Game-Changer.

It’s Okay Boomers: Either through careful sociological study, or by pure intuition, Kieran McAnulty has grasped that a substantial number – maybe even a majority – of the Baby Boom Generation can be won away from their fear of a devastating racist backlash. Boomers no longer have to worry about what the older generation will say or do – because most of the RSA Generation are dead and buried. It’s their kids and their grandkids that they should be thinking of now.

KIERAN MCANULTY has changed the game in a way only open to authentic political leaders. Instead of shying away from the challenges of co-governance, he has leaned into them. Instead of hiding behind the obfuscating language of official communications, he has demonstrated the extraordinary power of a simple “Yes” or “No”. What’s more, he has done all this in the accents of an ordinary Kiwi bloke. Kieran McAnulty is the person Chris Hipkins is trying to be.

Sticking up for the Treaty of Waitangi was always the winning response for the Sixth Labour Government. Most New Zealanders are justifiably proud of their country’s efforts to offer the indigenous Māori a measure of redress for the injustices heaped upon them during the creation of the settler-state called New Zealand. It is, of course, true that not all New Zealanders feel this way, but those who reject the promises of the Treaty grow fewer in number with every passing year. Young New Zealand, the demographic fast embracing “Aotearoa” as their nation, believe in the Treaty – and will fight for it.

McAnulty gets this because, at just 38 years-of-age, he’s a member of that younger demographic. The Baby Boom generation came of political age under the shadow of a racist majority. The majority Rob Muldoon knew he could count on in 1975 and 1981. The reactionary social formation that was still there in great numbers back in 2004 when Don Brash delivered his in/famous Orewa Speech. The prime motivator of Helen Clark’s ruthless response to the Court of Appeal’s decision on the foreshore and seabed. But McAnulty, alongside many others in Labour’s caucus, is two generations away from the politicians who were young in the 1960s and 70s. That world has gone – just as gaslight and gaiters had departed the world of the post-war generation.

So why didn’t Gen-Xers like Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins lean-in to the co-governance debate like McAnulty? One possible explanation is that they were never able to shake-off their fear that the Big Racist Monster was still out there, still capable of upending progressive governments. They had, after all, seen at close hand Clark’s reaction to the post-Orewa polls. They had been witnesses, not only to the Labour leader’s fear of a Pakeha racist backlash, but also to her antipathy towards the “haters and wreckers” of Māori nationalism. Those sort of experiences leave a deep impression.

For McAnulty, however, they are yesterday’s political calculations. Either through careful sociological study, or by pure intuition, he has grasped what so many of his colleagues have not. That a substantial number – maybe even a majority – of the Baby Boomers can be won away from their fear of the Big Racist Monster. That the people who marched against the Vietnam War, protested the Springbok Tour, and organised for a nuclear-free New Zealand no longer have to worry about what the older generation will say or do – because most of the RSA Generation are dead and buried. It’s their kids and their grandkids that the Boomers should be thinking of now.

McAnulty’s other key insight is that when younger New Zealanders hear the word “democracy” their reaction is often quite different from that of their parents and grandparents. Democracy was what the Baby Boomers parents had fought for during the Second World War. It was the precious heirloom of the “Free World” through all the years of the Cold War. For the young New Zealanders who grew up in the shadow of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, however, democracy has been subjected to an altogether more robust interrogation.

It was under democracy that the New Zealand trade union movement was gutted, and never allowed to recover. It was under democracy that the welfare state became as cold as charity. It was democracy that looked at global warming – and did nothing. Democracy that denied an entire generation their own affordable home. Democracy that allowed big corporations to wreck the New Zealand environment, and then take their profits offshore. Sure, you could vote, once every three years, but nothing ever seemed to change. Democracy might have done plenty for their grandparents’ and parents’ generations, but it has done bugger-all for theirs.

When older New Zealanders look at co-governance they are prone to see the demise of one-person, one-vote. But young New Zealanders look at the mess local government has made of their cities and towns, rivers and forests; they think about the way farming and business interests always seem to get what they want – often at the expense of everybody and everything else; and they ask themselves: Could the Māori make a worse job of looking after Aotearoa than Pakeha democracy? Could co-governance with mana whenua be any worse than co-governance with capitalists?

McAnulty has, quite rightly, pointed out that New Zealand has developed its own version of democracy. That it is steadily moving towards a way of governing that sees achieving consensus as preferable to, and certainly more sensible than, a 50 percent+1 tyranny of the majority. Both Māori and Pakeha are talking about a constitution based on the Treaty of Waitangi, rather than the Westminster system, might look like. Ways forward that follow the paths already laid down in numerous Treaty settlements. A system of governance based on the peoples we are becoming, rather than the far-from-democratic institutions the British colonisers brought with them.

If McAnulty’s colleagues have the courage to follow his lead, then the looming election may yet become an historical turning-point. With National and Act offering nothing more than more of the same, Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori have been given the chance to join the most progressive elements of the older generations with the hopes and aspirations of younger New Zealanders, thereby forging an electoral alliance equal to the challenges of an uncertain and demanding future.

More than quarter-of-a-century ago, I concluded a feature article entitled “The Struggle For Sovereignty”, written for New Zealand Political Review, with the following sentences:

New Zealanders are heading into a great storm of change. Much that is precious to us will pass away. As Pakeha we have grown accustomed to being the colonisers rather than the colonised. Loss of power will be a new experience for us. As the second great wave of colonisation washes over us, our best chance of survival will be to reach out for the hands of the tangata whenua – whose feet are sunk deepest in the earth of Aotearoa. In the storm of change that is coming, the strength which that position gives to Māori will make them the only solid point around which everything else twists and turns. If we, as Pakeha, do not reach out and grasp that strength, the fury of the storm will blow us far away.

That storm is now upon us.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 18 April 2023.

What Is Co-Governance?

Two Flags, Two Masters? Just as it required a full-scale military effort to destroy the first attempt at Māori self-government in the 1850s and 60s (an effort that divided Maoridom itself into supporters and opponents of the Crown) any second attempt to establish tino rangatiratanga, based on the confiscatory policies required to give it cultural and economic substance, could only be achieved militarily. That is to say, by fighting a racially-charged civil war.

CO-GOVERNANCE presents New Zealanders with the most acute constitutional challenge since the Land Wars of the 1860s. Paradoxically, it would be a considerably less vexing problem if our ancestors truly had been the colonialist monsters of contemporary “progressive” folklore. Had the defeated Māori tribes been driven onto and confined within “reservations” – as happened to the Native Americans of Canada and the United States – instituting co-governance in the 2020s would be a breeze. Likewise, if the National Government of 1990-1999 had opted to create the New Zealand equivalent of “Bantustans” (self-governing ethnic enclaves) instead of instituting the internationally celebrated Treaty Settlement Process.

The central difficulty of the Treaty Settlement Process, as so many Māori nationalists have pointed out, is that it cannot offer more than a fraction of a cent on the dollar in terms of the current value of the Māori lands alienated under the laws of successive settler governments. To recover these from their present owners would require the outlay of hundreds-of-billions of dollars, a sum well beyond the means of even the New Zealand State – let alone individual iwi.

And yet, as the Waitangi Tribunal’s recent finding in relation to the Ngapuhi rohe makes clear, the establishment of authentic rangatiratanga is virtually impossible without the land that gives chiefly authority its political heft. With all but a tiny fraction of New Zealand presently under the control of the New Zealand State, its Pakeha citizens, and a not insubstantial number of foreign owners, any discussion of co-governance is inevitably reduced to sterile arguments over Māori representation on city councils and other public bodies.

That’s why the true underlying agenda of those who preach the gospel of co-governance can only be the re-confiscation of the tribal territories lost since the Land Wars. This may sound far-fetched, but it is not impossible. As Māori discovered in the 1860s, and subsequent decades, all that is required to deprive a people of their lands, forests and fisheries is control of the legislative process, and the military force necessary to enforce the legislators’ will.

While Pakeha New Zealanders remained united in their resolve to construct a “Better Britain” on the lands confiscated and/or acquired (all too often by immoral means) from the country’s indigenous people, the notion of re-confiscation could be dismissed as an absurdity. But, if a substantial portion of the Pakeha population, most particularly those occupying the critical nodes of state power: the judiciary, the public service, academia, the state-owned news-media, and at least one of the two major political parties; were to become ideologically disposed to facilitate the compulsory restitution of confiscated Māori resources, then the idea would begin to sound a whole lot less far-fetched.

To see how it might be accomplished one has only to study the manner in which the government of the newly-declared People’s Republic of China secured effective control of the privately-owned elements of the Chinese economy. The Communist Party of China, in sole control of the nation’s legislative machinery, and assured of a compliant judiciary and civil service, simply required private concerns to make over an ever-larger fraction of their shareholding to the Chinese state. With Boards of Directors dominated by government appointees, and no prospect of ever recovering control of their enterprises, the “owners” reluctantly sold their remaining shares to the state (receiving only a risible fraction of their true worth). The smart capitalists, reading the writing on the wall, sold-up early and fled to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States. The one’s who hoped for the best, generally fared the worst.

With the news-media firmly under the Communist Party’s control, and the legal climate growing increasingly hostile to any citizen courageous enough to challenge the government’s policies, the transfer of private property into state hands was accomplished by the end of the 1950s – in less than a decade. It would have taken considerably longer if the People’s Liberation Army had not been standing behind the Communist Party’s legislators, civil servants and journalists. But, its willingness to apply military force to enforce the party’s will was never in doubt. In the words of the Chinese Communist leader, Mao Zedong: “All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

How might a New Zealand parliament dominated by political parties favourably disposed towards co-governance set about transferring land held by private Pakeha/foreign interests to iwi authorities? One option might involve imposing all kinds of environmental and cultural obligations on landowners – obligations that could not be fulfilled without rendering the enterprise unprofitable. Crown purchase (at a fraction of the land’s true worth) would follow, allowing the state to amass a vast amount of additional  real-estate. This process would undoubtedly be speeded-up by the consequent catastrophic collapse in agricultural land prices, which only constant and massive Crown purchases could stem.

With most of New Zealand land now in the possession of the Crown, returning it to tangata whenua would be the obvious next step towards meaningful co-governance. The Waitangi Tribunal, or some other, similar, body could be tasked with delimiting Aotearoa’s iwi boundaries as they existed at the time of the Treaty’s signing in February 1840. (Given that many of these boundaries would have been extended, reduced, or eliminated altogether as a consequence of the Musket Wars of the 1820s and 30s, deciding who should get what would likely entail a fair amount of ‘robust’ negotiation!)

The critical question to be settled in order for this process to succeed is whether a pro-co-governance parliament could rely upon the Police and the NZ Defence Force to enforce its legislative will. That there would be considerable resistance to the government’s plans may be taken as given, with such resistance escalating to terrorism and a full-scale armed rebellion more than likely. With the outbreak of deadly race-based violence, the loyalties of the Police and the NZDF would be tested to destruction.

Just as it required a full-scale military effort to destroy the first attempt at Māori self-government in the 1850s and 60s (an effort that divided Maoridom itself into supporters and opponents of the Crown) any second attempt to establish rangatiratanga, based on the confiscatory policies required to give it cultural and economic substance, could only be achieved militarily. That is to say, by fighting a racially-charged civil war.

Some would argue it makes more sense to accept that the historical evolution of the nation of New Zealand has actually allowed Māori to enjoy the best of both worlds. Their language and culture endure alongside their iwi and hapu connections, all very much alive beneath the overlaid institutions of the settler state. 

That they are able to take full advantage of those institutions is due to the historical oddity of the colonists who created New Zealand not following the example of their white settler contemporaries and forcing the remnants of the indigenous tribes onto reservations – entities particularly suited to being “co-governed” in “partnership” with their conquerors. Instead, the Pakeha declared Māori to be full citizens, afforded them parliamentary representation, and laid the foundations of the bi-cultural society fast-emerging in Twenty-First Century Aotearoa-New Zealand.

If co-governance denotes a political system in which an indigenous people and the descendants of the settlers who joined them wrestle together with the legacies of colonisation – as free and equal citizens – then we already have it.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 17 January 2023.

Willie Jackson's Problem.

On The Horns Of A Dilemma: The essence of Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson’s problem is that he can neither withdraw, nor water-down, the Draft Plan for implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering political fire from Maori. His Pakeha colleagues face the same problem – in reverse. If the Labour Cabinet signs up to UNDRIP/He Puapua, then it can kiss the 2023 election good-bye.

WILLIE JACKSON HAS A PROBLEM – a big problem. Since 2017, he has led the charge to secure more resources for Māori and, by winning them, has assumed a pivotal political role in the quest for Tino Rangatiratanga. With Jackson’s successes, however, have come heightened expectations of more. Just how high Māori hopes have grown is manifested in the contents of the Draft Plan for implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) So alarming are the recommendations contained in this document, that the Māori Development Minister is refusing to present it to Cabinet.

Jackson’s refusal is highly significant. If the plan has a promoter of Māori economic and social development as stalwart as Jackson shaking his head, then the Draft Plan must be effectively indistinguishable from the He Puapua Report.

Therein lies Jackson’s problem. The moment the He Puapua Report entered the public arena it was too late to order it shredded. It had become a ticking political time-bomb that could only be defused with the co-operation of all sides of the Māori sovereignty debate. It’s only saving grace was that it was not – yet – an official government document. This was a godsend for Jackson and the Labour Government. They had been given a few crucial months to do whatever was needed to prevent a potentially fatal political explosion.

It explains why Jackson and his colleagues asked Maoridom to develop its response to the UNDRIP/He Puapua challenge first, ahead of Pakeha, and behind closed doors. They were hoping that, perceiving the revolutionary character of He Puapua, the good and the great of Maoridom would bend all their powers to reshaping its recommendations into something Jackson’s Labour colleagues – and the rest of New Zealand – could live with.

Unfortunately for Jackson and Labour, that is not what happened. After 70 hui, held across the country, the mood of Maoridom was made strikingly clear. UNDRIP was a hard-and-fast commitment. The radical vision of He Puapua was not to be to be finessed away with fine phrases. Rangatahi, the rising generation of young Māori nationalists, would accept nothing less than a full-on, Te Tiriti-driven, co-governed and bi-cultural Aotearoa.

How radical is the Draft Plan? It is revolutionary. How else to describe its call for one justice system for Pakeha and another for Māori? The late Moana Jackson would be proud of the document, because, essentially, it reflects his vision of the future. The softly-spoken revolutionary’s body may lie with his ancestors, but his spirit is strong among that part of Maoridom for whom Tino Rangatiratanga and Mana Motuhake have become non-negotiable components of Aotearoa’s future.

That “responsible Maoridom” decided not to come through for him, or Labour, must have hit Willie Jackson hard. So hard that he was forced back onto that most traditional of Labour precepts: the fundamental decency and common sense of the New Zealand working-class. Jackson’s interim solution to the Draft Plan’s ideological inflexibility is to divide the intellectuals and ideologues responsible for He Puapua from ordinary, hard-working, Māori New Zealanders:

I know what the average Māori will think and they’re not walking around every day thinking about the United Nations’ Declaration of Indigenous Peoples – they’re thinking about their housing, their health, their education.

This would sound a lot more convincing if Jackson’s Pakeha colleagues had not been aggressively selling the notion that Māori housing, health and education will only improve when the rest of New Zealand starts living up to Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s implicit promise of “partnership”. Generally-speaking, working-class people have more on their minds than politics. But, they aren’t deaf. Tell them that their future and politics are intimately entwined often enough, and loudly enough, and, eventually, they’ll start paying attention. Quite unintentionally, Labour may have kicked-off a revolution of rising expectations.

Such is the essence of Jackson’s problem: he can neither withdraw, nor water-down, the Draft Plan without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering political fire from Māori. His Pakeha colleagues face the same problem – in reverse. If the Labour Cabinet signs up to UNDRIP/He Puapua, then the party can kiss the 2023 election good-bye.

Jackson understands this completely:

You can imagine some of the wants or asks from [Māori], but as I remind them, it’s not just about them. It’s about what do we want to do as a government and how do we want to honour that declaration and how do we realistically go forward getting people to recognise there are indigenous obligations without them thinking we’re going to take their houses off them.

Which is, of course, why the revolutionary He Puapua Report should have been shredded the moment it passed from the hands of the Māori nationalist dreamers who wrote it, into the possession of those who do politics for a living.

Still, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody no good. Labour’s crisis is Te Pāti Māori’s red, white and black opportunity. Any watering-down, let alone withdrawal, of the Draft Plan will be seized upon by Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as proof positive of Pakeha Labour’s perfidy. After five years of promising Māori the moon, after repeated pledges to institute co-governance, the Labour Government will have proved that, when push comes to shove, it is no more willing than any other coloniser to surrender its white privilege.

And to Jackson’s colleagues in Labour’s Māori caucus, Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer will jeer: “Fool me once, shame on you: fool me hundreds of times, and I must be a Māori Labour Party MP!”

Except, being roundly castigated by Te Pāti Māori is probably the best response Labour could hope for. Virtuously upholding democracy by rejecting the separatist recommendations of the Draft Plan is about the only way this Government can remain electorally competitive. It would certainly allow Jackson to sharpen his class-based critique of Māori society. (Which as a strategy, would be even more effective if he could just to point to tangible gains for working-class Māori in housing, health and education!)

Not that National and Act can afford to just sit back with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy the fun. If the Right/Left poll numbers remain relatively even, then the parliamentary support of an enlarged Te Pāti Māori – pumped-up by the protest votes of all those Māori outraged by a Labour betrayal even bigger than the Seabed and Foreshore, may prove critical to National and Act being able to form a government.

What price will Te Pāti Māori extract from National for its support on Confidence and Supply?

When John Key put that question to Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia in 2008, the answer turned out to include the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 5 July 2022.

Getting On With Co-Governance – Without Debate.

Who’s Missing From This Picture? The re-birth of the co-governance concept cannot be attributed to the institutions of Pakeha rule, at least, not in the sense that the massive constitutional revisions it entails have been presented to and endorsed by the House of Representatives, and then ratified by the citizens of New Zealand in a democratic referendum. It is, rather, the work of Cabinet Ministers and Judges; of New Zealand’s permanent executive; of the body that slowly emerged to replace the tutelary power and influence of the British state. The force that now calls itself “The Crown”.

CO-GOVERNANCE, and what it means for New Zealand, is predicted to feature prominently in next year’s general election. Passions are already running high on both sides of this issue. All the more reason, one would think, for this country’s public broadcasters to facilitate a reasoned debate between those holding opposing views. Alas, in 2022, the publicly-owned radio network, RNZ, appears to have either forgotten how to conduct reasoned debate, or repudiated the whole idea.

On the morning of Wednesday, 11 May 2022, RNZ Contract Producer Sharon Brettkelly began promoting her latest contribution to “The Detail” series of podcasts. Entitled “Co-Governance: Time To Get On With It?”, Brettkelly’s piece featured just two participants.

These were Chris Finlayson, former National Party Minister for Treaty Settlements, and Traci Houpapa, Chair of the Federation of Māori Authorities, both of whom were, indisputably, well-qualified to speak on the podcast’s subject. Unfortunately, they were also very strong supporters of co-governance. Brettkelly had not thought it necessary to balance her journalism by including the opinions of equally strong and well-qualified opponents of co-governance.

Now, there will be those who object immediately that “balanced reporting” does not require the arguments for and against any given proposition to be included in the same broadcast. For balance to be maintained, it is sufficient that the views of antagonists and protagonists are presented to the audience fairly, and with equal potential impact, within roughly the same timeframe. So long as Brettkelly, or some other RNZ Contract Producer, created a podcast featuring two well-qualified and forceful opponents of co-governance, all would be well.

Sadly, given the current ideological climate in which RNZ’s journalists are required to operate, the chances of such a podcast being made are extremely slim. To broadcast such a production would be considered a breach of RNZ’s obligations under te Tiriti o Waitangi. It would also very likely be denounced by at least some of RNZ employees as a threat to their own and other New Zealanders’ well-being.

After all, we have it on the authority of no less of an expert than Chris Finlayson himself, that only the “Sour Right” and other “losers” oppose co-governance. What possible benefit could there be in providing a publicly-owned platform from which the views of people who “don’t like tangata whenua” and who “dream of a world that never was and never could be”, are spewed forth?

As the title of Brettkelly’s podcast suggests, the question is not whether co-governance represents a fundamental and unmandated break with New Zealand’s constitutional norms; or even if it is a politically feasible objective; but whether or not it is time to just get on with the job. Or, to quote Finlayson, addressing those who might still be entertaining doubts: “Go with the flow”. Clearly, among the people Brettkelly and her ilk deem worthy of a RNZ platform, there is no debate about co-governance. Or, at least, no debate in which representatives of iwi, or the Crown, should allow themselves to become involved.

Listening to Brettkelly’s podcast, it becomes increasingly clear that “The Crown” is a player in the co-governance drama meriting much closer scrutiny.

Most of us, when we hear someone refer to The Crown, rather naively (it turns out) assume the term is being used to describe the Government – the body which we, as citizens of New Zealand, elect to manage the country on our behalf.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

When iwi representatives and Cabinet ministers talk about The Crown they have something else in mind altogether. For these folk, The Crown represents the permanent and supreme executive power. It encompasses all the decisive institutions of the New Zealand state: the Executive Council (a.k.a the Cabinet); the senior echelons of the public service; the armed forces and the Police; the national security apparatus; and – most important of all – the Judiciary.

Why does this matter? Because the Treaty of Waitangi was presented to the representatives of the indigenous people of these islands by a representative of the British Crown. It was a take-it-or-leave-it deal, that was offered to Māori: not by the British people, who, in 1840, had bugger-all say in the treaties negotiated by their betters (and still don’t) but by agents of the British state. Māori took the deal precisely because, at that time, the British state was the most powerful executive authority on Earth.

What undermined the Treaty was the steady devolution of authority (kawanatanga) from the executive power back in London (and from its local representative, the Governor) to the representative institutions of the Pakeha settlers – whose numbers had grown from a couple of thousand to something equal to or greater than the indigenous population.

In the eyes of these settler governments, the Treaty was not an agreement in which they had played any part, and most certainly was not a document they had the slightest intention of honouring. In the early 1860s, they demanded from London – and got – the overwhelming military force they needed to bury the Treaty and, along with it, the very idea of co-governance.

The re-birth of the co-governance concept cannot be attributed to the institutions of Pakeha rule, at least, not in the sense that the massive constitutional revisions it entails have been presented to and endorsed by the House of Representatives, and then ratified by the citizens of New Zealand in a democratic referendum. It is, rather, the work of Cabinet Ministers and Judges; of New Zealand’s permanent executive; of the body that slowly emerged to replace the tutelary power and influence of the British state. The force that now calls itself “The Crown”.

This is what lies behind the tangata whenua’s fear of representative democracy or, as they prefer to call it, “the tyranny of the majority”, and their preference for working with The Crown alone. They understand perfectly what most Pakeha have yet to grasp: that representative democracy was the means of their dispossession. They know that New Zealand can have democracy, or it can have co-governance, but it can’t have both.

Fair enough. But how are the citizens of New Zealand to explain the scorn and disdain in which The Crown so clearly holds them? Is it simply because The Crown knows that the measures required to keep the peace between Māori and Pakeha will never receive the imprimatur of a freely and fairly elected New Zealand Parliament? That only under a constitutional arrangement in which iwi and The Crown between them wield sufficient power to over-rule the will of “The [Pakeha] People” can the instruments of peace be created?

Because iwi and The Crown both know that co-governance will never be forged by free and fair debate, or free and fair elections, but only by “getting on with it”.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 12 May 2022.

Who Will Fight For Democracy?

May The Force Be With Us: With New Zealanders under 40, nostalgia for a time when politics worked gains little purchase. Politics hasn’t swerved to any noticeable degree since the 1980s, becoming in the Twenty-First Century a battle between marketing strategies, not ideologies. Young New Zealanders critique political advertisements in the way their parents and grandparents once critiqued the content of the major parties’ election manifestoes.

THE TIMING couldn’t have been better – or worse – depending upon which side of the political divide you position yourself. First, Trevor Mallard allows letters to be sent out to Winston Peters, Matt King, and (reportedly) other former MPs, trespassing them from Parliament Grounds for two years. Then, just 24 hours after that story breaks, Hobson’s Pledge inserts a full-page ad’ in The Herald spoofing the Star Wars franchise and announcing an “Attack On The Votes”.

Putting to one side the double standards of The Herald: whose editorial team, in spite of ruling an ad’ from the group Speak Up For Women (featuring nothing more inflammatory than the dictionary definition of “woman”) too much for its readers to bear, was nevertheless prepared to wear whatever harm Hobson’s Pledge’s graphic intervention might inflict on the body politic; the ad’ does reflect the growing public unease at this government’s commitment (or, more correctly, lack of commitment) to core democratic principles.

At present, most of that unease is concentrated in the older age-groups of the population. These are the New Zealanders who came of age at a time when the two main political parties represented clear and distinct approaches to defining and securing the public good.

The votes cast by New Zealanders in those far-off days steered the nation leftwards or rightwards in ways that must seem quite odd to those accustomed to the unchanging neoliberal parameters of MMP. That the National Party won more frequently than Labour was disappointing but not disheartening to Labour’s supporters. They understood that when the electoral planets did finally come into alignment for their party, big changes would follow. Changes which, historically, National was more likely to come to terms with than overturn.

In short, older New Zealanders can still remember when politics worked. More to the point, they can remember when even those who placed themselves on the right of the political spectrum accepted that what Martin Luther King called “the great arc of history” was bending in the direction of justice. They, or their parents, had been brought to the very edge of the moral precipice over which right-wing extremism had attempted to drag humanity. People who still thought that way – even after Auschwitz – were kept at the outermost margins of political life. The vile content of the letters they sent to the nation’s editors never saw the light of day. Their fascistic ravings were routinely filed in the nearest rubbish bin.

With New Zealanders under 40, however, all this political nostalgia gains little purchase. Politics hasn’t swerved to any noticeable degree since the 1980s, becoming in the Twenty-First Century a battle between marketing strategies, not ideologies. Young New Zealanders critique political advertisements in the way their parents and grandparents once critiqued the major parties’ election manifestoes. The “look” and “tone” of a political leader counts for much more than any ideas they might have. What matters most is that the leader of “your” party doesn’t come off looking and sounding like a “dick”.

“Democracy” no longer enjoys the universal admiration it elicited from people all over the world when its stood over the broken bodies of fascism and militarism at the end of World War II. As Dame Anne Salmond reminded Newsroom’s readers just the other day, Article 1 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights admits “no ifs, no buts, no exceptions” when it declares:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

But, if these words carried the unchallengeable ring of truth for the parents and grandparents of today’s younger voters, those same younger voters are more likely to consider them an extremely dubious set of philosophical propositions. Where, for example, does the “spirit of brotherhood” leave the women of the world?

“Democracy” in the Twenty-First Century offers electorates almost nothing in the way of alternative economic policies. Economics is no longer deemed a suitable subject for the sort of robust political contestation that distinguished the political parties of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In the Age of Neoliberalism, the economic principles by which a nation is governed have become fixed. Politicians do not challenge these principles, restricting themselves to debating which party is best equipped to implement them most effectively and efficiently.

For young people on the losing side of the economic – that is to say class – struggle, it makes absolutely no difference whether Labour or National is in power. Neither party would dream of stepping beyond the bounds of neoliberal orthodoxy. No matter which political formation occupies the Treasury Benches, housing does not become more affordable, poverty is not alleviated, unions remain peripheral, and Climate Change is not seriously addressed. As the Anarchist slogan puts it: “Why bother voting? – The politicians always win.”

The situation we face in 2022 bears comparison with the years following World War I. The much-vaunted concepts of democracy and progress had presided over a slaughter without historical parallel – and for what? The enlargement of the British and French empires? The elevation of American capital to global pre-eminence? The obscene wealth of wartime profiteers? Mass unemployment and homelessness for those who had survived the horrors of the trenches?

The stench of the old doctrines and the old values was worse that the stink of cordite and rotting comrades. Small wonder that veterans responded so enthusiastically to the demagogues of the far-Left and far-Right who denounced democracy as a busted flush.

As in the 1920s and 30s, the most radical political ideologies of the Twenty-First Century are dedicated to the nature of human identity and the possibility of human transformation. Ethnicity and nationality remain the central obsessions of the Far-Right, while the possibility of transformation continues to drive the Left. Where the Soviets dreamt of creating a wholly new kind of human-being – homo sovieticus – the modern identarian Left dream of the evolutionary leaps made possible by the elimination of oppression and privilege.

Dreams on this scale cannot be achieved by the tawdry compromises of democratic politics. The key objective of both the Far-Right and the Far-Left is to conquer the political apparatus and harness it to the all-important task of producing human transformation. The modern ideologue fears nothing more than the democratic mobilisation of ordinary citizens for the modest purposes of achieving all those ordinary things that make life safe and comfortable. Safety and comfort are Kryptonite to the radical political personality.

Guided more by intuition than ideology, Hobson’s Pledge “gets” the totalitarian implications of a political project driven not by what people actually want, but what they should want. Its choice of the Star Wars franchise to hang its publicity campaign on is a shrewd one. For what is George Lucas’s fantasy if not ancient mythology, with all its archetypal heroes and villains, tricked-out in the dazzling accoutrements of space-age technology?

If “Episode 1” of “The Democracy Wars” was the occupation of Parliament Grounds, and Trevor Mallard’s furious response to the mob menacing his marble halls; and “Episode 2” is Labour’s “Attack On The Votes”; then the third episode, due for release towards the end of 2023 can only be – “The People Strike Back”.

But, if Hobson’s Pledge and its allies are to defeat the curious blending of ethno-nationalism and transformative identarianism that constitutes Labour’s “Empire”, then its ageing leadership will first have to convince young New Zealanders that Democracy is worth fighting for.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of  Thursday, 5 May 2022.

No Good Options. Will Co-Governance Break Our Democracy?

A Dangerous Moment: Given the intense preparation which has gone into raising Māori expectations of co-governance, it would now be extremely dangerous for any political party to bring its institutional evolution to a halt. That said, the lack of any serious preparation of the non-Māori population for the revolutionary implications of setting New Zealand’s democratic political system aside in favour of “parity” between the Treaty “partners”, has already set in motion the growth of potentially massive electoral resistance to the co-governance project.

THERE ARE MOMENTS IN HISTORY when all the options available to political leaders are bad. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, faced such a moment in the late-1930s. New Zealand’s current political leadership is facing an equally fraught range of options. Already, there is no course of action available to either Jacinda Ardern or Christopher Luxon that does not, ultimately, end in tears.

How did we arrive at such a dangerous moment?

For the beginnings of an answer we must look to the Bicultural Project developed by the New Zealand Left in the 1980s. In its essence, this project was an attempt to retain the coherence of the New Zealand working-class by building a much greater level of cultural understanding between Pakeha and Māori workers, thereby ensuring that any improvements in living standards and political influence would benefit both ethnicities equally. In its first iteration, at least, the Bicultural Project was about class and culture. A rising economic tide, born of working-class unity, would lift all boats – and waka.

Māori nationalists were having none of it. From their perspective, the original Bicultural Project was just another Pakeha ruse for remaining in charge of the evolution of the New Zealand state. From the very beginning, nationalist writers – most notably Donna Awatere – were at pains to make it clear that the acquisition of Tino Rangatiratanga, Māori Sovereignty, would be achieved in spite of, not by the grace and favour of, the “White Left”. Māori nationalists of aristocratic lineage evinced only scorn for the trade unions and the left-wing parties. Their goal was always admirably clear. They wanted their country back. All of it. Now.

Perhaps, if Rogernomics had never happened, some sort of compromise might have been reached. We’ll never know. The Neoliberal Revolution smashed the unity of the New Zealand working-class into a thousand pieces. As always in this country’s history, massive economic change hit Māori communities the hardest. Meanwhile, what was left of the traditional Pakeha working-class was demobilised and disarmed by the Employment Contracts Act. Within a few years the White Left had ceased to exist.

Biculturalism 2.0, however, neither needed nor wanted any sort of Left. Māori nationalists found Neoliberalism’s take on the Bicultural Project much more encouraging than the Marxists’ version. Lord Cooke of Thorndon’s 1987 “partnership” formulation of the Treaty relationship dovetailed neatly with the neo-tribal capitalism mandated by the Crown/Iwi-based Treaty Settlement Process. The resulting quasi-autonomous ethnic corporations, working hand-in-glove with the Executive Branch of the New Zealand state, were now on course to produce an entirely new set of constitutional possibilities.

The relentless promotion of the so-called “Partnership Model” within those institutions directly controlled by, and/or beholden to, the State, combined with a young Māori elite, educated by the Iwi corporates, and strategically located by sympathetic public servants at the myriad power-points of the state apparatus, transformed the human resources of the Crown into a powerful ideological force. In alliance with the free-floating Iwi corporations, the New Zealand state and its appendages – especially the major political parties, the mainstream news media and the universities – were now ready to proceed to the next phase: Biculturalism 3.0 – also known as “Co-Governance”.

Given the intense preparation which has gone into raising Māori expectations of co-governance, it would now be extremely dangerous for any political party to bring its institutional evolution to a halt. That said, the lack of any serious preparation of the non-Māori population for the revolutionary implications of setting New Zealand’s democratic political system aside in favour of “parity” between the Treaty “partners”, has already set in motion the growth of potentially massive electoral resistance to the co-governance project.

On the Pakeha Right the expectation is that the National and Act parties will, between them, bring the “anti-democratic” innovations of “Māori radicals” to a shuddering halt. The vehicle for this moratorium is the Act Party’s “bottom-line” referendum on co-governance, the result of which the Right (almost certainly correctly) regards as a forgone conclusion. Should National indicate in any way its reluctance to adhere to Act’s bottom-line, then its grip on the right-leaning electorate will be weakened profoundly – boosting Act’s support and quite possibly bringing the NZ First Party back into Parliament.

On the Centre-Left, by contrast, there is a growing level of apprehension that its steadily declining level of support – as registered in the opinion polls – will require not only the seats of Labour and the Greens, but also those of Te Pāti Māori, if “progressives” are to retain possession of the Treasury Benches. With support for Te Pāti Māori rising (at the Greens’ expense) neither Labour nor the Greens will be able to signal any retreat from their commitment to the co-governance project.

Even within Te Pāti Māori, fears will be growing that the support it is attracting in the polls may not end up being reflected in the polling-booths. Younger voters are notoriously difficult to mobilise, especially when compared to older voters (who can be relied upon to cast their votes with an almost religious devotion). To get these younger voters “off the couch”, Te Pāti Māori will need to present the coming election as an existential threat to the future of tangata whenua in Aotearoa. Co-governance will thus be elevated to a non-negotiable component of the nation’s future.

Labour and the Greens will find themselves being dragged further and further to the left in order to keep this nascent Red-Green-Brown coalition together. To distract their still dubious working-class Pakeha supporters from the co-governance question, Labour may lay before them reforms aimed squarely at dismantling the neoliberal economic order in favour of “real Labour policies”. With the Greens and Te Pāti Māori shouting “Me too!”, it will be the turn of National and Act to paint the forthcoming election as not only an existential threat to democracy, but also to the socio-economic status quo.

Clearly, not everybody’s expectations can be fulfilled in a democratic election. Historically, the voters on either side of the political divide have understood and accepted this state of affairs. There is always next time.

The risk New Zealand runs in 2023 is that the policy promises of the contending parties will be come to be seen by their respective supporters as critical to the survival of the nation. On the Right, the introduction of co-governance will be equated with the death of democracy. On the Left, a racist referendum endorsing the elimination of co-governance will be construed as an all-out assault on the Treaty of Waitangi and the indigenous people it was intended to protect.

In such circumstances, the uncompromising partisans on both sides begin to believe that if they concede defeat there will be no “next time”. At that point the cry goes out for a “continuation of politics by other means”. Bullets replace ballots, and peace ceases to be an option – for anybody.


This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 22 April 2022.

2023: The One To Lose.

Drive Towards The Dawn: Labour should present the voters with a bold and radical vision of their country’s future. A future founded on a political economy of equity and justice. Labour and the Greens will lose, naturally. But, with the economy tanking, and the international situation going from bad to worse, the 2023 General Election looks more-and-more like the election the parties of the future need to lose.

BRYCE EDWARDS, in this morning’s (10/3/22) edition of his excellent NZ Politics Daily, writes:

“There is still a chance that the Government will back down on Three Waters. If opinion polls continue to narrow between the left and right blocs, then Jacinda Ardern will start to look at what areas of the Government reform programme are eroding public confidence. Three Waters, or at least the co-governance model, is likely to be identified as a roadblock to re-election in 2023.”

But, a back-down on Three Waters could only eventuate following a direct and successful attack upon the largest and most powerful faction in the Labour Caucus – the Māori Caucus. Given the political beliefs of most of Labour’s non-Māori caucus members, however, is such an attack even conceivable? It would represent not only a rejection of the orthodox interpretation of te Tiriti o Waitangi, along with the co-governance model it is said to mandate, but also the wholesale repudiation of the only political principles the current generation of Labour MPs take seriously.

Now the cynics might chuckle and point to the number of sitting MPs who stand to lose their seats if Labour’s fast-falling level of electoral support is not arrested. Having just entered Parliament, are these politicians really prepared to be swept out of it on the highly contentious proposition that co-governance really is the wave of the future?

Isn’t it more likely that these MPs will suddenly discover that co-governance formed no part of Labour’s 2020 Election Manifesto? Or, that co-governance is full of constitutional fish-hooks that the likes of Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson have not been entirely up-front about? Some may even decide to read He Puapua from start to finish, and end up wondering how the Labour Cabinet could just wave it through.

On the other hand, nobody has ever gone broke betting on the propensity of white liberals to fold like tents when subjected to an uncompromising assault by people of colour. Are Labour’s current crop of luvvies really tough enough to face down the bitter accusations of racism and colonialist betrayal which would undoubtedly be hurled at them by the Māori Caucus’s staunchest spokespeople?

Is Jacinda?

And are the Non-Māori majority of the Labour Caucus really willing to call the Māori Caucus’s bluff if it threatens to refuse the Whip? Could the Labour leadership be sure of holding on to at least three or four of Willie Jackson’s team in the event of a walkout? (Always assuming that the Greens do not walk away from their agreement with the Labour Government in solidarity with its Māori members.)

It is very hard to see how scrapping co-governance and provoking a walkout of Labour’s Māori caucus could happen without provoking a snap election. With the Greens and the Māori Party tearing into Labour’s left-flank, it is even harder to see any other outcome apart from a resounding National/Act victory. Which would, of course, mean the scrapping of Three Waters and co-governance.

Better, perhaps, to go down with the Tino Rangatiratanga flag flying? Paradoxically, going to the country on a platform of constitutional and cultural transformation – and getting thrashed – could well be the best way of keeping Labour and the Greens in the long-term political game.

Because, one thing is for certain: the genie of co-governance is well and truly out of its bottle and it is doubtful whether the New Zealand state any longer possesses either the strength or the will to stuff it back in. Were a right-wing government foolish enough to try, the resulting convulsions in the body politic would make the recent dyspepsia manifested in Parliament Grounds look like a delegation of Plunket mums.

This time the wretched refuse of the colonial capitalist economy would not attract the scorn of middle-class Pakeha social-liberals. This time they would be pitching their tents right alongside them. This time the New Zealand ensign flying alongside the Tino Rangatiratanga flag would not be at all confusing. This time it would be: “One flag for tauiwi; one flag for tangata whenua; and te Tiriti over all.” This time Labour and the Greens would not be scorning the occupation. This time they’d be taking the demands of the protesters directly to the floor of the House of Representatives. This time they would not be speaking for the state. This time they would be speaking for the future.

There was a time – not so very long ago – when Bryce Edwards’ speculation about Labour stepping away from Three Waters and co-governance would have represented nothing more nor less than the conventional wisdom. But, times have changed. Aotearoa-New Zealand faces unprecedented challenges, and it is becoming clearer with every passing year that our current constitutional arrangements are unlikely to prove equal to the task of meeting them.

As Bryce himself notes:

“The alternative is that the Government gets out and actually sells the reforms to the public. This is what has been sorely lacking (beyond the infamous [Three Waters] propaganda ad campaign). But that will require more than disparaging co-governance critics whose arguments are resonating widely with the public.”

Indeed it will. And, if Labour has retained even a shred of historical consciousness, it will go the electorate with more than just Three Waters on the bill-of-sale. It should present the voters with a bold and radical vision of their country’s future. A future founded on a political economy of equity and justice. A future in which everyone can win, and where losing isn’t predetermined by the colour of your skin. Labour and the Greens will lose, naturally. But, with the economy tanking, and the international situation going from bad to worse, the 2023 General Election looks more-and-more like the election the parties of the future need to lose.

The vital objective should be to win the votes of the young. The challenges that loom will be theirs to meet and overcome. Above all, Labour should not allow itself to be spooked by a solidification of frightened conservatism among the over-60s. Let the dead bury their dead.

The trick, in these circumstances, is to make sure that you leave office with a bang – not a whimper. With great things still left to do. In the immortal words of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind: “Tomorrow is another day.”

Let the Right inherit the whirlwind that’s coming.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 11 March 2022.

Riding 2022's Revolutionary Tiger.

Get Ready For A Wild Ride: 2022 will be dominated by two “C” words: “Covid” and “Co-Governance”. Both are certain to spawn variants of unpredictable virulence from the original strain. But, as happened with the Pandemic, the unfolding of the Co-Governance Debate is proceeding in ways determined by the decisions of Jacinda Ardern’s Government.

2022 WILL BE a revolutionary year. The deliberative processes begun in 2021 on how best to reconfigure the New Zealand state in conformity with the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will expand and intensify throughout 2022. New Zealanders will not be able to escape the consequences of their government’s decision to set these processes in motion. Nor will that Government be able to stop what it has begun. Over the course of the next twelve months we will discover how well the people of Aotearoa-New Zealand can ride the revolutionary tiger.

Personally, I would not have unleashed the deliberations attendant upon the revolutionary He Puapua Report in the midst of a global pandemic. Profound structural and constitutional changes are, surely, best left for calmer circumstances, when the population is less distracted and agitated. Then again, revolutions could hardly have happened if the times in which they occurred were calm and devoid of social tensions. In Karl Marx’s trenchant aphorism: “Men make history – but they do not make it just as they please.”

The authors of He Puapua would have been wise to think about Marx’s words before applying their eager fingers to their collective keyboard. As the hapless King Louis XVI (1754-1793) discovered to his cost, asking the people what they want their rulers to do for them is fraught with all kinds of dangers. As any historian who has poured over the ordinary people of France’s Cahiers de doléances (Lists of Complaints) knows full well, once freed from his bottle, the Genie of Change will not be persuaded to return until the world is changed indeed.

2022, therefore, looks set to be dominated by two “C” words: “Covid” and “Co-Governance”. Both are certain to spawn variants of unpredictable virulence from the original strain. But, as happened with the Pandemic, the unfolding of the Co-Governance Debate is proceeding in ways determined by the decisions of Jacinda Ardern’s Government.

For many months now a group of distinguished Māori leaders have been formulating a detailed response to the ideas and proposals contained in He Puapua. This response, as per the Government’s wishes, will be presented to Ministers first. Only after its official receipt will the rest of the New Zealand population be asked for its view of how to best give expression to the principles of te Tiriti. You can put a ring around the prediction that the Māori and Pakeha views of how New Zealand should be governed will not be the same.

It is possible (but by no means certain) that the Māori response will be characterised by both its intellectual coherence and unmistakeable unity of purpose. If the principal Pakeha response is anything but a hot mess of outrage and anger, however, it will be a major miracle. Some Pakeha (many of them academics, public servants and, regrettably, journalists) will attempt to avoid doing the intellectual and cultural mahi inherent in the fraught processes of constitutional change by simply adopting the Māori proposals in toto. Others will decry the whole exercise as an unwanted and electorally unmandated pretext for sowing cultural division and conflict. They will not shrink from calling it treason, and branding its promoters – Māori and Pakeha – as traitors.

The great problem with the Government’s almost careless decision to foist this debate upon the nation is that, already, in the minds of just about all its participants, existential issues are at stake. Nothing less than the life, or death, of everything they hold dear is seen to turn on its outcome. Men and women will stop at very little to emerge victorious from such a struggle. History makes it chillingly clear that, if the end is a people’s survival, then all means are permissible.

What, then, is to be done? Having tossed the dragon’s teeth of co-governance into earth already ploughed-up by the divisions of Covid-19, how can Jacinda’s Government pluck from this nettle, danger, this flower, constitutional safety?

My own answer, for what it’s worth, is to make it clear that co-governance is just one more means towards the historic end that has always united the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders: a fair go for everyone.

A “revolution” that delivers co-governance to self-selecting ethnic elites, accountable to neither Māori nor Pakeha, will not stand.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 31 December 2021.