The Outsider Insider: Awful week for the National Party

Mike Williams

OPINION

I grew up in Hawke's Bay, for most of my life I have lived in Auckland.

I've also spent several years in Wellington.

Though I'm comfortable and feel at home in all three places, I had a powerful reminder of where my heart really lies last week when I watched the Hawke's Bay rugby team defeat Bay of Plenty in a heart-stopping match.

It recalled the Ranfurly Shield matches, many of which I attended, when Hawke's Bay held the shield in the 60s.

The Ranfurly Shield has largely been eclipsed these days, but last week's win was just as memorable as when the Hawke's Bay team took the trophy half a century or more ago with the brilliant halfback Hepa Paewai trapping Waikato with a dummy pass off a scrum in the dying minutes of the game.

It was also a fun time for politics watchers with the possibility of a referendum on the name of our country and another party meltdown.

The National Party has had a truly awful couple of weeks. Leader Judith Collins kicked off its nightmare with an attack on Dr Siouxsie Wiles for sitting on an Auckland beach unmasked, calling her a "big fat hypocrite".

This was followed by the publication of a Curia poll, commissioned by the normally right-wing friendly Taxpayer's Union showing National's party vote at 21 per cent and the Act Party eating further into National's support with nearly 15 per cent of the vote.

In quick succession, Collins was caught on camera in a Queenstown shop without a mask making a mockery of her attack on Siouxsie Wiles.

This performance brought to mind the Armenian proverb "Just because your house burnt down, your wife left you and your horse died, doesn't mean your well won't dry up".

There were again rumblings about a leadership change in the National Party and the most likely replacement seems to be the former leader who was rolled last year, Simon Bridges.

Bridges would be foolish to make his move at the moment, in my view. Lockdowns of the kind we just endured favour sitting governments and with a modicum of self-discipline, Judith Collins can lift her game.

Another possible contender for the National Party leadership, Christopher Luxon the former CEO of Air New Zealand, gave a waffly performance on weekend television and looks to be years away from any kind of promotion, if ever.

Māori language week saw the Te Pati Māori launch a petition asking for the country's name to be changed from New Zealand to Aotearoa. The Party also asks that the names of towns and cities are changed to their Māori names by 2026.

This petition accumulated 51,000 signatures on its first day.

Less attractive with 13,000 signatures was New Zealand First's petition to have a referendum on the country's name.

Winston Peters has previously condemned the name Aotearoa as not an original Māori name for these islands, but some evidence I chanced upon last week will cast great doubt on his assertion.

As I have written before, New Zealand, or Nieuw Zeeland, in the original Dutch was not the name Abel Tasman gave to the islands he "discovered" in December 1642. He gave us the name Staten Land, thinking the land he saw was connected to South America. The name New Zealand was applied by an anonymous Dutch mapmaker 40 years later.

It's likely that once the latest bout of Covid-19 is over, there will be a debate on this issue, although the Prime Minister recognises that this will be divisive, and she's not interested.

Predictably Don Brash has weighed into the argument with a Curia poll on the country's name. The findings are equally predictable with 49 per cent opposing a name change and 28 per cent supporting one.

This would support Winston Peters' stance, however there is a significant undecided element of 32 per cent which makes any referendum outcome hard to predict.

One of the earliest Polynesians who reported the traditional names for many of the islands in the South Pacific was encountered by Captain James Cook in Tahiti in July 1769.

This was Tupaia, a Tahitian chieftain and navigator who was to join Cook's Endeavour and act as translator when Captain Cook encountered Māori in New Zealand.

He was popular with and respected by Māori as a tohunga and when Cook returned in 1773, Māori reportedly approached his vessel calling "Tupaia, Tupaia".

Tupaia drew an ocean chart for Cook in August 1769 which shows islands ranging from Rotuma west of Samoa, the southern Cook Islands, the Austral Group, Mangareva, Pitcairn and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and many others.

His words were noted down phonetically, probably by Joseph Banks.

South of Tahiti, in roughly the right direction there's a landmass Tupaia named as "Ohiteroa". This could very easily be a transliteration of Aotearoa.

Let's talk about that, Winston!

* Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today