The truism that the personal is political and the political personal is very much the case with Māori (identity) politics. We’ve recently seen several incidents in which Māori government ministers have criticised other Māori MPs or public figures in ways that, by implication, relate to who they are as Māori.
In May, Labour minister Willie Jackson referred to Act leader David Seymour as a “useless Māori” for his lack of advocacy for Māori. More recently, an opinion column Jackson wrote in 2010 resurfaced, in which he named several Māori media personalities and wrote, “it’s not just about a Māori face. More important is the Māori perspective.”
