Justifiable passion

I am of the opinion that Julie-Anne Genter’s so-called ‘outburst’ in Parliament is a symptom of how restrictive our governance model has become, and a clear sign of the need for rapid, adaptive change aka rapidaptivity.

Her’s was an outburst of quite justifiable passion and “end of my tether” frustration at the gross ineptitude and nonsensical, debilitating policies being railroaded through the House under urgency — at a rate unprecedented in Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial hisherstory — by the National-Act-NZ1st aka NACTZ1 coalition. What I call a ‘Covernment’.

After Golriz Gharhaman, Kiri Allan, Dame Jacinda Ardern and others we should, yes, ‘should’, also be asking, “How much despicable, misogynist, racist and classist hate mail is this person — this woman — receiving from the Alt-Far-Right and the “Freedom” fruitloops?

Many people will have encountered ‘Action Methods’ in personal growth, corporate management and sales training workshops, professional development, drama and on te marae atea. Here, safely expressed passion and gesticulation, movement and oratory are encouraged because they are healthy.

What is needed is more of this, not its further containment and restriction. Not the entrenchment of the ancient, but the encouragement of the emergent. Keeping the feelings inside, not given expression, is what makes people sick, or makes them hide their compassion and empathy in fear of their own pent-up feelings.

This will require systemic change in this thing we call governance — which should be ‘evolving’ — and give new meaning to the role of ‘Speaker’, for instance, as facilitator of a far more complete expression of the loftiest of human endeavours.

Wally Hicks Kohukohu