The Friday Conference - Abraham Ordia public forum

Play on the black keys of the piano alone, you have dischord...play on the white keys, and you have dischord. Play on the black and white keys, and you have harmony.

– Abraham Ordia's parting words to the NZ audience

I ask you all please, is this image of New Zealand you want to take back to any country in the world?

– Gordon Dryden calls for calm

You're not in control of this audience, Mr Dryden.

– Heckler in the audience

...talk about morality — whose morality? White morality?

– Donna Awatere

...a diabolic confrontation between Māori and Pākehā. Appeals from Dryden to let [Abraham Ordia]'s voice be heard were drowned in the vicious exchange of mindless rhetoric and heckling. Sure, matters were in hand for the first half-hour ... from then on the great debate took on the atmosphere of a Roman Circus. Friday Conference became a cauldron of prejudice, hatred, racism, irrelevancy, bitterness, stupidity and bad manners.

– Writer Connie Binnie in The Auckland Star, June 1976