Come on Simon, put your best foot forward

Iseem to recall that Opposition leader Simon Bridges has extremely small feet. OK, this is not what you think. I was once covering a ministerial visit to a vast roading project, as a reporter. It was the type of visit where they get all the guests swaddled in safety gear – glasses, hard hats, hi-vis vests.

Let me tell you, if there was ever a true representation of class difference it’s this: an entourage of politicians and journalists and spin doctors and senior managers – in borrowed worker-clothes – clopping round actual workers, in a mist of cologne, lattes, breath mints, ministerial-vehicle air freshener.

It is an unmanliness so stinging that, upon returning to the office, I always feel like not taking a shower. I always feel like calling my dad, who has a real worker’s job, and digging a hole with him, with hi-vis on everything, and trying not to cry.

Anyway, I remember one time when Bridges, then transport minister, arrived and staff had to hunt round for some steel-toed gumboots that would fit his (I swear I heard him say) size 7 feet. Kids generally don’t work on construction sites any more, so I guess they didn’t have many boots (booties?) in that size.

That’s my Simon Bridges story, and I bring him up because since his fall from government, and related ascension to National leader, he has interested me. I see some parallels between us. At first glance you might say we were both highachieving young Ma¯ ori.

He, however, is actually young. Also, he leads the Opposition, and appears in Parliament, and has an office and staff, and owns suits. I have been invited twice to be a celebrity judge for the Paraparaumu College Stars In Their Eyes talent quest.

Putting aside age and actual achievement, the key difference is that I chucked it all in to learn te reo Ma¯ ori fulltime. Right there is the only thing I think I’ve ever had over a high achiever.

So here is my challenge to Bridges: chuck it in too, if only for a year. Don’t wait – do it now, and you can go back to politics with a good, strong foundation in your language.

I know, it sounds like a joke. But it is a serious question for all Ma¯ ori. Is anything more important than the fight to save te reo?

The language is in an existential crisis. The number of proficient speakers is low and declining. We can’t get out of the death-dive by having a nation of people who can only say ‘‘Kia ora’’, count to 10-ish and point at colours and identify most of them.

Te reo Ma¯ ori demands something more, which is time. As work closes in around us, with responsibilities to our families, we think there is always something more important on which to spend our time; muttering to ourselves that we will do something, eventually, about the unfinished business of becoming our true self.

And it’s not even our fault we face a choice. We didn’t have a choice in learning Pa¯ keha¯ . The mistreatment of te reo Ma¯ ori over hundreds of years by later arrivals has boxed us in when it comes to our own language’s survival. And I don’t say all of this to shame Bridges or any other

Ma¯ ori. Learning te reo properly is, in my experience, just a way to feel a lot better.

Anyway, when I talk about the demand for time, I mean genuinely setting aside the dazzle of adult ambitions and schemes – getting a promotion, making more money, yup, even running the country – and not succumbing to the complications of disentanglement from everyday life.

I see this strength in the other students at the wa¯ nanga where I study – a group of people who work so hard to learn te reo around life’s demands, families, jobs, other study, that it makes my head spin. (It seems I spend a lot of my life watching other people working hard.)

Anyway, I wish I had something reassuring to say about time. I’ve only recently started treating its passage with the seriousness it deserves. Maybe maturity, which can happen at any age, is the act of not being frivolous with time. My point is that, while time is happening, you should try to cram in some important stuff.

Bridges can run all he wants towards Pa¯ keha¯ high achievement, certainly what some might think of as the important stuff; but in the end it’s just another wall. The questions of power and policy eat up time, but he can’t escape his own heart. No Ma¯ ori can.

It sounds like a joke. But it is a serious question for all Ma¯ ori. Is anything more important than the fight to save te reo?