Did anyone else notice this from Mark Jennings’ Newsroom account of Blinglish’s launch:
A hundred or so young Chinese wearing blue T-shirts with “Blue dragons” written on the front marched in to the stadium in a highly-organised fashion.
I randomly asked two of them why they had come. They seemed to find the question confusing but told me they were overseas students.
Were National padding their audience with foreign students to make themselves look popular (especially with non-old white people that general frequent their meetings)? Seems an interesting response to their complaints about Labour’s US interns…
Also from that story:
The local Chinese media had a strong presence at the launch and Sky Kiwi (news website aimed at Chinese under 40) reporter Sophie Song told me her story would focus on English’s well-rehearsed, and soon to be well-reported, one liner “hardworking New Zealanders are not an ATM for the Labour Party”.
Song said this line would resonate very well with the Chinese community who believed in hard work and saving rather than spending.
She expected most Chinese would vote National.
We get apoplectic when Mike Hosking incorrectly tells people they can’t vote for the Maori Party (and can’t apologise about it properly – I like this idea that TVNZ should have weekly MMP lessons on Seven Sharp as a way of putting it right); but there’s a lot of media out there that goes unscrutinised as it’s not in English.
Some of it may be good; some of it may even be in the left’s favour; but evidently at least some of it is biased right. And reaches out to large audiences these days – Sky Kiwi has quite large readership, so can influence a lot of votes.
I’m not sure how easy the answer is, but I’m hoping left parties are well engaged with ethnic media too, and are getting their alternative visions out to all communities.
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