The other day, I wrote a piece on Poto Williams’ selection to be Labour’s candidate in the Christchurch East by-election. I promptly had to ban a commenter who assumed her selection was due to a quota – ie. a woman Cook Islander can’t possibly win on her own merit. Unfortunately, it seems The Standard sets higher, um, standards than The Herald, which published a similar argument by Damien Rogers today.
No, I don’t know who Damien Rogers is either – a political science lecturer at Massey’s Albany campus, apparently, which seems like the equivalent of being a junior lieutenant in the Navy’s Lake Taupo division – not exactly part of the A Team. Unfortunately, it also seems this arsehole is a leftie, which just goes to show the Right doesn’t have a monopoly on arseholes.
Rogers’ half-witted piece claims that “Labour Party president Moira Coatsworth and general secretary Tim Barnett influenced recent decisions to select Meka Whaitiri to fill the vacancy left by Parekura Horomia, and Poto Williams to fill the vacancy left by Lianne Dalziel”.
Of course, the central Party gets a vote on candidacy selections, along with members, affiliates, and local branch officials but Rogers presents no evidence that Coatsworth and Barnett ‘influenced’ the decisions beyond that – or even that the central Party’s votes went to the successful nominees. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s not what happened with Whaitiri because the Parliamentary leadership at the time wanted Shane Taurima.
Having presented no evidence whatsoever that Coatsworth and Barnett even chose Whaitiri and Williams, let alone got others to vote for them, Rogers takes another leap by assuming that they can only have been selected on some kind of gender and ethnicity quota referring to the: “The quota-based approach favoured by the Labour Party leadership”.
Again, no evidence of this is presented. You wonder how this fucken morons become the people who teach our youngsters when they can’t even pass basic evidential hurdles in their own arguments.
Rogers just assumes that if you’re a woman or non-Pakeha and you get selected by a party to represent them, then it must be a quota. Ipso facto, the fact stands by itself because, in Rogers’ moronic world, a woman, a Maori, or a Cook Islander can’t possibly ever just be the best fucken person for the job. What is this moron doing teaching?
And what the hell is the Herald doing publishing this prejudice-reinforcing, unevidenced shit? Shame, motherfuckers, shame.
PS. I’ve just seen that Rogers is Fran Mold’s partner and used to work for the GCSB. I’ll leave implications of those facts to the reader.
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