An offer he could so refuse
distaste for the wider public. Here is a place where legitimate opportunities to protest have been overshadowed by the indulgences of those who feel sufficiently righteous in their anger that they regard shabby behaviour as justified, even sanctified, by the occasion.
Under the self-indulgent control of Ngapuhi, Waitangi itself has too often become a place of bad theatre, be it the mud flung at Don Brash or the on-the-spot rejection of speaking rights that reduced Helen Clark, seldom seen as a fragile figure, to tears.
Initially it was speaking rights, rather than the potential for pinkened projectiles or physical mud-slinging that new PMBill English cited as the reason for his thanks-anyway decision this year.
But then he said it plainly; a lot of New Zealanders cringe a bit when they see the way ceremonies there are conducted.
This is essentially the same judgement John Key reached last year, albeit amid a climate of heated anti-TPPA protest. Now it’s English who says he’s been denied the chance at the widely publicised powhiri to speak ‘‘about issues of importance to New Zealand, as is tradition’’.
English is now potentially setting up his deputy, Paula Bennett, who will be attending Waitangi in his stead. But not only will Bennett be well up for it, she’s also a tad harder to justify as (to borrow from a different culture) a political pinata.
Ngapuhi leader Kingi Taurua says if English does not attend then he has no right to talk about the Treaty of Waitangi. Rubbish. English will still lead a delegation of ministers for a meeting at Waitangi on February 3 but on Waitangi Day itself he will be rather pointedly be underlining that significant events also happen elsewhere. He’ll be meeting the leaders of the 60 iwi who make up the Iwi Chairs’ Forum.
Ngapuhi can scarcely cast this as preferring to meet tame Maori, at least not without inviting reminders of their own previous decision to ban all reporters from their marae except those working for Maori TV.
English, incidentally, is on record saying back in 2000 that New Zealanders have chosen Anzac over Waitangi for their national day.
It’s unlikely he’s changed his views.