It’s not fair to say MPs need a spine

Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was ejected from the debating chamber yesterday by Speaker Gerry Brownlee for saying: "If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history”.

This was a totally unfair comment by Swarbrick because while it might seem like the government politicians refusing to acknowledge the genocide are spineless, she should know they’re actually really (really) busy fighting right now!

The politicians she called out can’t talk about the ‘war’ when they’re battling their own wars.

And they’re fighting those wars on many fronts!

So - let’s take a look at the courage shown by government politicians who are part of defence forces against the most significant issues facing our country.

Erica Stanford’s war against the word hongi

For two years, New Zealanders have been begging Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford to provide humanitarian emergency visa pathways for Palestinians with family in New Zealand. This would literally save lives, which is why dozens of human rights organisations and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders signed an open letter in March last year begging her to act.

But they didn’t know she was preparing to fight against our greatest threat: The word hongi. When Stanford found out 26 of 75 books given to Aotearoa’s children in class had up to THREE WHOLE Māori words, and a 27th book, 'At the Marae', had a whopping six Māori words - she took up arms.

She personally insisted on a near total ban on Māori words - the offending and impossible to understand words? Marae, karanga, kai, karakia, wharenui, koro, hongi, and the name Tāne.

Winston Peters’ war against trans girls playing floorball

Last month, Winston Peters said he would pull funding from any team that allows trans children or adults to play community sport.

It followed Chris Bishop asking Sport NZ to review the guidelines that broadly suggest “transgender people can take part in sports in the gender they identify with”.

Together, the junk police have waged war on community sports teams' ability to decide who plays on their teams. Because the biggest issue we face as a country is making sure a trans girl doesn’t accidentally play hockey.

What next? No lesbians allowed in roller derby? Be so for real.

Chris Bishop’s war against friendly cities

Last week, Te Whanganui a Tara entered an international partnership or ‘friendly city’ agreement with the Palestinian city of Ramallah. It was a beautiful gesture with a besieged group of people who are suffering through the unimaginable. The agreement symbolises a commitment to solidarity, cooperation and peace. Pretty nice eh?

Except that it wasn’t nice, and if you think it’s nice, you’re an anti-semite, and also somehow Tory Whanau is an anti-semite?

Bishop linked this agreement to anti-semitic graffiti in Wellington and suggested Tory Whanau had not spoken out against the graffiti, except that she did - repeatedly. And the 350,000 people living in Ramallah aren’t responsible for anti-semitic graffiti.

You might be thinking - “Who is Chris Bishop?” Well, he’s the Minister of Housing in a country where the median house price sits at 6.54 times the median income nationally, and 112,496 New Zealanders (at least) are severely housing deprived. So, posting snarky comments at Tory Whanau is exactly what we want him to be doing instead of…his job.

David Seymour’s war against any kids eating anywhere

David Seymour has continued his campaign of terror against children eating at lunchtime. Not content with running around schools like a reverse ham-burgler stealing kids’ lunches from under their noses, he’s continuing his unconditional support of Israel’s starvation regime of Gaza’s children.

Seymour has long been a supporter of Israel because he, too, hates kids. In September last year, he asked Foreign Minister Winston Peters to, in future, talk with ACT about New Zealand's position on Israel before making decisions on it, which is a frankly insane thing to request.

France, the United Kingdom, Canada and now Australia have all declared an intention to recognise a Palestinian state at a United Nations summit next month. The government has said they’ll think about it.

It’s been said that the hold-out on action on the genocide and recognising Palestinians as human beings is based on the views of one powerful person in government. I guess we just have to guess who that is…

Chris Luxon’s war against being a prime minister

It’s the job he thought he wanted, but has since found out he doesn’t like. It’s hard being prime minister when you’re not actually prime minister. Christopher Luxon has slowly come to the understanding that he gave away any tiny amount of power he had to an 800-year-old man obsessed with genitals and a racist who drinks room-temperature milk.

When he eats pavlova on a mountain while allowing hungry kids in Aotearoa to have their lunches snatched away by a Thatcher wannabe - he doesn’t even get cheered. People make fun of him!

His popularity has reached a two-year-low. His own deputy prime ministers are always insulting him and disrespecting him. He thought he could round up his property portfolio to ten after being the CEO of the country for a term, but now it looks like he’s going to be the leader of the only one-term National government ever.

But he’s determined - he will hug instead of hongi, his was out of this. He has declared war on being a prime minister, and victory looks assured.

So spare a thought for our busy politicians, fighting not for you, or anyone really, but for the causes closest to their hearts: Reactionary BS they think is popular because they spend too much time on Twitter.

Lest we forget at the next election.

Thank you so much for supporting my mahi by becoming a free or paid subscriber!! I love you more than Chris Bishop loves Big Tobacco!