“The lady doth protest too much, methinks…

By Don Kavanagh
Editor of New Zealand Local Government magazine

Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet has been quoted (and misquoted) so often that it has reached cliché status, but occasionally there is a genuine reason to haul it out and dust it off.
Michael Laws’s vigorous insistence that Wanganui has never had and will never have the letter H in its name is one of those times.
Now far be it for this magazine to tell anyone what to do, say or think, but Mr Laws’s snarling righteousness on this matter is starting to wear thin, especially his treatment of a group of Otaki students who had the temerity to write to him and suggest that it made more sense from a Maori perspective to spell the placename “Whanganui”.
His bilious response to them shocked not just the children themselves, but also many who thought that he was becoming almost statesmanlike.
Just a week previously he had rightly earned the admiration of the rest of the country when a council-inspired law made the wearing of gang insignia illegal in Wanganui’s CBD. Finally, someone was standing up to the “petty terrorists”, as he called them.
And he was right to call them that, for that is what they are – groups of over-indulged criminals who use force or the threat of force to ensure they are allowed to live outside the law with only minor sanction.
Finally, a council was stating clearly and simply: “We don’t want you here and we won’t tolerate bullying of our community by you.”
You could almost hear the roars of approval from around the country as the law was passed and also the shrieks of laughter at the resulting “protest” by the gangs. The protest amounted to a few old codgers, a couple of shrill, wet-mouthed civil liberties whingers,  some sulky looking thugs and a dog turning up to say how unfair it was that those nice lads in the leather waistcoats had to take their patches off.
It was a laughable response to a stroke of law-making brilliance and Mr Laws was rightly proud that his council and his city were the ones to do it.
So the subsequent serve he gave the poor kids from Otaki came as something of a shock.
His defence of his position also raised eyebrows as press release after press release emerged from the council announcing that the Mayor was right and the children wrong. Online polls were quoted, as were volumes of texts and emails he received supporting him. He even managed to get the Prime Minister to mumble something incoherent about it being a local decision for local people.
But there was something a bit, well, desperate about his acts of self-defence. Regardless of the fact that it is a matter that should be dealt with locally – and that it will not happen as long as there is a National-led government in power – Mr Laws’s strident proclamation of the rightness of his cause is grating.
And his written slapping of the children of an Otaki school was distasteful, given the fact that we should be encouraging our youth to get involved in politics at all levels.
As the television ads constantly remind us – it’s not okay.