Plans to introduce bilingual road signs in New Zealand have become a political battleground as arguments over racial politics become increasingly important in the country’s election race.
Last week, New Zealand opened a public consultation on plans to create bilingual road signs in English and te reo Māori, the indigenous language of Aotearoa. Transport agency Waka Kotahi said the signs were “an opportunity for te reo Māori to be seen in our communities and support language learning and revitalization” and that “making te reo Māori part of our daily lives promotes cultural understanding and social cohesion.”
Bilingual road signs are the norm in many countries, including Scotland, Wales and parts of Europe. The plans were immediately criticized, however, from the centre-right National Party, with spokesman Simeon Brown saying the signs would be confusing and that “We all speak English and they should be in English”. David Seymour, leader of the libertarian right-wing Law party and future partner of the National Coalition, said “the purpose of road signs is to communicate information in a language that drivers understand, not a virtue signal, not a social engineer.” .
Justice Minister Kiritapu Allan said the comments were an insult to New Zealand intelligence.
“They seem to think New Zealand isn’t smart enough,” he said New Zealand newspaper Stuff. “The rest of the world has embraced bilingualism and multilingualism, which is reflected in their road signs. This is a real insult to New Zealanders and our IQ.”
Both she and Premier Chris Hipkins called the remarks a form of “dog-whistle” posturing to win votes through reactionary racial politics.
“I’m not entirely sure where they’re going to go with this unless it’s a dog whistle,” Hipkins said.
During colonization, there were active efforts to eliminate the indigenous language in New Zealand, with some children being beaten for speaking it at school. More recently, the country has been in the midst of large-scale efforts to recover and revitalize the language. The number of New Zealanders who can speak basic Maori words and phrases has been growing, from 24% in 2018 to 30% in 2021, according to Statistics New Zealand. According to the 2018 census, 4% of New Zealanders were fluent in Māori, up from 3.7% in 2013.
Te Herenga Waka Victoria University’s Dr Awanui Te Huia said steps such as traffic signals were an important element of this. “The more we see the Māori language around the place, it gives us a sense of where we are, politically and physically, but it also tells Māori speakers that this language, our language, has relevance in contemporary contexts. , she said.
He saw criticism of bilingualism as politically motivated and a distraction. “We are close to the election – these right parties know they have to differentiate themselves,” he said.
“It focuses energy away from where we need to focus, which is revitalization, using language as a platform for cross-cultural engagement, as a form of nation-building.”
The political row over bilingual road signs has been criticized as a divisive way to win votes ahead of October’s general election. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images
While the National Party later softened some of its stance, with leader Christopher Luxon saying the party was not opposed to bilingualism but did not think it should be a priority for transport, the issue sparked political debate fierce The political upheaval comes with New Zealand’s election just months away, scheduled for October 14, and in a political tenure that has seen racial politics repeatedly emerge as a line of attack.
With New Zealand’s two largest political parties, Labor and National, competing for the centre, successive National leaders have turned disputes over “co-governance” with Maori as points of difference and contention. When the government proposed Māori governing bodies on health and water reforms, then National Party leader Judith Collins accused them of creating “two stealth systems”.
Political commentator Shane Te Pou, who was previously an executive member of the Labor party, said he believed the criticism of bilingualism was “trying to beat a culture war that I don’t think exists in the New Zealand paradigm, but certainly has some traction among older pākehā [white] New Zealanders.” He said the comments were part of a wider stance by New Zealand’s right wing, which opposed co-government with Maori, and could be an attempt by National to win back voters who ‘had deviated from the right, to the Act party, which voted strongly at 12.7% in May.
“They’re trying to get some of that vote back – it’s as simple as that,” Te Pou said.
In a speech setting out the Act party’s campaign for the next election, Seymour accused the Labour-led government of “accelerating the drift towards separatism with its constant insertion of race-based politics into everything”. and promised to eliminate the “treatment”. people differently according to race”.
The Maori Party [Māori party] co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer he told RNZ the statements were an “ignorant alarmist way of doing politics”.
“Twenty percent of our population is Maori. If we see a major party basically trying to ignore 20% of that population, then can we expect them to do the same to the rest of our multiculturalism, diversity and languages that we see emerging in Aotearoa?
