July 22, 2020
Taranaki seats tokenism says Peters
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the New Plymouth District Council is out of touch with it's ratepayers.
The council yesterday voted 12-2 to skip public consultation and create Māori wards at the local government election in 2022.
It did so despite the risk of repeating the turmoil of six years ago, when opponents of a similar move first put up a petition for a compulsory referendum and then voted the seats down.
Mr Peters says it was tokenism then and tokenism now.
"Your idea of equality is to pigeonhole Māori and say 'you can be in this ward, you can have this seat.' I have never supported that sort of behaviour because it pigeonholes Māori where others want them to be. Tokenism is the most destructive thing when it comes to race and it is a form of racism itself and I have spent my whole life opposing it," he says.
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