Ludicrous to see Brash as a contender

FScott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American life. But New Zealand life? Here, a career can run to four acts, even five.

Don Brash has been an economist, Reserve Bank Governor, leader of two political parties, one of which came close to winning an election from the momentum generated by expressing highly controversial views about Ma¯ ori at a Rotary club north of Auckland.

His second leadership stint, for Act, was much less successful.

The fourth – or is it fifth? – act has been a late-in-life reinvention as a free speech advocate. He fronted for the Free Speech Coalition formed to back alt-right activists Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux before their visit to New Zealand, while claiming not to have researched their views.

Yet it turned out their views on racial superiority were surprisingly similar to his own.

Brash is on record as saying that ‘‘while Jews made up only around 0.2 per cent of the world’s population, and only 2 per cent of the American population, they had won 22 per cent of all Nobel prizes’’.

Therefore, ‘‘it is impossible to ignore the possibility that at the very least Jewish culture is superior to many other cultures’’.

He made that comment during a debate on free speech at Auckland University, after Massey University’s counterproductive decision to cancel a Brash appearance, turning him into a free speech martyr. Combined with his respectable appearance and background, it has given some remarkably backward and even offensive views the appearance of acceptability.

Of course Brash has the right to air these and other views, on campus, in print or on street corners, if he wishes.

But we also have to be clear about the implications of his pseudo-scientific race views.

His comments about Ma¯ ori in general and the use of Te Reo in particular echo discredited 19th and early 20th century beliefs that an ‘‘inferior’’ culture would die out when confronted by a ‘‘superior’’ one.

After years in the political wilderness, Brash has been normalised again.

The strangest manifestation might be a nomination as New Zealander of the Year.

There is every chance this is a prank, like the voting by stirrers who kept David Seymour in Dancing with the Stars.

But the notion that Brash could be in contention for an award honouring a New Zealander who ‘‘makes us proud of our country and what can be achieved’’ and has contributed to ‘‘the wellbeing of the nation’’ is ludicrous.

While the award is banksponsored, the prime minister’s involvement lends it a semi-official status.

A Jacinda Ardern Facebook video called for nominations.

The winner wears a ka¯ kahu or cloak known as Pouhine, designed by Ma¯ ori weaver Veranoa Hetet. It would be bizarre to see that beautifully crafted, historically meaningful object draped around the shoulders of a political figure who has been so hostile to the culture that produced it.

Hetet has responded with horror on social media at the thought Brash might wear her creation, saying she would ‘‘question the whole NZer of the Year kaupapa’’. We might need to help Brash with the unfamiliar Ma¯ ori word in that sentence.