Monday, December 18, 2023

A walking pile of insincerity

Chris Luxon's reactionary coalition hates te reo. In addition to trying to eliminate it from public use by the government, they're also trying to cut the pay of public servants who can use it, and cut funding for public servants to learn. But of course Luxon is not practicising what he preaches:
Taxpayers have paid for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s own Māori language classes, even as he criticised public servants for bonuses for its use.

As New Zealand grapples with a new style of Government and a new approach to the Māori language, the Prime Minister has fallen foul of his own advice to the public service.

Luxon appears guilty of a double standard after scolding bureaucrats for taking cash bonuses for understanding the Māori language, while using taxpayer funds to learn himself.

[...]

”In the real world outside of Wellington and outside the bubble of MPs, people who want to learn te reo or want to learn any other education actually pay for it themselves.”

However, Luxon did not follow his own advice. After repeated requests, the Prime Minister’s office confirmed taxpayers paid for Luxon’s own classes using a budget offered to the leader of the Opposition.

”As leader of the Opposition and a potential prime minister at the time, developing better skills in te reo was highly relevant to his role,” the spokesman said.

And it is highly relevant to his role. But taking government funding to learn, while cutting it for everyone else, makes him look like a two-faced dirty hypocrite, a walking pile of insincerity. But then, that's what you get from people whose political ideology is based on "one rule for me, and one for everyone else".