Broadcaster Duncan Garner has called Taika Waititi “treasonous” for speaking his mind on New Zealand’s environmental woes, concerning suicide rate and lack of affordable housing.
Waititi, this year’s New Zealander of the Year and director of the soon-to-be-released Thor: Ragnarok, told Marae he wasn’t proud to be a Kiwi when so many problems appeared to be ignored.
Stuff columnist Duncan Garner delivered a punchy editorial against the director on The AM Show Thursday morning. He called Waititi “treasonous” for voicing his concerns on the nation’s state of affairs.
“He was New Zealander of the year, this year 2017, so he’s an ambassador for New Zealand now … you cannot be this treasonous about your own country. You cannot say you’re not proud to be a New Zealander if you’re the New Zealander of the year,” Garner said.
Waititi said New Zealand’s waterways were “poisoned”.
“I’m not very proud of coming from a place which everyone overseas thinks is this clean, green country,” he said.
Garner argued that the criticism was wrong because he thought only some waterways were “dodgy”, not all of them. “Wrong,” Garner declared. “It’s not all poison. Some of them, some of them are pretty dodgy I agree.”
In the Marae interview, Waititi had listed a string of problems he saw with New Zealand, one of which was the state of our rivers. Garner agreed with all the other issues but still found issue with Waititi calling them out.
“He’s right on many things. Yes, we’ve got issues with our housing and mental health and depression and suicide numbers,” the journalist said. “I get all that.”
“I’ve got a problem with it, because you have to be accurate as
New Zealander of the Year, and I reckon he’s thrown New Zealand under the bus,” the former political editor concluded.
So… is he not allowed to address issues he has with the country? We all have the right to, so why is he getting all up in arms about him, just because he’s ‘New Zealander of the Year’ when he’s exercising his right to speak up about stuff lots of people, especially the tourism industry here, try to sweep under the rug in terms of environmental issues? Of course it’s completely fine for him to say that he isn’t proud of the country due to the state of it, calling out lies and issues and whatnot. Using his position in society to bring more attention to issues isn’t really throwing us under the bus in my opinion because it just shows things we can try work on to better our image so we don’t spout lies when we say stuff like ‘all our waterways are clean’. How in the world is that ‘treasonous’ to state? Shit, Pissy Baby Duncan even agrees with most of what he said, but hates that it was said… doesn’t that mean if Duncan himself said it he would have to slap that label onto himself? He fucking wouldn’t. Duncan Garner, you’re a fucking idiot.
The Thor: Ragnarok director took to Twitter this evening to ‘apologise’ for comments he made in an interview with Marae regarding New Zealand’s waterways, suicide rates and child poverty, among other things.
“I’m sorry NZ!” he tweeted. “I wasn’t thinking and spoke in haste. I forgot to mention domestic violence, sexism, homophobia, and racism. My bad!”
Waititi later followed that up with several more tweets, including one poking fun at the fact that while he also criticised New Zealand’s high rates of teen suicide, depression, child poverty and abuse, it was his description of our waterways as “poisoned” that seemed to have drawn the most ire from Garner.
Me: NZ has highest teen suicide rates, depression, child poverty/abuse, & our waterways are poisoned.
NZ: Don’t hassle our water, traitor! — Taika Waititi (@TaikaWaititi) October 19, 2017
Patriotism shouldn’t be “love it or leave it”. It should be “love it AND FIX IT”.
Taika Waititi labelled ‘treasonous’ for saying he isn’t proud of New Zealand
knitting in the dark 