Finance Minister Grant Robertson on the Government's decision to increase minimum wage during coronavirus lockdown.
A Whanganui East woman says she was the victim of racial abuse from a nearby window as she and her family were out walking close to their home during the first week of the Covid-19 lockdown.
But Wen Xiong has found an unusual way to "channel the emotions" she wasfeeling, by making a rap song about it, something she had zero experience with.
"The next day I was still pretty angry, and I suddenly had the idea," Xiong said.
"I'd never done anything like that before, but I watched a couple of tutorial videos on online and wrote down how I was feeling.
"It was an unexpected way to get my emotions out, but I felt a whole lot better afterwards."
Xiong says the incident happened last week when she was walking with family in her neighbourhood.
"We were walking around our block, and a man opened his window and started yelling at us to go back to our own country and stuff about bringing coronavirus here," Xiong said.
"He just kept yelling and yelling, and all I could reply was something like 'we're just walking in our own neighbourhood'."
"I'd never swear in front of my kids, so after he kept screaming for a while I finally snapped and said, "wash your mouth out".
"I've been in New Zealand for thirteen years and this is the first time I've experienced it in this country," she said.
"I told my boys that I felt sad for the man who yelled at us and that maybe he didn't have someone to tell him what was right and wrong when he was growing up."
Wen Xiong told her verbal abuser to "wash his mouth out." Photo / Supplied
Xiong said she had "an outpouring" of support and messages on her Facebook page after people found out what she had experienced.
"It was really nice to get so many messages from my friends," Xiong said.
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"I've felt so lucky here in Whanganui that people are always smiling and chatting to me on the street, so it was a real shock to experience something my friends overseas had told me about."
The song, called Open Your Window Open Your Mind has been posted on YouTube.
The Multicultural Council of Rangitīkei/Whanganui's Pushpa Prasad said that there would always be "those certain few" whose opinions may be "uninformed or uneducated".
"I've always believed in the religion of humanitarianism because, at the end of the day, we are all the same," Prasad added.
"Some people have these kinds of racist thoughts and opinions, but we can only respond with kindness, and our council has been working really hard to educate the public to try and increase acceptance and understanding."
New Zealand's Race Relations Commissioner, Meng Foon, said the Covid-19 crisis had heightened the fear amongst the general population but stressed that the only way for the country to get past the epidemic was through unity.
