A high-profile New Zealand lawmaker was accused of racism yesterday after making what he called a “joke” at the expense of Asians as he railed against Chinese investment in the country’s farming sector.
New Zealand First party leader Winston Peters said at a party campaign launch in Auckland on Sunday that he wanted to tighten restrictions on foreign ownership, telling the audience: “As they say in Beijing: ‘Two Wongs don’t make a white.’”
The comment was labeled “disappointing and shameful” by New Zealand Race Relations Commissioner Susan Devoy, while the ACT New Zealand party accused Peters of inciting hatred against Chinese ahead of a general election on Sept. 20.
“Mr Peters may think it is funny to tell weak racist jokes, but it is not funny to New Zealand’s Chinese community,” ACT deputy leader Kenneth Wang said. “Every time Mr Peters stirs up anti-Chinese feeling he gives racists in the community encouragement to attack Chinese. I have reports of Chinese women being abused in the street [and] young louts going into Chinese shops to abuse shopkeepers.”
Peters, a long-standing anti-immigration campaigner who in the past has warned about New Zealand becoming an “Asian colony,” said his critics lacked a sense of humor and claimed he was originally told the joke by a Chinese man in Beijing.
“The reality is a Chinese guy thought it was a joke; he told me that and I thought it was funny, so did my colleagues,” he said. “There’s nothing racist about it ... what we don’t need is a few journalists who decide that they’re going to be the Nazi politically correct police of this country.”
Peters served as New Zealand deputy prime minister from 1996 to 1998 as part of a National Party-led coalition government, and was foreign minister from 2005 to 2008 as part of a coalition led by the center-left Labour Party.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Peters was being deliberately provocative to gain attention ahead of the election.
The “two Wongs don’t make a white” line was originally attributed to former Australian prime minister Arthur Calwell, a strong supporter of the “White Australia” immigration policy adopted by Canberra until the 1970s.
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