Print

Mail

wiki links

Backbencher suspended after Holocaust remarks

Former New Zealand Cabinet minister John Tamihere was sent on extended stress leave by the government yesterday following comments that he was "sick and tired" of hearing how many Jews were gassed in the Holocaust.

Prime Minister Helen Clark effectively suspended him from her Labor Party and Parliament, saying his statements were "thoughtless, deeply offensive and utterly unacceptable."

She had earlier put him on stress leave for a week after publication of a magazine interview in which he said Clark was emotional and went to pieces, was surrounded by gays and lesbians, her chief adviser was "butch" and her female-dominated government was anti-men and allowed labor unions too much influence.

Tamihere, 45, a controversial politician long tipped as likely to be New Zealand's first indigenous Maori prime minister, claimed he thought the interview for the magazine Investigate was off the record and Clark sent him on stress leave.

But she extended this indefinitely after the Herald on Sunday newspaper revealed extracts from the interview which the magazine had not published, including: "I'm sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed, not because I'm not revolted by it -- I am -- or I'm not violated by it -- I am -- but because I already know that."

"How many times do I have to be told and made to feel guilty?" he said.

He was making a comparison with historic Maori claims of persecution by New Zealand's European settlers. Although part-Maori himself, Tamihere had won support across racial lines by insisting the indigenous people should move on from past injustices and not dwell on compensation handouts from the state.

Clark promoted him to her Cabinet but he quit a year ago pending inquiries into allegations of tax evasion and fraud which eventually cleared him.

She had made it clear he was rehabilitating himself as a backbencher when the interview in which he criticized her and their colleagues appeared last week.

Enraged at the apparent disunity in the government which will seek a third three-year term at a general election later this year, she sent him away from Parliament on stress leave on April 4. He was due to return to a parliamentary caucus meeting next Tuesday.
This story has been viewed 2318 times.