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| Tough Assignment: The first lesson Christopher Luxon will have to learn is that being Prime Minister is not at all the same as being CEO. Political power is always and everywhere a matter of negotiation. Even dictators discover how dangerous it is to try and rule arbitrarily, and alone. Those who tried did not remain dictators very long. |
CHRISTOPHER LUXON has shown himself to be a fast learner when it comes to mastering the skills required to win. Now, having won, he cannot avoid revealing how quickly he can master the art of governing.
The first lesson he will have to learn is that being Prime Minister is not at all the same as being CEO. Political power is always and everywhere a matter of negotiation. Even dictators discover how dangerous it is to try and rule arbitrarily, and alone. Those who tried did not remain dictators very long.
And, it won’t be long before New Zealand’s new leader’s ability to manage change is put to the test. We must all hope that Luxon takes to governing as readily as he took to campaigning.
Who’s going to test him? Not Winston Peters. The leader of NZ First is in the box seat – and he knows it. Without NZ First’s 8 votes, Luxon cannot inform the Governor-General that he has the confidence of the House of Representatives. No, the person most likely to test Luxon’s political abilities is the biggest loser from the final vote count, David Seymour.
National needed the Act Party to do much better than it ended up doing in the 2023 General Election. In the final tally, Act’s Party Vote, at 8.64 percent, was only 1.05 percentage points higher than the party’s 2020 total. The actual result was well short of the support it was racking-up in pre-election polls – which climbed as high as 14 percent.
No one needed to tell Seymour who was responsible for Act’s collapse from double to single figures. Winston Peters campaigning skills (not insignificantly boosted by several large donations to NZ First) did not take long to manifest themselves – not once the triennial Joker in the pack got back out on the road. It was a test. Could Seymour maintain his winning political persona in the face of Peters’ superb demonstration (best ad’ of the campaign) of just how comfortable he was in the saddle? The answer turned out to be: “Only just.”
The first sign of Seymour’s jitters was his truculent response to the discovery of one or two questionable candidates on Act’s Party List. It was a nothing story. By the time the airwaves were carrying their names, the “unacceptable” candidates were no longer standing. The incident, responded to sensibly, could have reaffirmed Seymour’s impressive control over his party. Yes, someone had blundered, but just look at how quickly the problem was solved. That’s the sort of leader New Zealand needs!
Truculence – bordering on petulance – was a new look for Seymour, and the voters didn’t like it. One didn’t need a degree in political science to join the dots. As NZ First continued its relentless rise towards electoral viability, the Act leader was showing dangerous signs of losing his political composure altogether. How else to explain his otherwise inexplicable threat to get rid of the statutory holiday after New Year’s Day? No one was asking for it. No one wanted it. Act appeared to be going doolally.
Seymour’s threat to take his party onto the cross-benches and restrict its support for National to votes of confidence – but not supply – received much criticism, but it was exactly what Act needed. It served as a jarring reminder, not only to Luxon and National, but also to all right-wing voters, that Seymour and his party were not the sort of politicians to be taken for granted. They may not be able to ride horses, but they sure-as-shit could shoot them.
Christopher Luxon would be wise to bear that in mind as he and his negotiating team flit between Act and NZ First in search of sweet harmony. Seymour absolutely cannot be made to look like an MMP cuckold: watching the object of his political affections lavishing generous concessions upon a third party. Making Act look impotent would be the surest way of making Seymour prove to the whole world what a hard bargainer he can be.
The issue most likely to ensure that Act and its leader become the centre of attention is the future of Te Tiriti. No other policy is more likely to test the mettle of New Zealand’s new prime minister. No other policy is more likely to make National jump the wrong way.
Luxon’s advisers are practically certain to tell him that this is not an issue which engages the concern of more than a very small percentage of New Zealanders, and that exposing his new government to the barrage of abuse that was bound to follow any major concession to Act on Te Tiriti would be a catastrophic mistake.
Luxon should ignore his advisers.
No other issue speaks as clearly to the political and cultural divide presently separating New Zealanders than the current definition of Te Tiriti, and all the highly controversial policy decisions mandated and empowered by its constitutionally transformational elements. If National refuses to address this issue, humiliating Act in the process, then two very dangerous things will happen.
First. Among a significant percentage of the electorate (the people who no longer tell pollsters what they truly believe) the perception will take hold that Luxon lacks the courage to accept the mandate which his election victory has bestowed upon him. At the heart of that mandate is a commission to confront, head-on, the constitutional and cultural assumptions of the judicial, bureaucratic, academic and media elites, as they have grown and developed since 2017, and to roll them back. To make it clear from the very start that “decolonisation” and “indigenisation” are not among the priorities of the incoming government. If Luxon encourages the perception that National is “wimping out” on his mandate, then National’s political hegemony will be put at serious risk.
Second. Any attempt by National to rule out a referendum on Te Tiriti, will leave Seymour and Act with no option but to seize the mandate, which Luxon has spurned, for itself. That can only mean taking up an independent position on the cross-benches, and forcing National and NZ First to win Act’s support for every single item on their legislative agenda.
To avoid this political disaster – the most likely outcome of which would be a new election, throwing up a balance of parliamentary forces little changed from the present – Luxon must display the full range of his leadership skills.
If Seymour and Peters could be jointly commissioned by the Prime Minister with organising and encouraging the broadest possible discussion and debate about Te Tiriti, involving the broadest possible cross-section of the New Zealand population, then Act’s referendum would likely not be necessary. Such a genuinely democratic exercise would expose just how isolated the promoters of decolonisation and indigenisation are from the rest of the nation. Nothing could make clearer the elites’ lack of genuine political support. The revolutionaries embedded in the nation’s key institutions would have to come up with a new and improved strategy.
Luxon, himself, would likely emerge from this process as both a statesman and a peacemaker. Simply allowing Seymour’s plan to proceed, unmoderated, to the point of staging a binding referendum on the meaning of Te Tiriti, would provoke massive – and potentially violent – political resistance. Certainly, Te Pāti Māori and the Greens are gearing-up for a stoush which, according to Labour’s Willie Jackson, would be “five times, ten times” worse than the hugely divisive Springbok Tour protests of 1981. Opting, instead, for an open-ended, state-facilitated, and truly public discussion about the country’s constitutional future would cast Luxon as the wise and courageous champion of New Zealand’s liberal democracy. The last time National had a leader who made that his mission, it was in office for the next 12 years.
This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 6 November 2023.
20 comments:
On the Friday before the election I was waiting at the barbers, Shane Jones was there as well and we had quite a long discussion. Local issues mostly. I asked him what NZF's position was regarding the ACT treaty referendum. He was not fundamentally opposed to it but said it would take too long and that Parliament should simply legislate to remove the "Treaty Principles" from law, that the laws were the responsibility of Parliament not Judges, lawyers or academics. Fair enough; either way it looks like there is a genuine willingness to address the mess.
The unresolved issue is mostly around language, specifically the massive (conveniently exploitable?) misunderstandings around definitions. What was meant by "taonga" for example? What does it mean now? Hongi said it was "property procured by the spear" or war booty, or it could be a treasured possession, or (from Wikipedia) "all sorts of heirlooms and artefacts, land, fisheries, natural resources such as geothermal springs and access to natural resources, such as riparian water rights and access to the riparian zone of rivers or streams. Intangible examples may include language and spiritual beliefs". Or, incredibly, "such things as intellectual property, genetic engineering and allocation of radio frequency spectrum".
Really clear and unambiguous that is.
Our glorious gift of the English language allows pin point precision, crystal clear definitions; the practice of inserting ambiguous (therefore legally meaningless?) Maori words into the legal and political implications of the Treaty is a mess and what sort of a basis for a modern multicultural democracy.
Law needs precise definitions, obviously. For prior cowardly and foolish politicians to leave it as loose and subjective as it was grossly irresponsible. It's late, but not too late, it must be sorted out.
Act rightly pinpointed the anti-democratic interpretation the Treaty Principles used by the Ardern-Hipkins government as underlying its racially divisive polices. The proposed referendum was designed to entrench a Treaty Principles Act which, in turn, would follow a fully-open debate – a process that was previously denied to voters.
The incoming government is very well placed to facilitate such a debate. Given that the main opposition to the passage of this Act will come from the Greens & Te Pati Maori – who are their own worst enemies – it has an excellent chance of an easy passage.
The future of Te Tiriti. This ugly corrosive can has been kicked down the road by politicians for far too long and now it's nearing a point where race based sepratism is becoming a reality. If this country ends up there, it's stuffed. Why? Because it simply does not work.
Willie Jackson and Rawiri Waititi both sing from the same song sheet that democracy is a tyranny and both would love to see it dead and buried and the well connected tiny minority lording it over the majority. Its the logical goal and the aspiration surely? As Tamati Kruger said, Tuhoe are not interested in co-governance, they want self determination, but if co-governance is "...the next bus stop that has to be made", then that's what it has to be. That makes Willies dream all the clearer, there's no good ending to the never ending clicks on this ratchet.
Seymour is 100% correct, we must confront this shadowy takeover now. Its not the Treaty, that's clear enough, it's the self serving "principles" that only some Maori get a say in that keep evolving into what suits best in their grab for power that need to be referred back to the majority for the vote.
If this nonsense is allowed to continue to its now predictable outcome, forget this country as being viable ever again. Few will want to nor could do business here, nepotism and corruption would be ripe because after all, primal tribal rivalries and familial connections would be put front and centre and all the institutions that bind functioning society together would similarly be finished. And with the ending of democracy, no one can change that situation at the tick of a pen.
Luxon will have to be the opposite of what he currently presents, an obsequious vote pleaser and box ticker, he'll have to lead, whether he wants to or not. The threat is that grave. So forget Willie's pathetic unjustified racist threats, the threat against democracy is far worse!
If Luxon is a good negotiator we will know in the next few weeks. His keeping Winston and Seymour apart until some common ground is found by those in the shadows, is a smart move in my book. When they all meet having something in common there is less likely hood of a blowup before they even get started. Luxon will need to see how his ship sails before taking on any inflammable cargo for example a treaty referendum, and he won’t want it. Seymour is lucky in some respects. Unlike Luxon his manifesto wish list doesn’t have to eventuate, and it would only be his own wish to go beyond saving face with his supporters, that imo, would force him to make a stand on some policy. Both Winston and Seymour will need to be thrown a bone and treated respectfully to get the desired result. I believe Luxon was smart to include Winston because as a National voter I didn’t want Act to be too powerful on say 12% or 15%. As it stands there is not much difference in the NZ1 and Act vote. Neither of them having much of a mandate.
I agree with Chris the potential for disasters and discontent is certainly there but so far Luxon has proved us wrong about him. Few gave him a chance at adjusting from business to parliament at all let alone in the time he has done it. Few on the left thought he would stand a chance debating against Chippy and have been proven wrong. Few on the left envisaged a swing to the right on such a scale and Luxon has to take some credit for that. He will get his chance and he deserves it. Will he govern well, we will find out soon enough.
The Act referendum proposal is undoubtedly in violation of international law. The Treaty of Waitangi is an international treaty between sovereign states. The 1835 Declaration of Independence signed by the northern hapu for Busby was recognized by the British parliament. This gave Maori internationally accepted status as sovereign people. Hence the confederation flag accepted as one which trade was conducted in international and British ports.
A referendum would essentially be one party unilaterally changing the terns of a bilateral treaty.
It would then bring to question the foundation of our state. It would no longer be by agreement (albeit one not always honoured) but by imposition. Maori and constitutional allies would be right to see this as a move towards conquest. Resistance should be expected
I think Mr. Luxon is going to be as pragmatic as possible and will try to play down and minimise the increasingly factional cultural discontent that is besieging our country. Instead he will, and prefer to, emphasise the typical National dictum of "capable stewards of the economy" hoping this will deflect away from constitutional issues and challenges.
Winston's populist rhetoric was his trusty vehicle to get over 5% and keep his party alive. Unlike Seymour, when push comes to shove, I doubt he will vehemently continue to extol his anti co-governance messages. 'What's best for Winston'is ultimately his bottom line.
Evidently Luxon and Seymour have had numerous chats already so will have mutually and pre-emptively agreed how they will handle Winston although this is no guarantee that their strategy will be successful.
Despite Seymour's strong stance on bottom lines I think he will also pragmatically make concessions.
Fran O'Sullivan expresses cautious optimism that Luxon's hitherto unseen negotiating skills will come to the fore and, for now, we can look forward to a relatively settled three years.
David, te reo Maori is an official language of NZ. This means conceptional words such as Taonga may have standing even if there is no English equivalent. Other Polynesian conceptional language would include mana, aroha and tapu. These can only be conceptualized not directly translated.
For taonga the conceptional meaning is that of what is treasured, this maybe aesthetic or material. What is given 'treasured' status by one culture can differ from a different culture. The Treaty is specifically concerning that which is valued by Maori.
Ironically given your post, language is one of the intangible taonga recognized (RIP Dun Mihaka), this means reo concepts such as taonga don't have to be exactly translated to have legal standing.
Even taking away the Treaty, UN requirements would protect that which is valued and important to the indigenous culture.
"The Treaty of Waitangi is an international treaty between sovereign states"
This is patently false. In terms of international law, the ToW is only a treaty in name only. As the courts ruled some years afterwards, it is a legal "nullity." The parties to the ToW were the Crown and the various Maori tribes. No tribe was sovereign over all of New Zealand. Iwi didn't even think in terms of "Maori" as a collective entity, it was a fundamentally inter-tribal relationship with no encompassing sense of a "we" denoting Maori.
Thanks TB, I'm not convinced by the "international law" argument but I'm no expert so I'll leave that.
What remains unresolved is the meaning, understandings and implications of and around terms like Tino rangatiratanga and how they apply today. Does it, for example, confer ownership or control or authority over the commons? Is it fundamentally different to the subsidiary authority that exists elsewhere in society? The right to freehold land, the right to dismiss and discipline participants in schools, clubs, businesses for example.
If the subsequent actions of the treaty signatories and their descendants is any indication (it is) it's clear that the authority of the chiefs was, and is, regarded as subsidiary with ultimate authority and sovereignty in the hands of the people via their representatives; symbolically the Crown. In what realistic way can "the chiefs" assert authority others other than by concession of "The Crown"? Like it or not that is what sovereignty effectively means. It needs sorting out and the proper way to do that is by the people through our sovereign authority.
I have been advocating something quite similar, though not the apparent political roadshow that our host is proposing.
Rather I propose a comprehensive Royal Commission charged with coming up with an acceptable set of "Principles of the Treaty", that could form the basis of legislative definition of the principles. The term itself is a creature of statute but it has never been statutorily defined. So over the last 36 years the Courts have fulfilled that role, supplemented by the bureaucracy.
To give politicians a degree of ownership, I envisage that the coalition would agree on the membership of the Commission, or perhaps each party appoints who they think appropriate, but with the understanding there be a single report, not majority and minority opinions. The Royal Commission needs to be seen as more than a creature of the elites, it needs to widely canvass opinion.
That is all very well for the mechanism, what about the results?
Self evidently, it cannot be anything that would only appeal to the zealots of Act. Since such a statute would have a quasi constitutional status, it has to be able to survive changes of government. Otherwise the whole exercise would be entirely counter productive. Since the alternative is each successive government passing their own version of the principles that are only acceptable to their partisans. It would be hard to imagine anything that would be more disruptive to civil society than that.
Act partisans refer to Willie Jackson's view as to what could happen as being a thugs veto. They obviously have no recollection of the Foreshore and Seabed marches led by Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples with widespread iwi support. Does anyone really imagine that the current leadership of Te Pati Maori or the Greens would passively stand by? Or for that matter, the Labour Party.
I am pretty sure that Luxon will not agree to a referendum, he has all but ruled it out, which in my view is the right thing to do. A Party with 38% can't just cravenly collapse to a party with 8%, particularly when the policy does not have much acceptance of the other 92%.
But I agree with our host, Luxon has to do something. His coalition partners need to be seen to get something out of a policy that is apparently so central to them. Can Luxon and his team come up with something that allows a thoughtful consideration of the issue?
Mark, I think your observations on Winston are spot on. I'm not too sure what David Seymour actually stands for as I believe his referendum pledge was more about ganering votes than an actual demand.
We do need to call a halt on the redefining of the treaty and it's place in our country but whether a referendum is needed I am not too sure. Maybe the three headed hydra we'll get to call a government if they all behave like adultscan just state that treaty principles have not been re-translated, being "akin" to a partnership is not the same as being a partnership and we all need to pull together to repair the damage inflicted by the 2 previous governments since 2017.
Now whether Winston has the courage to accept some of the blame for where we are now will be interesting so any declaration will probably studiously ignore his culpability but we'll see if Luxon can appreciate that the 55% that voted for this current government are a majority and want no part of co-governance or separate maori control over any assets whatsoever other than what they personally already own.
My own gut feeling is that once again it will turn into a bauble hunt for Winston and he'll hold the entire country to ransom for his own ends, as per usual.
@The Barron: Both the Declaration and the Confederation were the initiative of the British Resident James Busby who saw them as a step towards making New Zealand a British possession and fending off French interference. New Zealand did not exist as a sovereign state prior to British rule.
Oh Madame you are so 19th century. Prendergast and Richmond have essentially been overturned since 1986.
The 1835 Declaration of Independence was Busby trying to get a unified sovereign body to negotiate with. The British had done this in Tahiti, Tonga, Hawaii and attempted to do so in Samoa. As with the American Declaration of Independence, this was a declaration of sovereignty. Lord Glenelg, the secretary of state for the colonies, advised the King that it showed ‘a due regard to the just rights of others and to the interests of His Majesty’s subjects.' It was recognized in Westminster. Historian Tom Brooking argued that the Colonial Office accepted the Confederation of United Tribes as bestowing ‘indisputable’ Māori ‘title to the soil and the sovereignty of New Zealand.'
The agreed flag was recognition of the northern confederation right to trade as a sovereign people. Busby was still expanding the Declaration to new signatories until the time of the Treaty.
The very nature of the Treaty of Waitangi is that it was a bilateral treaty and remains so. The reason that Hobson went to Waitangi was because he had a recognized sovereign body, through the declaration, to negotiate with.
Are you suggesting, The Barron, that some Maori terms are so arcane they are effectively unintelligible to those of another culture? Beyond the ken of those not so blessed? Given their centrality to our future governance, it's surely time to sort that out. No?
How convenient to claim inscrutability; it all sounds a lot like "weaponising the woo-woo".
Thanks Wayne, your suggestion sounds sensible but would it really be "able to survive changes of government" in the way that ratification by referendum would?
There is no reason why the terms of the referendum shouldn't be decided by a process such as you outline. ACT's proposal, as it stands, is opposed by only 18% (Curia poll) so there is widespread support for, at least, a proper defining of the principles. Better late than never.
I don't know how seriously we should take the threats (disguised as warnings) from Waititi, Jackson and Co but I do know that we shouldn't be cowed into silence and inaction because of them. Quite the reverse. What sort of gun should I buy?
David George,
The reason why I oppose a referendum is that it will be an explicit removal of minority rights. Maori are a minority, mostly contained in the 18%. They will not agree to an ACT imposed definition of the principles of the treaty. I am well connected to Maori views on this matter, primarily through my wife. I know the level of response and division that such a referendum will cause.
A referendum might work if the principles have widespread consensus, but I am certain that consensus would not appeal to Act partisans.
I note that our host has referred to Willy Jackson's predictions. I am certain that our host knows full well just how important the contemporary interpretation of the principles are to Maori, as defined by numerous court judgements. Maori will not just idly stand by if these are removed at Act's insistence.
The fact that conservative senior politicians, among others, have counselled against such a referendum should not be ignored lightly. They won't be. The last thing National needs over the next 3 years is an intemperate "debate" over the principles of the treaty. There is a smarter approach to this issue.
'Arcane' is a strange term and the complete opposite as to my response to you. It has to be noted, the most recent update to the Oxford Dictionary had more new word absorbed into English from te reo than any other language source.
My response to you was that Maori ontology is incorporated into the language. If we accept that the culture is significantly different than western culture, we accept concepts and cultural thought differ, logically, conceptional language and other cultural expression may differ to the extent that the English language does not have a direct equivalent. Hence te reo words adding to the English language.
I once saw an Anthropology paper that had about 100 different English translations of the Tongan word 'Alofa'. Yet any traditional Polynesian would immediately understand each use of alofa, aroha, aloha or variants.
The Maori language is an official language of NZ, and is recognized as a language of the courts. When the courts have recognized 'loss of mana', it enters NZ law as would be traditionally understood in te reo. As a concept it has been used legally in the Peter Ellis settlement. It is conceptionally Maori, but has legal status for all in NZ jurisprudence.
Wayne:"...why I oppose a referendum is that it will be an explicit removal of minority rights"
Where have rights based on heredity or ethnicity or tribal affiliation ever led to a free and fair or peaceful and prosperous society? Lebanon? Rwanda?
ACT's proposal:
All citizens of New Zealand have the same political rights and duties
All political authority comes from the people by democratic means including universal suffrage, regular and free elections with a secret ballot
New Zealand is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy where discrimination based on ethnicity is illegal
David
Act’s proposal ignores Article 2 of the Treaty, which specifically protects Māori interests.
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