Just Visiting.

Disputed Title: Regardless of whether you’re defending the USA from citizen-aliens; guarding Aotearoa against insufficiently Māori Māori; or upholding the “principles, traditions, and ideals” that define New Zealand as a nation; the one thing you absolutely must be sure of is that the people who are “just visiting” your country, cannot impose their will upon those whose treasure it has been all along.

THERE’S A MEMORABLE SCENE in “The Good Shepherd”, a movie about the early years of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson (a character modelled on the real-life counter-spy James Jesus Angleton) and he is talking to Joseph Palmi, a Mafioso (played by the inimitable Joe Pesci) who asks him an interesting question.

Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something ... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the [Blacks], they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

Sixteen years ago, “The Good Shepherd’s” screenwriter, Eric Roth, had his hero, Edward Wilson, give voice to a political idea that has only grown stronger among the sort of people who founded, and largely staffed, the CIA in the 1940s and 50s. Not the hyphenated Americans alluded to by Joseph Palmi, but the descendants of the original English and Scots-Irish settlers of the thirteen British colonies which, eventually, became the United States of America.

But, if the open expression of this idea was confined to the better sort of Republican country-club for most of the post-war era, it has – thanks to Donald Trump – escaped. Virtually everything that distinguishes Trumpian populism may be traced back to those two crucial questions: Who is a real American?, and, Who is “just visiting”? All of the hatred directed at ethnic minorities, women, and the gender divergent is explicable only when set in the context of the historical and constitutional expansion of who can be an American citizen.

Moreover, if American political commentator, Brynn Tannehill, posting on the US website, Dame is to be believed, the Edward Wilson understanding of who “owns” America, may, in just a few decades, be the unabashed conventional wisdom of the American Right. Tannehill quotes Larry Ellmers of the ultra-conservative Claremont Institute – with chilling effect.

According to Ellmers, few Americans are willing to accept that:

[M]ost people living in the United States today – certainly more than half – are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term […..] They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

Inasmuch as most of the political trends and tropes of American politics tend to end up on these shores eventually – and, thanks to social-media, rather sooner these days than later – it would seem sensible to anticipate similar ethno-nationalist sentiments becoming a feature of New Zealand politics.

Fuelling such attitudes will be the sort of statements that got Kelvin Davis into hot water a few weeks ago. Annoyed by the political stance taken by Act MP and Wahine Māori, Karen Chhour, Davis accused her of viewing the world through a “vanilla lens”. Like Edward Wilson, Davis gave every appearance of regarding all those who followed the original inhabitants of Aotearoa as “just visiting”.

(It is worth noting, at this point, that Wilson’s creator, Roth, made no mention of Native Americans, the people who really were the continent’s first arrivals!)

Should the idea become widely accepted that those who share Davis’s opinions of late arrivals “do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined [New Zealand] as a nation and as a people”, then the behaviour of ultra-conservative Pakeha will become every bit as provocative – and dangerous – as the behaviour of extreme Māori nationalists.

Because, of course, these otherwise antagonistic groups have two very important imperatives in common: both must be absolutely committed to gutting democracy and extinguishing liberty. How could they not be, when those who do not share their views of the world possess a great many more votes than they do?

Regardless of whether you’re defending the USA from citizen-aliens; guarding Aotearoa against insufficiently Māori Māori; or upholding the “principles, traditions, and ideals” that define New Zealand as a nation; the one thing you absolutely must be sure of is that the people who are “just visiting” your country, cannot impose their will upon those whose treasure it has been all along.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 December 2022.

Reality Bites.

Repeat After Me: Te Ao Maori is a metaphor, not a place. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not a bridge, it is a highly contentious political document. Human-beings inhabit one world, not many.

KELVIN DAVIS believes that Karen Chhour is looking at the world through a “vanilla lens”. 

Racially-charged sentiments of this sort used to be reserved for embarrassing Pakeha uncles, a little the worse for drink following a big Christmas Dinner. Family members winced at the old man’s reliance on “Māori blood” fractions to determine who was, and wasn’t, a “real Māori”. 

Equally embarrassing, however, is the spectacle of a Māori cabinet minister belittling an Act MP of Ngāpuhi descent for refusing to leave “her Pakeha world”. New Zealanders of all ethnicities now need to confront and deconstruct Davis’s objectionable ethnic dualism – because it is extremely dangerous.

Challenged in the House, by Chhour, to account for Oranga Tamariki’s treatment of vulnerable children, Davis, the responsible minister, responded: “What the Member needs to do is cross the bridge that is Te Tiriti o Waitangi from her Pākehā world into the Māori world and understand exactly why, how the Māori world operates.”

What, exactly, is the Minister trying to convey with these words?

Essentially, Davis was declaring the existence of two quite distinct realities – Māori and Pakeha. Viewed from the perspective of Pakeha reality, the behaviour of Oranga Tamariki may appear to be egregiously negligent – even cruel. But, viewed from Te Ao Māori, its behaviour may be construed in an entirely different way. The key to unlocking this profound ontological problem is Te Tiriti – or, at least, Te Tiriti as currently interpreted.

The contemporary interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi would have us believe that it set out to define the relationship between Māori, Pakeha, and their respective instruments of governance. That it was, indeed, a document intended to regulate the interaction of two very different realities. Two ethnic worlds, which were to remain separate but equal in perpetuity.

In 1840, such ethnic dualism made a certain kind of sense. When the Treaty was signed there were barely 2,000 Pakeha in the whole of New Zealand, and about 80,000 Māori. The world beyond New Zealand had a foothold on these islands, but not much more. For most Māori, their world was the only world – all contact with the islands to the north having been broken centuries before. The idea that, in the space of less than 30 years, the world of these strangers might overwhelm their own would have seemed preposterous to most of those present at the signing of the Treaty in February, 1840.

Most – but not all. There were Māori at Waitangi who had crossed the Tasman to Sydney. Some had made it as far as Europe. They knew that this much larger world, hitherto oblivious to the existence of the Māori, was unlikely to leave their people in peace for very long. They had seen the ships of the Americans and the French anchored in their bays, and they were as aware as the British authorities that the New Zealand Company would soon be causing all kinds of trouble for iwi and hapu south of Lake Taupo.

However prettily the Treaty expressed the fiction of kawanatanga and tino rangatiratanga accommodating each other’s needs in peace and harmony, the Māori world would not long survive its collision with the rest of Planet Earth.

And so it proved. Call it the inexorable march of “civilisation”; call it “colonisation; call it the making of the New Zealand nation; call it what you will. Te Ao Māori soon ceased to be a description of reality and became, instead, a metaphor. And metaphors are poor armour against the real weapons of one’s foes. The Pai Marire faith may have reassured its warriors that a divine power would deflect the Pakeha bullets – or turn their soldiers to stone – but the imperial troopers cut them down regardless. In the end, there is only one world.

Kelvin Davis knows this as well as anyone. So why is he insisting on treating metaphors as if they were scientific facts? The only rational answer is that he, along with those controlling the increasingly powerful Māori corporations arising out of the Treaty Settlement Process, intends to alter the political reality of New Zealand in such a way that the Māori aristocracy, and the te Reo-speaking, tertiary-educated, professionals and managers of the Māori middle-class (the only Māori worth listening to?) will soon be wielding very real authority over the rest of New Zealand.

Included among “the rest” will be all those Māori without te Reo, without tertiary credentials, without six-figure salaries. Māori struggling to make it through the day in a world that has little sympathy for the poor. Māori without proper housing. Māori on the minimum wage. Māori lost to drugs and alcohol and crime. Māori whose kids suffer horribly for the sins of their fathers and mothers. Māori with backgrounds identical to Karen Chhour.

Chhour was demanding to know what Davis was doing for these, the most vulnerable inhabitants of her world, the real world, the only world. And all he could offer, by way of an answer, was a metaphorical bridge to a world that disappeared 250 years ago. A world which certainly cannot be conjured back into existence by a Minister of the Crown who does not care to be questioned by a wahine Māori who, all-too-clearly, sees him struggling to do his job.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 30 September 2022.

History Lessons.

“That’s a C- for History, Kelvin!” While it is certainly understandable that Māori-Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis was not anxious to castigate every Pakeha member of the House of Representatives for the crimes committed against his people by their ancestors; crimes from which his Labour colleagues continue to draw enormous benefits; the direction of his prosecutorial rhetoric at National and Act MPs exclusively was historically indefensible and morally obnoxious.

I SURE HOPE Kelvin Davis wasn’t a history teacher before he became a principal and then Te Tai Tokerau’s MP. Why? Because his grasp of what happened in this country between the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and today isn’t just wrong, it also has the potential to create great mischief.

The speech he delivered to the House of Representatives on Wednesday (11/5/22) is a particularly grim example of the Minister for Māori-Crown Relations historical ignorance. In it he appeared to equate the Opposition parties with the entire Pakeha population – past and present. This was more than just racially inflammatory, it represents a dangerous distortion of reality.

Addressing the Opposition Benches, Davis declared: “They conveniently overlook the fact that their wealth, their privilege and their authority was built off the backs of other people’s misery and entrenched inequality across generations.”

This is interesting. National’s leader, Christopher Luxon, was born in 1970, and the Act leader, David Seymour, in 1983. At the ages of 52 and 39 respectively, that doesn’t leave them many generations across which to have inflicted misery and entrenched inequality! He would have been on slightly firmer ground if he had been addressing his remarks to Labour’s Roger Douglas – whose policies did indeed inflict misery and inequality. Perhaps not across generations, but certainly since 1984. Except, of course, Labour MPs don’t like to draw attention to those policies – mostly on account of the fact that their party has done so little over nearly 40 years to reverse them.

Davis did considerably better, historically, when he described to the House the fate of his ancestors at the hands of Nineteenth Century colonial authorities. The gradual consolidation of the colonial state, its laws and regulations, effectively dispossessed Davis’s forebears, leaving them destitute and demoralised.

What Davis failed to mention, however, is that the Nineteenth Century dispossession of the Māori was Crown policy. More importantly, it was a process cheered to the echo by the overwhelming majority of the burgeoning Pakeha population. Rich and poor alike understood that their future prosperity was contingent upon the immiseration of the “native” population. Meaning that it wasn’t just the ancestors of the present Opposition MPs who built their wealth and privilege off the backs of his tupuna, but also the present crop of Pakeha Labour MPs seated alongside him.

While it is certainly understandable that Davis was not anxious to castigate every Pakeha member of the House of Representatives for the crimes committed against his people by their ancestors; crimes from which they continue, as a people, to draw enormous benefits; the direction of his prosecutorial rhetoric at National and Act MPs exclusively was historically indefensible and morally obnoxious.

If Davis is unaware that the single most devastating economic and social assault upon Māori of the last 50 years occurred on the Fourth Labour Government’s watch, then he has no business being an MP – let alone the Minister of Māori-Crown Relations. Certainly he cannot have forgotten that it was the Fifth Labour Government which oversaw the passage of the Seabed and Foreshore legislation. Or, that it was a Labour Prime Minister, Helen Clark, who described the leading opponents of that legislation as “haters and wreckers” – preferring to meet with an excessively woolly ram than with the tangata whenua her proposed law had so enraged.

Maybe the reckless willingness of the Sixth Labour Government to embrace the co-governance agenda of its Māori caucus is a delayed reaction to the actions of the Fourth and the Fifth. If so, then it is a very foolish reaction. Had Helen Clark and her Attorney-General not moved with speed to reverse the Court of Appeal’s overturning of what had been considered settled law, then Don Brash would, almost certainly, have won the 2005 General Election. Given that a National victory in 2005 would have meant the effective re-nullification of the Treaty and the abolition of the Māori Seats – thereby provoking civil war – Māori and Pakeha both owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.

The depressing thing about the politics of the moment is the apparent historical amnesia of just about all its practitioners. The Settler Nation responsible for extinguishing the Treaty in the 1860s is simply not prepared to see it reinstated as New Zealand’s de facto constitution in the 2020s. The way Davis chose to deliver his thoughts to the House of Representatives: in the form of an attack on the Opposition; shows just how impossible it is to construct an argument about our history that does not inevitably boil down to the equivalent of Sir Michael Cullen’s memorable taunt: “We won. You lost. Eat that!”

The most frightening aspect of Davis’s performance is that it showed no signs that the Minister of Māori-Crown relations has the slightest idea of what will happen to that relationship if co-governance is forced upon an unwilling Pakeha nation.

Davis’s colleague, Willie Jackson, has labelled the Act leader a “useless Māori” and “a dangerous man”. But David Seymour is no more or less “useless” than those Māori iwi and hapu that saw which way the wind was blowing in the 1850s and 60s and ended up fighting alongside General Cameron’s imperial troops. As for being a dangerous man. Well, Jackson’s description can only be proven if Seymour and his party attract sufficient support to enforce the implementation of Act’s radical policies. He will be a dangerous man only because his fellow New Zealanders have made him one – by voting for him.

It’s not Seymour that poses a danger to you and your people, Willie, it’s democracy. But, then, you already knew that, didn’t you?

By the same token, it’s not the Opposition that has somehow cornered all the privilege, Kelvin, nor is it the exclusive property of the 63 percent of the New Zealand population known as Pakeha. These fair-skinned Polynesians are not – and never will be – “Europeans”. Just as contemporary Māori are not – and never will be again – the Māori who inhabited these islands before colonisation. Both peoples are the victims of historical forces too vast for blame, too permanent for guilt.

It is high time we stopped using History as a weapon, and started relying upon it as a guide.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 13 May 2022.

Birthday Wishes: The NZ Labour Party Is 105 Years Old.

Doers - Not Talkers: Today’s Labour Party is very good at talking: yesterday’s Labour Party was honoured and loved for what it did. A hijab isn’t a state house. Covid-19 isn’t Adolf Hitler. And, its name notwithstanding, a soft-centred neoliberal party isn’t a mass movement of the New Zealand working-class.

ON 7 JULY 1916 the New Zealand Labour Party came into formal existence. That decision was not made in the mining town of Blackball, on the South Island’s West Coast, but in Wellington. The number of New Zealanders who still believe that the Labour Party was formed by the radical coal-miners of Blackball would easily outnumber those who know the true circumstances of its birth. To be fair, Labour has done very little to dispel this historical myth. Even today you will find Labour MPs posing proudly before the fading slogans of the Blackball miners’ union hall. As if, by some strange historical osmosis, the genuine socialism of the men and women of 1908 could be absorbed into the neoliberal souls of twenty-first century Labour MPs.

Labour’s blatant misrepresentation of its own history continues. In a message to members and supporters, Labour’s deputy-leader, Kelvin Davis, celebrated the party’s 105th anniversary by sending out a self-congratulatory message featuring this extraordinary review of Labour’s past leaders:

I want to acknowledge all our leaders, past and present. From Michael Joseph Savage, who moved furniture into the first state house way back in 1937, to Peter Fraser who was involved in setting up the United Nations. From Norm Kirk who helped Aotearoa recommit to Te Tiriti, to David Lange who said no to nukes and yes to the rainbow community. From Helen Clark who helped us Kiwis save for tomorrow, to Jacinda Ardern who stood up to hate and stood up for our health.

It is difficult to know where to begin with this crude travesty of Labour’s history.

Perhaps the first thing to note is the author’s (who may, or may not, be Davis) utter contempt for historical accuracy. He or she has cynically gathered together a grab-bag of “progressive” causes and assigned them – almost at random – to the heroes of Labour’s past and present. Tragically, this travesty will pass unnoticed by the overwhelming majority of the message’s recipients. For all intents and purposes, their knowledge of Labour, and New Zealand, history is non-existent. As a political and ideological community, the Labour Party no longer possesses the human resources necessary to pass on the stories that shaped the labour movement. Those who might have performed this service are either dead, or they left the party in disgust years ago.

How well I remember the stories told to me by an elderly trade unionist and Labour Party member, the late Fred Rudkin. He would describe making his way to the Tramway Workers union hall on Saturday mornings to be thrilled by the spell-binding “shed oratory” of Bill Richards, Dunedin’s foremost union agitator. And how, during the 1951 Waterfront Dispute, he and his best mate told lies to the Police to keep safe the local leaders of the locked-out Watersiders Union. He recalled this youthful resistance to the quasi-fascist “Emergency Regulations” imposed by the National Prime Minister, Sid Holland, with undisguised pride. Like so many who recalled those years of struggle, Fred departed the Labour Party in 1989 to become a founding member of Jim Anderton’s NewLabour.

Fred Rudkin wouldn’t have known whether to laugh or cry at the words attributed to Kelvin Davis. His Mickey Savage was the Labour leader who (at fatal cost to his health) brought New Zealanders social security “from the cradle to the grave”. Mickey might have been there to help move the furniture into the first state house, but Fred knew that it was Jack Lee who made sure Labour’s state housing programme was a success. In the scandal arising out of Lee’s vicious attack on Savage in 1940, Fred was torn between these two great Labour heroes.

His memories of Peter Fraser, likewise, encompassed more than his contribution to the 1945 United Nations Conference in San Francisco. He could tell you about Fraser’s conduct at another conference. The Labour Conference where Fraser did all he could – up to and including breaching the constitution – to ensure that Lee, his principal rival for the leadership, was expelled from the party for penning the article that “drove Savage to his grave”. If I remember rightly, it was Fred who first quoted to me Lee’s description of Fraser’s smile: “like moonlight flitting across a tombstone”. He knew that Labour’s heroes, like all human-beings, were deeply flawed and far from faultless.

I well recall my first Labour Party conference. It was 1979 and David Lange was the object of considerable resentment for his conservative Methodist lay preacher’s attitude towards abortion. Five years later, that same David Lange – now Prime Minister – did his best to persuade the Labour Party conference to water-down its stance on nuclear disarmament, and was shot down in flames by the party president, Jim Anderton, for his trouble. Lange did support gay rights, but the bill he voted for in 1986 was Fran Wilde’s, not his. What’s more, it was a conscience vote. Most Labour MPs supported it, but it was not Labour’s bill.

The target of the most serious misrepresentation in the letter attributed to Kelvin Davis is Norman Kirk.

Far from helping “Aotearoa recommit to Te Tiriti”, Big Norm promulgated “New Zealand Day” as a replacement for “Waitangi Day”. His purpose was precisely the opposite of today’s Labour Party, whose support for “co-governance” would have left Kirk scratching his head in confusion. His “New Zealand Day” was a statement of national unity, just as his inspired gesture of taking the little Maori boy’s hand and leading him across the Treaty Ground was a statement of racial equality and amity – not tino rangatiratanga. The Waitangi Tribunal, brought into existence in 1975 – months after Kirk’s death – was the work of Matt Rata and Bill Rowling – not “Big Norm”.

If Davis did, indeed, write this grossly distorted version of Labour’s history, then he owes his party an apology. If, however, he signed it in ignorance, then the sin is almost as grievous. If Labour’s deputy-leader knows so little about his party that he cannot spot gross historical revisionism when he sees it, then it is pointless to expect Labour’s rank-and-file members to take the slightest interest in what their party once stood for, and the feats it accomplished, in the course of 105 years.

On the other hand, it’s probably for the best. Today’s Labour Party is very good at talking: yesterday’s Labour Party was honoured and loved for what it did. A hijab isn’t a state house. Covid-19 isn’t Adolf Hitler. And, its name notwithstanding, a soft-centred neoliberal party isn’t a mass movement of the New Zealand working-class.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 8 July 2021.

Correcting Corrections - And Its Minister.

My Department Right Or Wrong: Far from “politicians involving themselves in some Corrections matters” being a bad thing, their involvement – along with that of the Ombudsman – constitutes a necessary check upon the unreasonable and unlawful exercise of authority over prison inmates by prison staff. A Corrections Minister who lets it be known that he has his prison officers’ backs – no matter what they do, or have done – makes the correction of Corrections well-nigh impossible.

KELVIN DAVIS is a deeply conservative Minister of Corrections. His response to the Waikeria Prison Riot was one of cold fury, and if his behaviour in the House earlier this week is any guide, that fury has not subsided.

During Question Time on Tuesday, Davis arranged for a “patsy question” to be put to him concerning a pamphlet distributed among prisoners by People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA). The group’s February newsletter praised the Waikeria rioters for “reforming the prison to the ground” and its authors quoted approvingly the Maori Party co-leader, Rawiri Waititi, for insisting that: “When injustice becomes law, defiance becomes duty.”

Davis’s parliamentary reply constituted a cutting reproof of Waititi’s words and actions: “I said from the beginning that politicians involving themselves in some Corrections matters would only serve to embolden and encourage more events that endanger the lives of prisoners and staff.”

There was more to the Minister’s reaction than mere rhetoric. Concerned that the content of the PAPA pamphlet was sufficiently inflammatory to “incite a riot”, the Department of Corrections passed it on to the Police.

This could prove embarrassing if the matter ever comes to court. The words attributed to Waititi were, as he himself acknowledged, very far from being his own. The quotation, “when injustice becomes law, defiance becomes duty”, is usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, and was often to be found in the statements and speeches of the Black Civil Rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King. In his own words, Dr King also observed that “rioting is the language of the unheard”.

None of which cut any ice with Davis. Even after Rawiri Waititi had negotiated the peaceful surrender of the 17 prison rioters back in January, and personally led them to safety, the Minister of Corrections pointedly refused to acknowledge the role played by Te Paati Māori in bringing the six-day stand-off to an end. As he has done so often during his time as Minister, Davis very publicly aligned himself with the Department of Corrections and its staff, heaping praise upon their professionalism and backing their response to the uprising.

Davis’s deep-seated conservatism has undoubtedly contributed to this “my department right or wrong” approach to the fraught issues of crime and punishment. It is not, however, the correct ministerial response.

The real and constant danger of those charged with running our prisons behaving badly is recognised by the fact that all Members of Parliament are legally empowered to respond to the complaints of prisoners and must be given access to them. These powers would not have been conferred upon the people’s representatives, by the people’s representatives, if they had not recognised the potential for cruel and unusual punishments being inflicted behind high walls and razor-wire – where few sympathetic eyes are watching, and help is very far away.

Far from “politicians involving themselves in some Corrections matters” being a bad thing, their involvement – along with that of the Ombudsman – constitutes a necessary check upon the unreasonable and unlawful exercise of authority over prison inmates by prison staff. A Corrections Minister who lets it be known that he has his prison officers’ backs – no matter what they do, or have done – makes the correction of Corrections well-nigh impossible.

Just how far Davis has strayed from the path of impartial ministerial oversight was revealed in his response to a recent judicial finding that Corrections staff at Auckland Women’s Prison had treated inmates in a “cruel, degrading and inhumane manner”. (Note well, this is the judgement of a New Zealand court, formulated after hearing and weighing the evidence of both sides, and that it has the force of law.)

The Minister’s response to the judgement was shocking. Rather than holding the persons responsible to account and insisting that such behaviour must never happen again, the Minister instead opted to treat the judge’s findings as mere “allegations” and asked Corrections to provide him with “their side of the story”.

With the possible exception of the Ministry of Justice itself, no other agency of the state has more cause to respect and uphold the Rule of Law than the Department of Corrections. If Kelvin Davis cannot accept that prison staff, as well as inmates, must conduct themselves lawfully, then he should resign.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 February 2021.

A Powerful Political Metaphor.

Lost Opportunity: The powerful political metaphor of the Maori Party leading the despised and marginalised from danger to safety, is one Labour could have pre-empted by taking the uprising at Waikeria Prison much more seriously.

AS WORD OF Rawiri Waititi’s successful intervention in the Waikeria Prison stand-off spreads, the Maori Party’s mana will grow significantly. It is difficult to think of a better metaphor with which to illustrate the party’s political mission than its co-leader, under the disdainful gaze of the authorities, leading 16 parched, burned, bleeding but unbroken prisoners out of danger and into safety. Surely, somewhere in New Zealand, a young Maori musician is already composing a song to celebrate Waititi’s success. He’s earned one.

It is difficult to imagine anyone bothering to write a song for the Corrections Minister, Kelvin Davis. Throughout the six days of the crisis at Waikeria, the Minister maintained an obdurate silence. The resolution of this crisis, New Zealanders were given to understand, was an “operational matter” – something best left to the public servants and corrections officers on the spot. The very same public servants and corrections officers whose actions – and failure to take action – were responsible for sparking the uprising in the first place.

The Ombudsman’s report of August 2020 made it very clear that conditions at Waikeria Prison left a great deal to be desired. Had the authorities responded to that report swiftly and decisively, then it is highly unlikely the uprising would have occurred.

It is very difficult for those who know nothing of life behind bars to fathom the degree of degradation required to make prisoners risk an extension of their sentences by violating the rules of their confinement. When you’re in jail, all you want to be is out. You’ll suffer an awful lot in silence before raising your voice in protest. That’s why any form of prison protest is a sure and certain sign that something very rotten is festering within its walls.

How rotten may, perhaps, be gleaned from the following passage, taken from the media release sent out by the protesting prisoners’ to (among others) Action Station and Hone Harawira:

Our drinking water in prison is brown. We have used our towels for three straight weeks now. Some of us have not had our bedding changed in five months. We have not received clean uniforms to wear for three months – we wear the same dirty clothes day in and day out. We have to wash our clothes in our dirty shower water and dry them on the concrete floor. We have no toilet seats: we eat our kai out of paper bags right next to our open, shared toilets.

If even half of these complaints are true, then New Zealand should hang its head in shame. Conditions such as these are what we associate with the hellholes of Central and South America – prisons wracked by riots, uprisings and mass escapes, and quelled by tear-gas, rubber bullets and (all too frequently) live rounds.

The pall of black smoke which, at the time of writing, still hung above Waikeria is a signal. A signal that we’re not doing it right. That we’ve got it wrong. That we have to stop listening to the people who have presided over these institutional failures for far too long. Most of all, however, it is signalling the importance of ceasing to react to the vicious messaging from our nation’s amygdala.

Crime and punishment are not issues that can be resolved successfully by our instinctive “flight or fight” reaction. They are matters for the national cerebellum, the seat of reason in the human brain. We must not leave them to the violent reptilian lunges of the Kiwi limbic system.

At times like these, however, the first political responders are almost always reptilian. Why are the authorities waiting? Where are the Police? Why aren’t we seeing the deployment of armed tactical units? Is there no pepper spray? No tear gas? No long batons? Are there no automatic weapons?

When a human-being is convicted of a crime, he or she does not cease to be a human-being. Imprisonment does not, contrary to the punitive expectations of many New Zealanders, permit the extinguishment of all the rights to which human-beings are entitled. This country is a signatory to a raft of international treaties and covenants affirming the fundamental human right to be treated decently.

These documents should have made it unthinkable for servants of the New Zealand state (which, presumably, includes the authorities at Waikeria Prison!) to refuse water and food to protesting inmates. If our soldiers refused to give prisoners water they would be guilty of a war crime.

What does it say about us as a people, that we are willing to treat the soldiers of a foreign foe with more respect than our own citizens? What does it say about our Minister of Corrections that he did not publicly repudiate the inhumane tactics of the Waikeria authorities?

More importantly, what does it say about the government of Jacinda Ardern? Why is her Cabinet so unaware, seemingly, of the acutely dangerous politics of the Waikeria Prison uprising? Yes, it’s holiday-time. And yes, Kiwis are taking full advantage of their success in defeating Covid-19. Very few people (including most of the mainstream news media) are paying much attention to events at Waikeria. But that does not excuse the Prime Minister for not noticing just how big a “win” her government has gifted the Maori Party.

Because that metaphor: the Maori Party leading the victims of the system out of danger and into safety; will speak with great force to the thousands of New Zealanders who cannot afford an expensive holiday in Queenstown. Those paying extortionate rent for substandard accommodation. Those parents working two jobs but still not making enough to keep their families fit and healthy. The New Zealanders who hear their leader talking about “kindness” and a “Team of Five Million”, but who just can’t see any evidence of it at work in their lives and neighbourhoods.

Dylan Asafo, a lecturer at Auckland Law School, put it like this:

Contrary to popular belief, the ‘centre’ isn’t a place for reasonable, measured minds who can see valid points on both sides and find a just and fair compromise. The ‘centre’ doesn’t actually exist. It’s an imagined safe space for people who are deeply invested in inequality in a settler-colonial, capitalist state but still want to be perceived as kind and decent people.

A left-wing Labour government would have reacted very differently to the uprising at Waikeria. It would have reassured all those members of the Maori working-class with fathers, brothers and sons locked away in hellholes like Waikeria, that Labour was committed unequivocally to their fair and humane treatment. Under a left-wing Labour government, it would have been the Corrections Minister leading those prisoners out of danger and into safety – and making sure every one of the Ombudsman’s recommendations was implemented.

By preferring to put their faith in an illusory political centre, Labour has ceded a crucial swathe of electoral territory to a Maori Party unafraid of placing itself at the head of an uprising much bigger than the one Rawiri Waititi just helped to end at Waikeria.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 4 January 2021

If Labour Wants Fewer Prisoners, Then It Needs To Create More Prison Space – Not Less.

He Should Be Locked Up: To hear Kelvin Davis acknowledge that it may soon be necessary to put prisoners on mattresses on the floor was sickening. That a Labour cabinet minister is willing to countenance the New Zealand prison system becoming indistinguishable from the Third World hellholes visited by Ross Kemp’s “Extreme World” TV show, marks a new low for what is already a sadly compromised party.

STUPIDITY ON STILTS. How else should the decision-making on Waikeria Prison be characterised. From practically every perspective, the Labour-led government’s determination not to proceed with the construction of a new 3,000-bed “mega-prison” was flawed. Most particularly (and most worryingly) it demonstrated the Cabinet’s inability to think politically. And, when your business is politics-at-the-highest-level, that’s a very serious flaw indeed.

Let’s begin from where we are right now. New Zealand’s current prison muster has never been higher. In a nation of just 4.7 million it has topped 10,000 – making New Zealanders one of the most incarcerated peoples in the OECD.

The consequences of this rapid rise in prisoner numbers is that the country’s existing prisons are already dangerously over-crowded. The acute lack of space has already led to the introduction of double-bunking (thank you Judith Collins) and to prisoners being locked in their cells for extended periods. Not surprisingly, these conditions have led to an increase in the number of prisoner-on-prisoner and prisoner-on-guard assaults, as well as to a sharp spike in the number of prisoner suicides.

If there’s one thing that would really help New Zealand’s prisoners; its prison guards; and, ultimately, it’s people as a whole; it would be to increase the amount of prison space dramatically. It is only after the Department of Corrections takes possession of enough state-of-the-art “correctional facilities” to humanely house not only its current, but also its projected muster, that any kind of serious discussion about prisoner rehabilitation can begin.

While prisoners are being double-bunked, locked in their cells 22 hours a day, and denied access to the sort of medical, educational and vocational services most of them need, all talk of rehabilitation is not only meaningless – it’s mendacious.

To hear Kelvin Davis acknowledge that it may soon be necessary to put prisoners on mattresses on the floor was sickening. That a Labour cabinet minister is willing to countenance the New Zealand prison system becoming indistinguishable from the Third World hellholes visited by Ross Kemp’s “Extreme World” TV show, marks a new low for what is already a sadly compromised party.

But, what else could he say? The botched compromise he’d just announced: a new 500-bed prison at Waikeria incorporating a 100-bed mental health facility; will not admit its first inmate until 2022. By which time the muster is unlikely to have fallen appreciably and chronic overcrowding will still be making bad men worse.

That’s why it is so dishonest of the Labour-led government to talk about its long-term (15 years!) goal of reducing New Zealand’s prison muster by 30 percent. The last political party to be in power continuously for 15 years was “King Dick” Seddon’s Liberals. Back in the days when politicians wore top-hats and spats.

The only way a political party can talk about a 15-year-plan for reducing prisoner numbers by 30 percent with any semblance of credibility is after it has already succeeded in forging a broad bi-partisan consensus on all the major issues relating to crime and punishment. While Labour remains unmoved by the electorate’s strong emotional attachment to the arguments of the Sensible Sentencing Trust: i.e. that the perpetrators of horrendous crimes must be kept as far away from society as possible, for as long as possible; no such consensus is possible.

A good first-step for Labour would be an open acknowledgement that in all societies there is an irreducible number of bad bastards who must be caught, convicted and locked away. In matters of crime and punishment it is also important to acknowledge that the government’s highest priority should always be the safety of the public. Prisons may represent, as Bill English noted, both a fiscal and a moral failure, but this side of the Second Coming they are failures that cannot be avoided.

It is only after the public has been convinced of a party’s commitment to their safety that the conversation about crime and punishment can be extended to embrace the broader questions of rehabilitation and crime prevention. Advances in both these areas stand a much better chance of being achieved when the effort is concentrated within the prison system itself. Creating the necessary settings for such activity will, paradoxically, require the creation of more correctional space – not less.

In other words, if Labour’s long-term goal is to reduce the size of the New Zealand prison system, then its short-term priority must be to expand it.

New Zealanders will only believe in rehabilitation when they are presented with irrefutable evidence of its success. When prisoners’ physical and mental health problems are treated professionally and effectively. When they are taught to read, write and count well enough to pass the written driving test. When the people released from this country’s prisons stay released.

Only then will the prison muster fall and the resulting savings be seen to exceed the money spent on providing the space and services needed to reduce New Zealand’s appalling incarceration rate.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 15 June 2018.

No Cookies! But Maybe The Balance Of Power: Why Kelvin Davis And The Labour Right Are So Scared Of Internet-Mana.

On Message And On Fire: The Labour Right are terrified that having established a parliamentary bridgehead the Internet-Mana Party will play the role of the broader Left’s staunch chorus, with Hone Harawira, Annette Sykes, Laila Harre and John Minto passing withering judgement upon the antics of a back-sliding Labour Caucus.

 

THE CRUDE POLITICAL GAMBIT of Kelvin Davis and his supporters in Te Tai Tokerau has fallen flat. His plans to knock Internet-Mana out of the electoral race have been revealed and the Maori voters of the North will punish him severely. Not only for his confrontational and abusive rhetoric, but also for the rank ingratitude and disloyalty he has displayed toward Labour. The rest of the country can only shake their heads in wonder at the strategic stupidity of the man.

 

Davis is, after all, the candidate to whom the Labour Party’s Ranking Committee gifted a very favourable position on the Party List. His role in Te Tai Tokerau was not to go all out to take the seat from Hone Harawira, but to maximise Labour’s Party Vote. It is staggering that Davis and his allies have been unable (or unwilling) to grasp the simple fact that the welfare of the people of the North will be most effectively secured by a victory in the forthcoming election for the parties of the Left – of which Internet-Mana is rapidly becoming a critical component.

 

The scuttlebutt in left-wing circles is that Davis has been “rarked up” by Labour’s ABC Faction, who not only need their leader, David Cunliffe, to fail on 20 September, but who are also determined to deny Internet-Mana a parliamentary bridgehead. Their plans to haul Labour back to the “centre” (the Right’s code word for an ideological position acceptable to Business New Zealand, Federated Farmers and the mainstream news media) will suffer a serious setback if Hone Harawira, Annette Sykes, Laila Harre and John Minto get to play the role of the Left’s staunch chorus – passing withering judgement upon the antics of a back-sliding Labour Caucus.

 

In this effort, the Labour Right is marching in lock-step with the National Party’s and the right-wing news media’s political objectives. The more intelligent among them understand that, over a three year term, an Internet-Mana presence in the House has the potential to haul back “Overton’s Window” from its present location well to the right of the political spectrum and reposition it much closer to the left. The overwhelming priority across the entire New Zealand Right is, therefore, to strangle this potential left-wing Hercules in his cradle. Wittingly or unwittingly, Davis has allowed himself to become a pawn in its game. How else to explain his willingness to be associated with David Farrar and Cameron Slater, the twin serpents sent to dispatch the Left’s infant hero?

 

The ABC Faction’s tactical priority is to smear David Cunliffe as Internet-Mana’s secret enabler: the politician who’s promising publicly to have nothing to do with Kim Dotcom’s creation while all the time secretly plotting to give Maori Affairs to Hone, Social Welfare to Laila Harre, and Foreign Affairs to John Minto. They are well aware of how badly the idea of any kind of Labour “deal” with Internet-Mana is playing with young, reasonably-skilled but indifferently-paid women workers whose extremely limited grasp of politics is almost exclusively informed by what Patrick Gower, Tove O’Brien and Corin Dann tells them on the six o’clock news.

 

In the past, these young women: retail workers, hairdressers, receptionists and office personnel of all kinds; have provided Labour with the numbers necessary to evict National Governments. Without them, securing victory becomes extremely problematic. Helen Clark lost what British snobs would call the “Chav Vote” to the dashing John Key in 2008 and poor old Phil Goff never seriously tempted them in 2011. David Cunliffe just might win them back in 2014, but not with Kim Dotcom looming behind him like a pantomime demon.

 

It is this need to distance himself from Dotcom and his allies that explains Cunliffe’s refusal to call out Davis for the dangerous political distraction he has become. Indeed, in a funny sort of way, Davis’s extreme animus towards Harawira and Dotcom has played into the Labour Leader’s hands. It has enabled him to reiterate in even more unequivocal language that Labour will have no truck with Kim Dotcom; that there will be no electorate deals done with Internet-Mana; and that no Internet-Mana MPs will be invited to serve in any coalition Cabinet over which Cunliffe presides. In Andy Williams’ immortal words to the importunate Cookie Bear: “Not now. Not ever. Never. No cookies! ”

 

Such is the general ignorance which still surrounds the MMP electoral system, however, that many of those reassured by Cunliffe’s rejection of the Internet-Mana Party may be shocked to discover on Election Night that they have somehow managed to win seats in Parliament. What’s more, as the sworn enemies of John Key’s government, if the numbers are there for David Cunliffe to become Prime Minister with Internet-Mana’s support they will happily make him so. This will undoubtedly provoke an outcry from those who interpreted Cunliffe’s “Internet-Mana will have no place in a Labour-led Government” as meaning “We will not accept the votes of Internet-Mana’s MPs in assembling the support needed to form a government.”

 

If that turns out to be the case, then New Zealanders are in for a crash-course in constitutional realities. They will discover that if Internet-Mana have the numbers to make David Cunliffe the Prime Minister, they will almost certainly also have the numbers to prevent John Key from resuming office. Whether some of the voters like it or not; whether National likes it or not; whether the mainstream news media likes it or not; and whether Kelvin Davis likes it or not; if the rules of MMP return the Internet-Mana Party in sufficient numbers to break the National Government and install a Labour-Green coalition – then that’s exactly what it will do.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of 6 August 2014.

Authoritarian Labour: Why Kelvin Davis Needs To STFU - Right Now!

One Angry Man: For a person who attaches so much importance to the concept of "respect", it's a pity Kelvin Davis seems utterly incapable of respecting other politicians and parties on the Left. If Labour continues to behave as if it has no need of allies, it's chances of winning the election are nil.
 

DAVID, MATT, SOMEBODY – PLEASE! Tell Kelvin Davis to pull his head in. His outburst on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report this morning was way beyond embarrassing. The ill-considered slagging of Hone Harawira and the Internet-Mana Party (IMP) not only reflected poorly on his own political skills, but it also raised doubts about Labour’s overall ability to read what is happening in the run-up to 20 September.

 

It wasn’t just the absence of any semblance of strategic – or even tactical – understanding that was so worrying about Davis’s performance this morning, it was his barely concealed aggression. There is an anger in Davis that calls into question his suitability for any kind of public office. Anger, and what appears to be a classic authoritarian character structure (the two often go together).

 

Just listen to how he describes his family in the potted biography Labour has displayed on its website. Davis tells us that he is “married with three beautiful, intelligent and respectful children”. It’s the use of the word “respectful” that gives him away. Such a public declaration of the importance Davis attaches to the concept of respect is a very telling character marker. It tell tells us a lot about his personality and where he most likely fits on the Left-Right/Authoritarian-Libertarian grid.

 

My guess is that he occupies a position that places him towards the Authoritarian end of the Authoritarian-Libertarian gradient and on the right of the Left-Right spectrum. He is very far from being the first Labour MP to be so located. Indeed, it would have been impossible for the Clark-led Government to have introduced so many pieces of reactionary Corrections and Justice legislation without the presence of a solid rump of such individuals in Labour’s caucus.

 

The authoritarian character structure does not, however, confine its political influence to law and order issues. Authoritarians tend to be threatened by just about any form of behaviour which deviates from what they define as “normal”. If required to do so they will tolerate “deviant” behaviour and life-styles, but their toleration should never be mistaken for acceptance. In the company of trusted “normal” colleagues, their true feelings will be aired – and seldom in a tolerant or accepting way!

 

The other give-away contained in Davis’s biography is his almost total reliance on education as a means of lifting families out of poverty. “Kelvin is passionate about improving outcomes for Maori and believes education is the vehicle that will enable Maori to fulfil their aspirations.” While no one can sensibly dispute the role education plays in enabling social mobility, when it is held up by politicians as a universal panacea, then their advocacy usually merits closer scrutiny.

 

Does Davis believe education is the Maori people’s best hope because, liberally interpreted, education draws forth from every individual both the self-knowledge and the self-confidence needed to live a full and self-determined life? Or, does he measure the value of education in terms of its ability to inculcate the social, political and economic values of those who control capitalist societies like our own? And because this latter type of education turns out individuals who are “fit for use” by those whose business it is to use them?

 

My concern is that Davis belongs in the second camp. How else should we interpret the statement that: “He believes that Treaty settlements are but the cream on the cake, and not the cake itself - he believes that education is that path that Maori need to take to enable us all to achieve greater health, wealth and happiness.”?

 

Surely this is an assimilationist view of Maori development? And isn’t the word “education” being used here by Davis as a sort of code for “equipping Maori for a place in the world that global capital is daily reconfiguring”? Is he not lining up alongside those who insist that Maori cultural identity is best relegated to a subsidiary, “off duty”, status? That Maori are best advised to let the sugared cream of monetary compensation, via the Treaty settlement process, obliterate the bitter taste of their people’s defeat and dispossession?

 

If this is, indeed, Davis’s view, then his barely concealed aggression towards Hone Harawira is readily explained. Not only is Harawira’s warrior persona an affront to the former intermediate school principal’s sense of order, but Harawira’s vision of a decolonised – an emancipated – Maoridom, is diametrically opposed to Davis’s vision of a New Zealand in which the well-paid servants of global capital might just as well be Maori as Pakeha.

 

Bluntly stated, Hone stands for everything Kelvin despises. Moreover, in the eyes of this angry representative of authoritarian Labour, the IMP can only be seen as a deeply subversive assault upon neoliberal capitalism’s core ideological values.

 

And what can Davis possibly make of Kim Dotcom? A highly successful capitalist who refuses to take the power of money seriously? A capitalist who plays with his money, makes merry-hell with it, and, now that the Powers-That-Be have come after him with armed policemen and extradition orders, is using it to carve a path to power – using Hone Harawira, Laila Harre, Annette Sykes and John Minto as his hammers and chisels.

 

Labour needs to decide – and quickly – if the authoritarian Davis really is the very model of a modern Labour MP that he (along with many others in the party and the news media) sees himself as representing. If he is, then it will be war in Te Tai Tokerau and throughout the country, and John Key will win the election. If he is not: if Labour wants to be seen as something more than an aggressive hard-man bereft of all strategic and tactical understanding; then someone has got to make Kelvin Davis STFU – right now!

 

A version of this essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 30 May 2014.

Same Old, Same Old (Kelvin Davis on Hone Harawira's Victory)

Sore Loser: Labour's Kelvin Davis won 41 percent to Hone Harawira's 48 percent in the Te Tai Tokerau by-election - and that was after Labour had thrown everything they had into the contest. No matter which way Davis and his colleagues attempt to spin it, they tried to strangle Mana in its cradle - and they failed.

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN? Listening to Labour’s Kelvin Davis putting the boot into Hone Harawira and Mana on Radio New Zealand this morning, I was reminded of the petty viciousness that also attended the birth of the NewLabour Party in 1989.

It was all there: the same overweening arrogance; the same blithe assumption that only the Labour Party has anything to contribute to the development of progressive politics in New Zealand. And, worst of all, the same sneering, belittling, mocking and disparaging tone.

It was the tone Labour adopted 22 years ago to deride and undermine Jim Anderton. Now it was being deployed against Hone Harawira.

As I listened to this political popinjay parroting the lines prepared for him, I found myself wondering how anybody could possibly have described Davis as “a good guy”.

Good Guys surely aren’t so reckless with the truth. Good guys surely don’t indulge in such small-minded character assassination. If Kelvin Davis is a “good guy”, all I can is: I’d hate to meet a bad one!

The most infuriating aspect of Davis’s spin is his proud boast that the by-election result has opened up the possibility of Labour reclaiming the Maori seats of Te Tai Tonga, Waiariki and Tamaki Makaurau.

There is, of course, some truth to this statement, but what Davis overlooks, in his indefatigable arrogance, is that the possibility of Labour taking these seats has only arisen because of Hone Harawira and the Mana Party.

It is Hone Harawira and Mana, the same man and the same party Davis so enjoys disparaging, that have redrawn the political landscape. Without Mana’s intervention there is every chance the Maori Party would have been able to hold those now at-risk seats. In doing so they would have provided John Key with at least four reliable votes – and in all likelihood the numbers to keep the National Party in power.

The success of the Mana Party, in almost certainly depriving National of those four votes, has improved dramatically the likelihood of Labour being able to form a government.

So why did Labour go all-out to strangle the infant Mana Party in its cradle? Why seek the political death of a man who could, potentially, do it so much good?

The answer to this question, sadly, is the same as the answer to the question: “Why didn’t Helen Clark intervene to rescue the Alliance?”

Because Labour remains absolutely determined to have “no enemies to the left”.

Labour simply cannot afford to loosen its grip on the working-class vote – even at the cost of remaining in Opposition – because it knows the moment any other political party succeeds in winning over the electors of seats like Mangere, Manukau East, Manurewa and Mana, Labour’s days as the leader of progressive politics in New Zealand are numbered.

Labour fears that it will end up fading from the electoral scene in precisely the same way that an increasingly right-wing Liberal Party faded in the years following the organised working-class’s 1916 decision to extricate itself from the Liberals’ paternalistic, middle-class grip.

In the words used by an old comrade to describe the political instincts of the Moscow-aligned Socialist Unity Party (which had a similar horror of a politically independent working class):

“[Labour] would rather keep control of the losing side, than lose control of the winning side.”

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.