June 17, 2022
Racism background noise in Tauranga byelection
Tauranga holds a byelection tomorrow, and Maori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi says Maori issues have been almost absent from the campaign.
The party did not contest the seat because it said racist attitudes made it unsafe to field a candidate.
Mr Waititi says the push back on that seems to have been as close as the campaign got to controversy.
“They haven’t talked about how they address the racism in Tauranga Moana, how they address those groups like Hobson’s Pledge that drop pamphlets saying ‘it’s OK to be proud to be white’ and all those sorts of things, the threat that come out of Papamoa by an individual that said they were going to burn 150 marae and kill a whole lot of Maori leadership and both Debbie and myself and our families, all those sorts of things, I haven’t heard them address that at all,” he says.
There is no known connection between Hobson’s Pledge and those who produced the white supremacists flyers, which were from a previously unknown group.
Tauranga is within Mr Waititi’s Waiariki seat.