ACT Party leader David Seymour. Photo / Alex Burton
OPINION
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It’s been a week since ACT Party leader David Seymour said his Guy Fawkes joke and I’m still looking for the punchline.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s political editor Jason Walls, he makes his intention to dismantle the Ministry for Pacific Peoples if elected this year clear.
“Well, in my fantasy, we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes in there and it’ll be all over. But we’ll probably have to have a more formal approach than that.”
Walls, somewhat taken aback, says: “Sorry - just go back to that before - that reference to blowing up the Ministry of Pacific People, just so we’re clear. Guy Fawkes?”
Seymour’s reply is immediate: “That’s clearly a joke.”
Asked whether he might be getting a little “too casual” in interviews, Seymour says: “Not at all. I think the average New Zealander feels that we need to be able to have a bit more of a laugh at times and I think possibly the press have got a bit sensitive about some of these issues.”
What’s really funny is that it appears Seymour doesn’t understand the concept of a joke - to provide humour, to draw out laughter, to be funny.
A Pasifika person listening to that interview live or reading that in an article for the first time probably jumped. Either that or mouthed a swear word - possibly a Samoan one.
A palagi man just very calmly said he would send the fireworks guy into the ministry that looks after Pacific peoples and “it’ll all be over.”
There’s a saying the Island kids tend to use when someone says something inappropriate, goes a little too far or backchats their mum - and which fits perfectly here too.
“You all good, bro?”
What will be over? The ministry or the people working in the ministry - or both? That’s the thought that comes to mind at hearing those words. They sound careless. Not funny.
It has since come to light that this isn’t the first time this so-called joke has been used by Seymour - who told Newshub it’s one he has made “many, many times” about many government departments.
I’m sad no one close to him has pointed out that the joke is as dry as the Sahara.
ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden has also said the joke has been “blown out” (choose a different word next time, sis) of proportion. No, it hasn’t.
New Zealanders include Kiwis who identify as Tongan, Samoan, Fijian, Cook Island, Niuean, Ni-Vanuatu, Tokelauan, Tuvaluan, Rotuman and so forth.
We make up Pacific peoples with various histories that involve the white man doing just what the implied crux of Seymour’s joke is about against brown people.
The joke may not have been in direct reference to blowing up Pasifika people as a group; but for many, it felt like a direct attack on us as a people - our family.
Just this week a group apologised after turning up to a Kaimai quiz night dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t know what the mentality was behind that, but it sounds like it started off as a joke.
In a world where terror attacks and indeed racism exist, actions and - in this case, words - matter.
They matter when you are an adult speaking to a child, a teacher talking to a student or when you are a white man.
They matter when you are the leader of a political party whose words can influence young impressionable minds - and that’s the real punchline.
Sieni Leo’o Olo is moving to Samoa for a simpler, more connected life.