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| No Longer Silent: The one sound loud enough to be heard above the efforts of even the most determined makers of political noise, is the sound of the long-suffering majority making up its mind. Emeritus Professor Nigel Biggar addresses the Free Speech Union AGM held at Auckland’s Viaduct Events Centre on Saturday, 9 November 2024. |
ARE WE LIVING in a world where, increasingly, “noise” is drowning out “sound”? A world in which it is getting harder and harder to distinguish the discrete voices of reason from the angry roar of the crowd. Where we are assailed by the deafening racket of bad political actors determined to drown out any and all opinions but their own.
Political “noise”, and its impact on society’s ability to “hear” itself, was brought to life vividly by Emeritus Professor Nigel Biggar from Oxford University in his keynote address to the AGM of the Free Speech Union, held at the Viaduct Events Centre on Saturday, 9 November 2024.
Pilloried by the Woke Left for daring to express the heretical view that colonialism wasn’t an unalloyed evil, and that the British Empire, in particular, wasn’t all bad, Biggar recalled the 2016 Oxford Union debate concerning the fate of Oriel College’s statue of Cecil Rhodes. The enemies of colonisation were determined to remove this memorial to one of Nineteenth Century Britain’s greatest imperial swashbucklers (think Elon Musk with a Maxim gun) and Biggar was on hand to argue that it makes more sense to understand your country’s history than to cancel it.
Every time an anti-Rhodes speaker sat down, Biggar told the surprisingly large audience of between 200-300 AGM attendees, the venerable debating chamber would erupt into wild and sustained applause. To the casual observer, support for the removal of Rhodes’ statute would have seemed overwhelming. Looking around the Chamber, however, Biggar noticed that the number not cheering and clapping was almost as large as the number who were. The “anti-colonialists” simply made a lot more noise. (The “Rhodes Must Fall!” motion was eventually carried 245/212.)
This is what political noise does. It renders nuance and subtlety impossible. It makes the voices of dissenters appear weak. Most importantly, deliberately amplified political noise causes those holding dissenting views to doubt the efficacy of their own judgement, intimidating them into inaction and silence. Political noise thus achieves the same result as switching-off an opponent’s microphone. The sounds made by individual contributors are lost in the deafening noise of the mob.
That Prof. Biggar’s speech to the FSU’s AGM, and the introduction of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill to Parliament, occurred in the same week could be seen as a happy coincidence. In the week ahead, a Hīkoi mō te Tiriti will set off from the Far North for Wellington. As it wends its way south, the ratio of noise to sound promises to be politically instructive.
According to the latest poll, conducted by Curia Research between 3-7 October 2024, 46 percent of those surveyed support the Treaty Principles Bill, 25 percent oppose it, and 29 percent are “unsure”. When compared to Curia’s first poll on the Bill, published on 14 March 2024, these latest results indicate a substantial drop in the number of respondents indicating assent. Back in March, the supporters of Seymour’s legislation outnumbered its opponents 3:1.
What caused this drop, from 3:1 to 2:1, has become a matter for debate. When Curia’s first poll was taken, Seymour’s principles possessed an admirable clarity. By October, however, the second of the three fundamental principles had been complicated considerably by the Bill’s drafters – to the point where its meaning was no longer readily intelligible to the ordinary voter. This would certainly explain the 7-point rise in the number of respondents indicating uncertainty.
The 7 percentage point rise in those indicating opposition to the Bill may also reflect the confusion created by the revised version of its second principle. There is certainly quite a difference between March’s Version 1:
The New Zealand Government will protect all New Zealanders’ authority over their land and other property.
And October’s Version 2:
The Crown recognises the rights that hapū and iwi had when they signed the Treaty. The Crown will respect and protect those rights. Those rights differ from the rights everyone has a reasonable expectation to enjoy only when they are specified in legislation, Treaty settlements, or other agreement with the Crown.
The hitherto staunchest supporters of Seymour’s legislative initiative may well consider the revised version of the Second Principle to be altogether too “Treaty-ish” in its wording and intent to be worthy of their continuing support.
Alternatively, the relentless demonisation of Seymour’s bill by all major media organisations, the overwhelming majority of political journalists and columnists, and – most effectively – by the nation’s leading political cartoonists, may be convincing an increasing number of the Bill’s supporters that they are indeed guilty, as charged, of being on “the wrong side of history”.
By preventing its supporters from hearing either themselves, or the clear plurality of other New Zealanders who share their views, think, the deafening political noise generated by the Bill’s institutional opponents, particularly the universities and the Waitangi Tribunal, may simply, through grinding emotional attrition, be turning the numbers around.
This is the bet that National and NZ First have taken. That, by the time the six months of select committee hearings have concluded, conservative New Zealanders will have grown heartily sick of the whole business.
It could be a shrewd bet, because the select committee hearings will doubtless be drowned out by the relentless cacophony of the Bill’s opponents. What’s more, the constant and public vilification of the Bill’s supporters will not only encourage their shell-shocked withdrawal from the debate, but also convince an ever-increasing number of New Zealanders that the political game is no longer worth the candle.
Alternatively, the actions of the Treaty Principles Bill’s opponents may provoke the same sort of angry public backlash that followed the violent end of the anti-vaccination mandate movement’s occupation of Parliament Grounds.
The Police are expecting upwards of 25,000 Māori protesters and their allies to descend upon the Parliamentary Precinct on Tuesday, 19 November. Among those allies, Police anticipate having to deal with a large number of gang members intending to defy the legal ban on public displays of gang insignia. It is also thought that a contingent of activists determined to link the “anti-colonial struggles” of Māori and Palestinians will be part of the Hikoi.
The Hikoi leaders have assured the Police that its demonstration of opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill will be peaceful. But the level of political noise, and the passions it can hardly avoid arousing, may outstrip the ability of the leaders to keep their followers under control. If the whole thing turns pear-shaped, then National and NZ First will lose their bet.
In the aftermath of the American elections, the Coalition Government would be unwise to position themselves too closely alongside a noisy – let alone a violent – minority. The one sound loud enough to be heard above the efforts of even the most determined makers of political noise, is the sound of the long-suffering majority making up its mind.
This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 11 November 2024.
6 comments:
The constitutional arrangements of NZ is becoming a bigger a bigger mess and as much as Luxon likes to tell us what really concerns him is economic growth, he's the prime minister now at the pointy end of history, who has no such luxury to muse over such trivia.
The pure irony of his prayers to make this silly little distraction go away by concentrating on "real" issues, the common sense voice in all this noise, seems oblivious to the reality that doing business in a country where ti tiriti means what ever Maori elite thinks it means at any given moment now means anyone with money to invest will not want to touch such a political and legal mess. Way too uncertain and risky. Money does not do woke. But it pays the bills.
It's exactly the same for tikanga in the Supreme courts rewrite of law governing New Zealand. A meaningless subjective shambles that no law book should ever ever include.
The first signs are here. The once economically lucrative foreign student industry no longer exists, unattractive to foreign students, yet Australian universities have had to close their books, being oversubscribed. When you have mandatory ti tiriti indoctrination at NZ universities, who would bother? You know higher education does not exist here anymore.
Similarly investment will politely give us a swerve too, and I suspect it is already. So now what Christopher? You can't run from the treaty bullshit industry, even though you so badly want to.
Maybe this is why he is hurriedly divesting himself of his housing portfolio. He's no idiot. As was a line in the movie Margin Call, a film second guessing a New York stock broking firms reaction during 2008, is Luxon indicating the "music has stopped"? Is his bouncy nothing to see here manner a theatrical sales pitch to hide the growing cracks in the foundations of this country?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, something Labour should be deeply familiar with. The noise you speak of is disguising the reality, New Zealand is almost there!
I listened to Prof. Biggar being interviewed on RNZ Nights program. He was asked questions as to collective action, such as a consumer boycott after a corporation acted in what many would see as against a disempowered sector. He was very uncomfortable with the idea of collective action in support of a cause. To me, as a unionist, he came across as just an old tory wanting to keep people in their place and his right to do so regardless of the harm and stigmatization he causes. I read reviews of his book, and generally historians noted that he lacked history discipline (his qualifications and professorship is in Theology) drawing wide conclusions from limited and selected historical examples.
I wish people to note, Cecil Rhodes was an imperialist administrator and businessman. He committed many things which decimated groups of indigenous peoples in Africa, the effects are still with us today. In a multicultural society, and as an international university, the descendants of those dispossessed and killed are attendants of that university. If there was a decision to put a statue of William III, you would expect Irish and Scots resistance. If there was a statute of Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, Indian British and those overseas would rightly want the removal. I do not see why the descendants of indefensible human rights abuse have to walk past a celebration of the perpetrators, no matter how many Boy's Own comics the public grew up with.
The prediction in this piece of a 'large number of gang members intending to defy the legal ban on public displays of gang insignia' at the hikoi has not aged well. Not only was it the equivalent of a city at least the size of Gisborne peaceful, united and crime free (as an example of Maori leading Maori), but the visual scaremongering of the comment becomes a little sillier when you factor in that the legislation was not in affect at the time.
I won't go further into this, but it is an example of the need to stigmatize Maori without evidence or understanding the organization. I would challenge those that leap to such scenarios to reflect on why they did so, and why they were wrong.
Well said again Little Keith; the road to hell sums it up.
"We fought many wars over whether or not the axiom of the divine intrinsic value of the individual man and woman is true - whether it is deeply, fundamentally and nonarbitrarily true. ..... Is it not the case that tyranny or slavery will rule...... if this cornerstone is rejected."
From 'We Who Wrestle with God', Jordan Peterson 2024.
The reference to gangs was contained in the media statements of the Police. My suspicion is that the organisers of the Hikoi made strenuous, and ultimately successful, efforts to keep them away from the event. A peaceful and united demonstration was vital to the success of their cause. The slightest hint of violence and/or intimidation would have been disastrous.
I had not seen such a statement from the Police, but that gives your readers the chance to ask why a state institution like the police would try to scare monger and why .they would stigmatize. The question as to why this works in drawing a significant group in society as to immediately think of gang intimidation when told there is a large gathering of Maori.
This reflects the true reason for the gang insignia legislation, it allows the public fear of, as Chis says, "them" to be extended through the governments term (the fear being with those that have never met a gang member) with the state now legally arresting and harassing the other noy for what they have done but for how they express the identity, often forged in abuse in state care. The PM's apology one day, and then his scorn of many of the victims the next. But it allows Maori, gangs and the oppression of the state to be intrinsicly linked.
Chris, when you start a piece on the Free Speech Unoon, I would hope more analysis before repeating police properganda on gang members and personal expression. I am sure you remember that in 1981, members of the Maori gangs marched as your colleagues.
Political noise, what a great description and analysis. I believe you are on the money Chris, as to the coalition gamble, but it is a gamble as you say. How people see and understand the bill will be quite different. It’s old knowledge that those who shout the loudest get heard but even those doing the shouting in this instance must in some way understand what they are demanding is not democratic, so they must believe what they are demanding is morally right, which to them trumps democracy. Their problem as I see it is, are they even morally on high ground. We don’t know because we the public have never had a say in what the treaty principles mean. Six months will give those interested a chance to think for themselves as to what those principles should be and how they see a future for NZ/Aotearoa. I believe this discussion will have large numbers on either side. It’s not cut and dried and there is no complete right or wrong. This is regardless of the Hikoi and those who made an informed decision to support it, along with those who were encouraged to support it as if their lives depended on it. As you say Chris the quiet majority of NZrs have yet to make a call.
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