[mediawatch] Dances With Curmudgeons

Karl du Fresne is not my favourite person in the world. He is, now that the sickening Michael Bassett has departed from the scene, the curmudgeon most guaranteed to get my hackles up. (Which is, of course, his function, as he well understands.)
And yet today I found myself agreeing with him. He acknowledged the “terror raids” to be a nasty overreaction by the NZ police. He acknowledged that, in the public mind, the police response itself evened out the existence of dodgy characters in the woods – leaving a public relations dead heat. And he said that the march of some Tuhoe down to Parliament was a spectacular own goal in terms of PR; instead of peacefully making a damning, silent protest, they donned masks and scared people. There goes any chance for public support.
He thinks this is foolish, self-defeating behaviour by the Tuhoe group. They could have had middle NZ on their side, and they squandered their chance. This is where we part ways (and I say this with some relief; it’s uncomfortable to be on the same road as du Fresne for any length of time).
The way I see it is this: why the hell should Tuhoe care about winning over middle New Zealand? That’s not the goal of the marchers at all. They were sending a message to police and to government that they will not be quiet, they will not roll over, they will not be the well-behaved colonised natives seeking peaceful redress for numerous injustices.
They weren’t trying to win support from middle NZ. They couldn’t care less about middle NZ. As much as the endless stream of letters to the editor gasping in fear at the scary brown people made me grumpy, scaring Mr and Mrs Smith didn’t seem an own goal to me any more than it seemed the point of the exercise. It was just a side effect of their larger political goal.
That goal was to establish Tuhoe as a political force in this nation. To get their name and their greivances on everyone’s lips. To make sure the decision-makers in this country think twice before they abuse that community again.
And judged by those criteria, it wasn’t an own goal. It was a resounding success.
(I leave it as an exercise for the reader whether or not du Fresne’s evaluation of the Tuhoe hikoi as foolish amounts to “dumb ignorant natives” racism.)