He’s just telling it like it isn’t

Shane Jones is never afraid to tell it like it isn’t.

Nga¯ ti Woke to the left of him, Nga¯ ti Redneck to the right, this self-aggrandising ‘‘beer-drinking, plain-speaking, red meat-eating’’ proudly unreconstructed politician is standing staunch in postured defence of his claims that a horde of students who have come from India have ‘‘ruined many’’ of the academic institutions they joined.

Anyone have a problem with that contention? And remember, we’re asking you middle-of-theroad New Zealanders. Jones is entirely untroubled what the woke among you may think – apparently that lot will just be all prissy about his language. Or the thinking behind it. Or the facts behind the thinking, such as they are.

Jones has not to date felt the need to detail the basis for these claims, to name the specific institutions, explain precisely what it is about the Indian students’ presence, or behaviour, or morality, or the sheer teeming mass of them, that has somehow caused this ruination.

That done, he would then need to stand accountable for whether this comes remotely close to justifying the gaping expansiveness of his contention, none of which suggested problems of a boutique scale.

To date, the bad news by and large seems to have escaped our academic institutions themselves. Granted, it’s public record that our authorities have, in the past, let some scandalously under-performing outfits of scant repute operate until they were exposed. But as one or two woke voices have tried to point out, this was hardly the fault of international students who had spent about $20,000 or $30,000 to come here without particularly intending to bring their institution crashing down around them.

His incendiary rhetoric is not a case of Jones just being disinclined to be dainty in his terminologies. He makes great play of being more Nga¯ ti Bloke than Nga¯ ti Woke, but there’s nothing woke about gagging on the ugliness of comments that are gratuitously and hurtfully rude about people for the basest of reasons. Jones is not some ignorant talkback caller and, when he behaves like one, it’s because he chooses to.

It hasn’t escaped notice that Jones’ condemnation hasn’t harmonised all that well with party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ trade-minded New Delhi trip, or Peters’ references to New Zealand Indians’ ‘‘seriously impressive achievements across all parts of New Zealand society’’.

Jones has form for cavalier depictions of Indians in NZ. When they protested against immigration practices making it harder for arranged-marriage couples to bring their spouses here, he effortlessly expanded the cause as a desire to ‘‘bring your whole village’’.

While it’s by no means the first outrageous comment around race and immigration out of NZ First – remember Richard Prosser? – his latest splutterings demand a Government response. Enter Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Exit Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, after frowning deeply but acting weakly. She said Jones had been loose with his language and wrong on the facts, and invited him to ‘‘reconsider’’ the way he talks about these issues because that would be better for New Zealand. How chastening. Let that be a lesson to him.

The lesson being that her displeasure remains an inconsequential thing that can be scornfully dismissed, bearing in mind scornful dismissals are more in his wheelhouse in any case. Clearly they aren’t in hers.

There’s nothing woke about gagging on the ugliness of comments that are gratuitously and hurtfully rude ...