A couple of weeks ago in our weekly catch-up with the ACT Party’s Simon Court, we discussed multiple countries moving to formally recognise Palestinian Statehood, and what New Zealand’s plans were in this regard.
Last week, Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, said the country would carefully weigh its position over the next month in recognising the state of Palestine.
During a debate in Parliament, the government’s delay in recognising a Palestinian state, as opposed to other countries such as France, the UK, Canada, and Australia, led Green Party co-leader, Chlöe Swarbrick, to refer to the country as “outlier,” and called for the government MPs “with a spine” to “stand on the right side of history”. This led to her being ordered to leave Parliament by Speaker Gerry Brownlee, after refusing to apologise for her statement.
As well as this, last week, Education Minister, Erica Stanford, announced cancelling the early-reading book At the Marae from its Ready to Read Phonics Plus series.
The government’s reasoning for this is through “mixed” evidence suggesting that learning both English and te reo Māori for young learners could confuse them.
The move has been widely criticised by linguists, academics, and educators, for being “an act of racism” and “white supremacy”.
For our weekly catch-up with the ACT Party’s Simon Court, Producer Castor spoke to Simon about both these topics, starting with recognising a Palestinian state.
Find out more about the Māori words which are a part of the official Oxford English Dictionary here
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