WELLINGTON: The removal of basic Maori phrases meaning “hello” and “New Zealand” from a Maori lunar new year invitation to an Australian official was not a snub of the Indigenous language by New Zealand’s government, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Wednesday, seemingly joking that it instead reflected the “incredibly simple” language required when speaking to Australians.
Luxon’s defense in Parliament of the lawmaker who ordered the removal of the Maori words from an invitation sent to Australia’s arts minister was an attempt to rebuff criticism that his government is anti-Maori, as it seeks to reverse policies favoring Indigenous people and language.
The prime minister appeared to indulge in a favorite pastime of New Zealanders, who enjoy a friendly rivalry with their closest neighbor: calling Australians stupid.
“In my dealings with Australians, it always pays to be incredibly simple and clear and use English,” Luxon said, referring to the invitation sent to Tony Burke.
Ripostes between lawmakers across the Tasman have precedent. In the most famous example, a New Zealand leader, Rob Muldoon, quipped in the 1980s that New Zealanders who migrate to Australia “raise the IQ of both countries.”
On Thursday, a smiling Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to Luxon with a favorite Australian joke — that no one can understand the New Zealand accent.
He said that at times interpreters were needed, perhaps diplomatically adding that he had sometimes “missed” things said by Luxon’s predecessors too.
“Look, we’re great friends and we’re great mates,” the Australian leader said. “Sometimes though we do speak a different language and that’s when we both think we’re speaking English.”
The exchange offered a diversion in an otherwise tense session of New Zealand’s Parliament, which has been roiled by accusations of bullying, racism and insults in recent weeks, with lawmakers in tears and the prime minister urging “all political leaders to watch their rhetoric.”
During Question Time, Luxon was asked by opposition leader Chris Hipkins about a series of inflammatory remarks he said lawmakers had recently made.
Among them was the report that New Zealand’s arts, culture and heritage minister, Paul Goldsmith — who signed off on the new year invitation — had directed officials to remove some Maori phrases from the materials, according to documents divulged by 1News.
They included “tena koe” — a formal way to say hello, learned by New Zealand children in their first year of elementary school — and “Aotearoa,” a commonplace Maori name for New Zealand.
“I just didn’t think it needed a lot of te reo in it,” Goldsmith told 1News, using a phrase meaning the Maori language, an official one of New Zealand. The language was once close to dying out, but activists provoked a revival over several decades, and common Maori words or phrases are now in everyday use among all New Zealanders.
The same movement prompted a revival of Matariki, the Maori lunar new year, which was established as a nationwide public holiday in 2020.
Since assuming office after the 2023 election, Luxon’s coalition government has prompted fraught public debates about race. One was over a return to English names for government agencies, many of which had assumed Maori titles in recent years.
Another was over ending initiatives that offer priority to Maori, who lag behind other New Zealanders in most health, economic and justice statistics.
Protesters gathered outside Parliament in the capital, Wellington, this week to oppose the government’s plans to repeal a clause requiring recognition of children’s Maori heritage from the law governing the child protection system.
A spokesperson for Burke, the Australian recipient of the controversial invitation, said on Thursday that he had known the meaning of the word Aotearoa since 1982, when it was referenced in the lyrics of a popular song by the New Zealand band Split Enz.

The Yazidi nightmare

Ten years after the genocide, their torment continues

Enter

keywords

MINNEAPOLIS: While former President Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance have been hammering Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over his response to the violence that erupted after George Floyd’s murder, Trump told the governor at the time that he fully agreed with how Walz handled it.
“What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately,” Trump told Walz and other governors and officials in a phone call on June 1, 2020. The Associated Press on Wednesday obtained an audio recording of the call, which has taken on new significance now that Walz has been tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate against Trump and Vance.
Other administration officials on the call included Defense Secretary Mark Esper; Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Attorney General William Barr.
ABC News reported on the call earlier Wednesday, a day after Harris introduced Walz as her vice presidential pick. CNN posted a transcript of the call back in 2020.

Protests erupted in Minneapolis and around the world after Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white former officer who knelt on the Black man’s neck for nearly 9 1/2 minutes, on May 25, 2020. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” His death forced a reckoning with police brutality and racism. Some of the protests turned violent.
Walz mobilized the Minnesota National Guard three days later to help restore order to Minneapolis after rioting that included the burning of a police station and numerous businesses. Trump offered federal help to Walz later that day, but the governor did not take him up on it.
During a May 2024 fundraiser in St. Paul, Trump repeated a claim he had been making lately that he was responsible for deploying the National Guard. “The entire city was burning down. ... If you didn’t have me as president, you wouldn’t have Minneapolis today,” Trump told a Republican audience. Trump made similar claims at a rally in St. Cloud last month.
It was actually Walz who gave the mobilization order in response to requests from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Although Walz came under criticism at the time for not moving faster. There was finger-pointing between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Walz on who bore responsibility for the delays.
Trump, in the June 1, 2020, call, described Walz as “an excellent guy” and later said: “I don’t blame you. I blame the mayor.” The president didn’t criticize the governor at the time.
“Tim, you called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast, it was like bowling pins,” Trump said.
But Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt put a different spin on the call in a statement to the AP on Wednesday.
“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” Leavitt said. “In this daily briefing phone call with Governors on June 1, days after the riots began, President Trump acknowledged Governor Walz for FINALLY taking action to deploy the National Guard to end the violence in the city.”
Walz did thank Trump on the call, as well as Esper and Milley, “for your strategic guidance, very helpful. ... Yeah, our city is grieving and in pain.”