Authenticity in their bluntness

Do I dare raise a timid flag in support of naughty Shane Jones, charmless John Tamihere, and the elusive guile of Winston Peters? Oh, to hell with it. Our lives would be dull without the blunt masculine perspective they bring to things, and the gasps of outrage they cause among the nicer class of people. At least they’re authentic.

Jones produces a courtly verbal flourish, a nuanced oratory unlike anyone else I can think of when he’s on form. It comes of being at home in a culture that values skill with the spoken word, and I like hearing it even when he’s totally out of line.

He stands universally condemned this week for his slack-lipped, slack-thinking comments on Indian overseas students studying here, and Indian immigration. The shock was in the blunt directness of his speech, unfiltered by the sense of responsibility we expect from players in public life. But – right or wrong – I doubt it really would have outraged many Ma¯ ori, struggling from a position of second-class citizenship in their own country.

How have they benefited from recent immigration, and did they ever seek, or agree to, multiculturalism when achieving biculturalism alone remains a hard fought, incremental battle? Let the man have a voice.

Peters once said: ‘‘We are being colonised without New Zealanders having some say in the numbers of people coming in, and where they are coming from. This is a deliberate policy of ethnic engineering and repopulation.’’ It’s a first nation perspective that needs to be heard in debate, not slapped down. It’s not as if either of them is burning crosses on front lawns, nor would they, but they’re on the same page, and Jones’s ‘‘get the nephs off the couch’’ comment about getting unemployed youth working will be requoted for years.

Tamihere was once trapped in a cafe´ interview with a journalist who taped his loose comments and later published them. The journalistic ethics of that were debatable. He offended by saying he was ‘‘sick of hearing how many Jews got gassed’’ in the Holocaust. To be fair, he added that he was revolted by it but, ‘‘how many times do I have to be told, and made to feel guilty?’’ Some of us would say, as often as it takes. We dare not forget what people are capable of.

He and Willie Jackson caused great offence with their comments on the Roast Busters, Auckland schoolboys who filmed themselves sexually abusing girls as young as 13, and boasting about it. These were low, blundering points in his career, as was his response of ‘‘Sieg Heil!’’ to a speech on multiculturalism by rival mayoral candidate Phil Goff. Nazis aren’t funny, he wasn’t, but loose cannons are bankable copy, and these were hard lessons.

It’s a pleasure to hear Peters’ evasive interviews. ‘‘I’m surprised you asked. I thought you knew everything,’’ he told one interviewer who irked him. It’s all verbal fencing for him.

Not for Government minister Carmel Sepuloni, though, who last weekend told of seriously jeopardising her health, and losing a baby she didn’t know she was carrying, by trying to be perfect. No, that’s not what she said, but it was a tale of a woman – so many women – who believe they can’t afford to be off their game for a second when they’re in a top job.

I’m always uneasy at her too-careful speech and hyper-self-control with the camera on her, as if something will snap if she dares relax for an instant. That’s asking too much of herself, a common failing of women. We suffer from impostor syndrome, and don’t believe we’ve earned it. Men, however slack, dare to enjoy. It can be infuriating.

These women are all unwilling to sugarcoat their own brilliance.