Coromandel MP Scott Simpson said as far as he could ascertain, a party volunteer added the categories in response to questions from members of the public.
“That won’t be happening again.”
Asked if it was racist, he said “I think it was in response to members of the public, I don’t think it’s appropriate and I wouldn’t have done it.”
Asked if he was referring to the pidgin English reference or the co-governance , he said “both”.
Labour’s Maori seats campaign chairman Willie Jackson said he couldn’t quite understand what the pidgin English referred to, but if it related to the use of te reo Māori, he did not believe such views were widespread.
“People are quick to use the racism [word]. I think it’s probably more ignorance than anything else.
“If you’re talking about the use of Māori language, we saw the way the public supported the bilingual signs and I think New Zealanders have grown up. So I think [National] are making the wrong calls in that area.
“In terms of co-governance, I also don’t think that’s as big a deal as they thought it was going to be. Once we clarified things, we don’t hear a lot of noise out there. The topics we hear about constantly are the cost of living and housing. I know they want to drum it up and make out it’s a big deal, but most Kiwis aren’t saying that to me.”
At a series of public meetings, National leader Christopher Luxon has sometimes fielded questions about the use of Māori names for government departments and bilingual road signs.
While Luxon has said he embraced te reo Māori and was trying to learn it himself, he believed it was a problem if people did not understand the Māori titles used for government departments, saying it was “difficult and really unfair when people don’t know who to contact”.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters’ is campaigning on a policy to stop the use of Māori titles for government departments.
National has also taken aim at Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency’s move to introduce bilingual road signs, including transport spokesman Simeon Brown telling a public meeting in Tauranga that he did not believe it should happen, other than for placenames, as it could confuse drivers. Luxon subsequently clarified that the party had no objection to bilingual signs, but did not believe resources should be put into them given the state of the roads.
National is not the only one using the “pidgin” term to refer to bilingualism or te reo Māori. Last week, Labour MP Marja Lubeck ridiculed Act leader David Seymour’s attempts to ask questions in te reo Māori as “pigeon reo.”
Lubeck tweeted: “Seymour needs to work on his te reo because not even the translator could understand him. The Speaker was very generous and translated the pigeon reo as Seymour asking ‘am I Māori’. Act really are turning Question time into a circus.”
Seymour had been asking about Te Whatu Ora’s equity adjuster score model, which gave extra priority to people who were rural, low-income, or Māori or Pacific.
Seymour attempted to ask in te reo Māori if he would be considered Māori for health purposes, but had not added the words to make it a question, leaving the Speaker to translate it for him.
Pidgin is a term used to describe a simplified language which is a hybrid of two other languages, usually the local language of a country and English. Pidgin-English is a common language in some Pacific countries, including PNG and Vanuatu, as well as several African countries.
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
