Sic 'em Wayne

Wayne Mapp must feel like a dog that's been thrown two bones.

Wayne's been getting his teeth sunk into Steve Maharey, the Blairite Minister and former radical sociologist who back in the 90s was known to buy the odd guilt copy of Socialist Worker, and who now seems to have been guilt-tripped by his local Labour branch into giving $200 to striking supermarket workers.

If Wayne bothers to read the text of Hone Harawira's recent speech to parliament about the cleaning industry, though, he'll find a lot more to bite at. Unlike Maharey, who's far too polite to actually support a strike in public, Hone has come out explicitly for the Service and Food Worker cleaners who have been campaigning for better pay and conditions this year.

In an article published back in May, Justin Taua foresaw a possible split in the Maori Party, because of the dissatisfaction of Hone and his supporters with the rightward trajectory of several party MPs, including leader Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples, the second of whom had caused outrage by voting for Wayne Mapp's bill when the wretched thing was given its first reading in parliament. Recently, though, Sharples reversed his position, effectively killing the bill. Now Harawira's speech has been applauded by Kirsty McCully, one of the leaders of the Clean Start campaign. In a statement issued this afternoon, Kirsty noted that:

After the Maori Party's about turn on the 90 day bill, it's really good
to see him talking about our campaign!

Before he made himself enemy number one for trade unionists, Wayne Mapp did a good job of annoying a lot of 'non-mainstream' Kiwis with his anti-feminist, anti-Maori campaign as the National Party's 'political correctness eradicator'. If he plays his cards right he can now kill two birds with one stone by bashing Hone as a Maori radical and a trade union wrecker - a red brownie, horror of horrors...