Now Phil Goff is playing the race card, and why not? Hone Harawira was dead right when he claimed White Mother F_______ had ripped Maori off 150 years ago, and while he did not necessarily use this purple piece of invective to impress his constituency, he certainly knew it would do his electability no harm should it leak out. Meanwhile, Tariana Turia is busy making soothing noises to Tory Pakeha voters to ensure her parliamentary privileges are not compromised, and Rodney Hide's yellow shirts refuse to allow Maori their democratic and treaty rights, which does no harm to the red neck rump that ACT represents.

Don Brash pushed the Iwi-Kiwi billboards and lost an election, because Helen Clarke pandered to red neck Labour voters and scotched the seabed and foreshore claim in the face of a stampede to Nation in that election.

Whatever card gets the votes is essentially what this is all about, and while prejudice continues to be a feature of New Zealand attitudes so it will be a key part of our politics. Pakeha continue to believe Maori were impoverished barbarians when Cook arrived, when the truth was that Cook's crew were probably more impoverished, both spiritually and materially, than the vast majority of the Maori population. To continue to claim that we (Pakeha) gave Maori civilisation is to deny the fact that our 'civilisation' is a product of Assyrians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks and other assorted wogs as much as it is of Rome and Merrie England.

'We' never owned civilisation enough to give it to anyone, the benefits of being human are a consequence of our birth not the largesse of any particular group of colonisers. Like Rome invaded Gaul for conquest and power, not to share its civilisation, so Pakeha came down here to steal land, and were extremely successful at it.

It would be interesting to know exactly how many Pakeha actually believe that Maori benefited hugely from their colonisation. The fact that there is little evidence of this puts the idea into the realms of Pakeha wishful thinking and the foundation of prejudice, because it fundamentally denies that the original relationship between Pakeha and Maori was one of equality, not a lopsided one between an iron age people and one from the stone age.

Similarly Maori prejudice towards Pakeha considers them to be material philistines who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. How many times is the idea promoted around here that Maori have a special relationship with the land. The fact is it is no more special than the relationship between a farmer and the farm.

If Maori love the land so much, how come so many of them live in Australia? And if Pakeha are so disrespectful of the land why are so many involved in Forest and Bird and other organisations that represent the concept of Kaitiakitanga with more integrity than the Maori Party doing a deal for cash.

So are the politicians playing the race card? Too right they are, all of them. For the news media to claim otherwise is to pretend that we are none of us prejudiced, but sadly, we all are. Prejudiced against anybody who might take our precious real estate away from us.

This week the various iwi around the country agreed to promote and red, black and white version of the Rastafarian flag as their emblem. What they should have selected is a flag with FOR SALE across the middle. One thing is certain, that flag would represent all of us.