New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday resumed campaigning for the nation’s delayed general election with an attention-grabbing promise to make the Maori New Year a public holiday.
Electioneering had barely started last month when a sudden COVID-19 outbreak forced Auckland into lockdown and brought a temporary halt to campaign activities.
Ardern ended up delaying the election by four weeks to Oct. 17 so her government could focus on containing the Auckland infections, which ended 102 days without community transmission of COVID-19 in New Zealand.
Photo: EPA-EFE
With lockdown now over in the nation’s largest city, Ardern kick-started her Labour Party’s renewed campaign with a pledge to make Matariki, the Maori new year, a public holiday from 2022.
“As I’ve traveled around New Zealand I’ve heard the calls for Matariki to become a public holiday — its time has come,” she said.
Labour deputy leader Kelvin Davis, who has a Maori background, said a Matariki holiday sent an important message to New Zealand’s indigenous people, who comprise less than 20 percent of the country’s population, but are central to its national identity.
“Making Matariki a public holiday is another step forward in our partnership as a people and a further recognition of te ao Maori [the Maori worldview] in our public life,” he said.
Ardern said Matariki — which usually falls in July — would help stimulate the economy by driving up spending.
“We don’t have many statutory holidays compared to other OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries and it would be good to break up the long run through winter,” she said.
However, National Party eader Judith Collins said Ardern’s priority should be on creating jobs to ease the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, not announcing new holidays.
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