Over the weekend, Labour unveiled its new political direction: racism:
Real-estate figures leaked to the Labour Party, which cover almost 4,000 house sales by one unidentified firm from February to April, indicate that people of Chinese descent [identified by whether their name "sounded Chinese" - I/S] accounted for 39.5 per cent of the transactions in the city in that period.
Yet Census 2013 data shows ethnic Chinese who are New Zealand residents or citizens account for just 9 per cent of Auckland's population.
Labour's conclusion (as obligingly passed on by the Herald): OMG! Foreigners are buying up all our houses and leaving decent honest white folk unable to buy their first home! Which might be true, but this data doesn't show it. Because even if you accept that a "Chinese sounding" name indicates Chinese ethnicity, and ignore some stuff about name diversity which could distort the results, you're still left with the fact, as the Herald puts it, that
It is not known if the Chinese buyers were based here or overseas.
Because what your name "sounds like" doesn't indicate anything at all about your residency or citizenship. And to be very clear, New Zealand citizens or permanent residents are kiwis, regardless of what their name "sounds like". Kiwis with "Chinese sounding" names are just as entitled to buy a house as anyone else. And foreign speculators are foreign speculators regardless of what their name "sounds like". By tarring a specific ethnicity (or at least something that "sounds like" it), Labour's point just ends up sounding like an ugly racist megaphone.
And I assume that its deliberate. Its obvious enough and revolting enough that anyone looking at it would say "hey, this sounds like racism!" even in a party as talentless and dysfunctional as Labour. I guess they've decided that Winston really is heading for the exit, and are trying to position themselves to grab his 200,000 dead white racist voters, and bugger their supposed party values. But if this is the direction our largest "centre left" party is heading in, I don't see why any decent person would want to support it.
