The wee Maori girl that John Key suckered into travelling with him to Waitangi early on in his term, has had enough.
Now 16, she's leaving for Aussie, saying that things are going backwards here and she's taking Key's credibility with her.
The Prime Minister's play for the 'underclass' vote worked beautifully then, with Aroha and her mum and probably the whole community they lived amongst, believing he was a great bloke. But it's all turned sour, with all of them finding they are losing under the 'John Key-led National Government', to the point where Aroha's going across the ditch. It's a very bad look for Key, who invested a lot in the chummy relationship, so readily lapped-up by the media, but now he's batting off the criticism that comes with Aroha's decision to abandon waka.
Lot's of awkward moments for Mr Key right now - and still a week to go before polling day! They do say, don't they, that a week's a long time...
22 comments:
I have no respect for people that abandon ship to Australia to 'sup' off their unsustainable resource exploitation derived prosperity.
You do Robert?
Nice.
Do I , Shunda?
How did you come to that conclusion?
Should I be showing Aroha some disrespect?
She is a symbol of keys epic celebrity, oops I mean policy, fail. Simple. He made it so.
He did too, Anonymous.
He did too.
Now she's let him down, poor John.
Should I be showing Aroha some disrespect?
Why would you equate not having respect for someone's actions with having to show them disrespect??
I personally don't buy the "I have to go to Australia" cry, and find it completely absurd.
What would it take for you to have to go to Australia to live Robert?
And Anon, I wonder which policy "fail" you are talking about, do you really want NZ to mine national parks with Ozzy style mining?
Clearly you both misunderstand why the grass is greener over the ditch (excuse the pun).
Shunda - "Why would you equate not having respect for someone's actions with having to show them disrespect??"
Because you modeled that for me Shunda, with the disrespect you showed for Aroha, when you used loaded words and phrases like 'abandon ship', 'sup' and 'I have no respect for'. Hardly a comment that is respectful of the girl, the subject of the post.
This girl, or other New Zealanders like her, might have to go to Australia because all her family are there, who knows? It's not for me to judge her reasons nor assume that mine criteria for staying or going are superior to hers. Do you feel you can make the judgment for her?
I can imagine that some people have to travel because the feel it in their bones. It may be a desire they've harbored since they were very young - who knows? You may not 'buy' it, but I'm willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt and accept that they understand their own situation better than I do.
You?
If the grass is greener in aussie it's probably because all the dairy effluent and poor water management here has killed ours.
The Maori have a word that describes the colour of our pastures - kack-a-reeky!
I can imagine that some people have to travel because the feel it in their bones. It may be a desire they've harbored since they were very young - who knows? You may not 'buy' it, but I'm willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt and accept that they understand their own situation better than I do.
That being the case the left (and you) are now exploiting Aroha for your own political gain.
Poor lass, exploited by Key so brazenly, and now the Left. No one should have mentioned that she's going to Aussie, or wondered at the symbolism of it.
Hey, you could meet her at the airport and give her a pick and shovel!!
For a post that started off as an example of Key's mismanagement, to, her maybe travelling 'cos it's a long-harboured desire kinda negates things?
Suz - Aroha represents Key's 'I care for the underclass' positioning from the early days of his term as PM. Now she's leaving the country. Symbolically, this looks bad for Key. His poster-girl, leaving the country, despite his promises to people like her. The reason for her leaving is secondary. This is a symbolic event. The symbolism is bad.
Shunda - Key wore Aroha like a badge during his Waitangi Day escapade. Now she's leaving NZ. This tarnishes Key's image. Her reasons for leaving may be unconnected to Key's management of the country, but it looks awful. I'm not sure why you think she's wanting to mine the Australian landscape. Are you angry that she's chosen Australia over NZ? Maybe she's going over to live with family. It doesn't matter to me.
It's the symbolism I'm enjoying.
I'm with you on this one RG. Terrible symbolism. But what do you expect when Key's National government has blindly followed liarbours policy settings? It's no wonder the country is spiralling downwards.
Paranormal
I admire Shunda for his honesty; he states very clearly an attitude that a number of Kiwis share: that of a visceral dislike of people (Our People?) who leave NZ.
This attitude was writ large earlier this year with Paul Callaghan's "Letter" to ex-students who had gone overseas.
The clearly articulated attitude is one of dismissiveness to those who have gone overseas, and an attendant shaming of them (the rats that abandon ship). The sub-text seems to be one of staunchness: those who stay are "heroic" and "staunch" and the rest are well...sub-par (to put it mildly).
Its about time some of us grew up. If places like Australia weren't there what would NZ be like? Longer queues for work? More child poverty? More people on some sort of welfare support?
It's got damn-all to do with us what Australia does with its resources. Be damn grateful it is a major market; be damned grateful that you don't live there - for all the good things it offers, there's no feather-bedding for Kiwis; and most of all be damned grateful that all our displaced citizens (who shamefully can't get a better life in their own country) don't come home en masse - all 700,000 or so of them.
We Kiwis really do give a strong impression of being punitive, petty and self-righteous sometimes. I thought we were better than this. After all its one of our Favoured Myths: how much better we are than just about everyone else.
As to Key, as a politician wedded to an ideology of attacking the emancipation of others, just what did we expect?
I admire Shunda for his honesty
No you don't, you simply made that statement to create the allusion of being reasonable before you preached your sermon.
But sadly you miss the point and are, well, just another left wing cliché that perhaps struggles for originality.
Enjoy painting that red on the necks of your opponents, but don't kid yourself.
corymbia11 - your treatise is a very perceptive one and highlights one of the more corrosive mechanisms used by 'certain parties' and their followers to maintain control. The attacking of 'outliers' who don't confirm to the conservative model in the way that you describe is very real, in my experience. The prime Minister's off-hand dismissal of actors for what he would have us believe are their 'infantile' opinions, is but one example. I suspect politicians at his level do it consciously, but someone like Shunda (breath deeply Shunda), does it without recognising why they feel that way and why they choose to belittle those who reject the conservative model, by expressing different thoughts, criticizing the staus quo, leaving the 'group', or in this case, going to Australia. Good luck with trying to get yopur message across to those who act in this way though, corybia11. It's a thankless and futile mission :-)
No Robert, your complicated psycho babble is just that - babble.
There is no inner hatred, conservative subconscious agenda, or any other hidden evil thoughts, just a realisation that that big country over the ditch has built it's wealth on some of the most unsustainable industry a greenie could possibly imagine.
But look here! you are prepared to swallow that stinking rat (if you perceive it makes key look bad) and even imply that I am the one with the problem!
Wow.
Shunda, you're arguing with the left who beleive they have the monopoly on 'caring' when in reality it is their 'caring' that is causing the harm.
Deep down the left want to trap people in poverty because that cements their voters ensuring the left stays in power.
They know from experience that as you raise individuals from the poverty trap, they see the light and vote to the right.
Paranormal
Shunda and Para - don't be dills.
I'm sorry if you think I'm a dill Robert, but you need to step back a moment and look at how the system is designed to trap people in poverty. It's all about political power.
Remember how the founder of the welfare state said it should be there to spring people back into gainful employment. He must be spinning in his grave to see how the party that bears the same name as the one he belonged to has so badly served the poor. And I'm sorry, your vaunted Greens are following the same formula.
Paranormal
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