A Grand Coalition For Peace, Unity and Democracy.

Co-Leaders? The uncomfortable truth is: not the Army, not the Police, not the Spooks, and not even a combination of all three, could defeat the scale and violence of White Supremacist and Māori Nationalist resistance which the imposition of radical decolonisation – or its racism-inspired defeat – would unleash upon the country. A Grand Coalition of Labour and National is one of the few correctives available to halt New Zealand’s steady drift towards civil war.

THOSE RESPONSIBLE for New Zealand’s national security face problems considerably greater than anti-vaxxers issuing bomb-threats. (Although with an anti-vaxxer currently being held in what sounds suspiciously like preventive detention, on a charge of sabotage, perhaps they’re mistaken!) Over the next 12 months, the NZ Defence Force, the Police, and the SIS – The Forces of Order – will have to decide which group of potential insurrectionists they have the best chance of beating: White Supremacists or Māori Nationalists?

These two extreme tendencies, both of them hostile to democracy, currently stand outside the arena of practical politics. For them to remain there, however, a political environment supportive of traditional democratic principles and, most crucially, supported by all key state institutions, will have to be actively promoted. Not only that, but an emphatic majority of citizens will have to believe the such official promotion is sincere, and that it will not simply evaporate if ordered to do so by radical political actors.

This is a predicament without precedent in New Zealand history. At no point in the 170-year history of responsible government in these islands has the arbitrary introduction of fundamental constitutional change turned on the outcome of an election. Radical changes have been made in the past, but always within the parameters of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. It is one of the great strengths of our Westminster system of government: that change is always reversible. What’s done can be undone – if the people will it.

If, however, the next general election produces a Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori coalition government, then fundamental constitutional changes, of the sort recommended in the He Puapua Report, will be introduced. This can be stated with confidence for the very simple reason that an unwavering tripartite commitment to the “decolonisation” and “indigenisation” of Aotearoa’s governing arrangements would be a precondition for any such coalition’s formation. The Māori Caucus of the Labour Party would demand it. The Greens would expect it. And the support of Te Pāti Māori (TPM) could not be contemplated without it.

These constitutional commitments could not be kept hidden from the electorate. Their necessity would be loudly proclaimed in the run-up to the election by TPM as a means of mobilising Māori voters generally, and energising young Māori voters in particular. TPM’s most obvious electoral strategy would be seek all seven Māori seats, while freeing their supporters to cast a Party Vote for Labour by way of compensation. Should TPM win all seven seats, but fail to win a commensurate share of the Party Vote, then the next Parliament would have an “overhang” of Left seats – making it even more difficult for the Right to secure a majority.

Would Labour consent to TPM’s strategy? Almost certainly. On the issues of decolonisation and indigenisation the Labour Party Caucus has demonstrated a firmness of purpose not seen since its predecessor’s embrace of “Rogernomics” back in the 1980s. It was not unusual in the late-80s to hear Labour MPs declare that they would rather lose their seat than reverse their support for Roger Douglas’s radical economic reforms. Faced with the option of repudiating the Treaty “partnership”, and the co-governance measures they believe it mandates, this present Labour Caucus (with a handful of exceptions) would almost certainly evince a similar determination to win through or leave Parliament altogether.

Such a coalescence of the Left around te Tiriti and co-governance would, naturally, generate an equal and opposite reaction from the Right. Any notion the National Party may have entertained of attempting to ride the Treaty-and-Co-Governance tiger would have to be jettisoned hastily. Christopher Luxon would have no choice but to embrace Act’s maximalist anti-separatist/pro-democracy policies as his own. David Seymour’s plans for legislatively defining the meaning of the Treaty, and having the resulting law either ratified or rejected by referendum, would thus be presented as the rock-solid commitment of the National-Act coalition government-in-waiting.

Faced with the possibility of losing every centimetre of ground they had won since 1985, Māori nationalists would make no bones about the consequences of a National-Act Government. The re-colonisation of Aotearoa would be resisted – by any means necessary.

Not to be outdone, White Supremacist groups would make it clear that any attempt to “re-tribalise” New Zealand society, by stripping its citizens of their democratic rights and property, would be met with armed resistance.

How would the Forces of Order respond to such threats? Their first move would likely be against the most ardent promoters of the decolonisation and indigenisation agenda. Senior public servants, vice-chancellors and media editors would be “invited” to moderate their radical stance on the politics of partnership. With “radicalisation” occurring apace among the activists of both camps, the Forces of Order’s top priority would be to “depressurize” the increasingly tense political atmosphere.

At the same time “the usual suspects” of the activist Right and Left would be made the subjects of heightened surveillance. All forms of intelligence gathering would be utilised in an attempt to keep abreast of the White Supremacists’ and Māori Nationalists’ activities. From the perspective of the Forces of Order, the best outcome of such a surveillance programme would be the uncovering of plans by both sides to launch a series of attacks on their opponents – up to and including the assassination of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

In these circumstances, the Forces of Order would be presented with the opportunity to persuade the leaders of the Centre-Left and the Centre-Right to dispense with their respective coalition partners and announce their intention to go into the election as a Grand Coalition for Peace, Unity and Democracy. The urgent necessity for such a dramatic solution could be demonstrated by a few suitably terrifying leaks to the most co-operative media outlets. Poll data, real or concocted, would indicate the public’s overwhelming support for the Grand Coalition. Dissenting MPs from Labour and National could then be purged ruthlessly from their Party Lists. At the electorate level, the candidate from the party assessed as most likely to win would be given a clear run by their coalition partner.

With the Grand Coalition parties promising to respect both the Treaty and New Zealand’s democratic traditions, while spending billions to “close the gaps” between Māori and Pakeha, the political prospects for Act, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would take a decided turn for the worse.

The Forces of Order would breathe a massive sigh of relief. Principally because the question originally posed: who could they beat? – is a trick question. The uncomfortable truth is: not the Army, not the Police, not the Spooks, and not even a combination of all three, could defeat the scale and violence of White Supremacist and Māori Nationalist resistance which the imposition of radical decolonisation – or its racism-inspired defeat – would unleash upon the country. An uncompromising government’s pursuit of one or the other would simply topple the nation into a bloody civil war.

And who would win that conflict? The answer, almost certainly, is – The Australians. Canberra could not afford to have a failed state on its eastern flank – ripe for the picking by a Chinese regime only too happy to sail to the rescue of whichever side seemed most likely to prevail. The Aussies’ pre-emptive intervention would see Aotearoa-New Zealand become the eighth state of the Commonwealth of Australia.

We would all have lost.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 2 August 2022.

Rumours of [Civil] War.

Point Of No Return: One minute the ordinary citizen is pausing amidst the familiar rush of daily chores to try and make sense of an alarming headline, and the next minute there’s the sound of machine-gun fire in the streets. Because most people simply cannot imagine the collapse of the political system they have believed and trusted in all their lives, they almost never see it coming, and are profoundly surprised when it arrives.

ACCORDING TO BARBARA WALTER author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them, the most common reaction to the outbreak of serious civil strife is surprise.

One minute the ordinary citizen is pausing amidst the familiar rush of daily chores to try and make sense of an alarming headline, and the next minute there’s the sound of machine-gun fire in the streets. Because most people simply cannot imagine the collapse of the political system they have believed and trusted in all their lives, they almost never see it coming, and are profoundly surprised when it arrives.

Professor Walter’s research warns that the nations most at risk of politically inspired violence are not those where democratic institutions and, much more importantly, democratic values, are strong. Nor yet those states where the grip of authoritarianism remains unflinching. The danger comes when tyrannical regimes begin to loosen their grip, or, when democracies start to question the merits of freedom. It is in these “anocracies” (systems of power in transition) that the likelihood of civil strife is at its highest.

Having pursued her research in a host of nations afflicted by murderous civil strife, Professor Walter has learned something else: that the very worst civil wars are those driven by the politics of ethnic and religious identity. The other fatal driver of division is what she calls “downgrading”:

“People may tolerate years of poverty, unemployment and discrimination. They may accept shoddy schools, poor hospitals and neglected infrastructure. But there is one thing they will not tolerate: losing status in a place they believe is theirs. In the 21st century, the most dangerous factions are once-dominant groups facing decline.”

Her use of the word “faction” in the above quotation is significant. Part of the relentless progression towards civil war is the rise of factions within the population. The seriousness of this semantic shift: from the more familiar use of the word to describe antagonistic groups operating within a single organisation (usually a political party) to embrace whole sections of society; cannot be overstated.

The most dangerous manifestation of this growth of organised social-antagonisms is the rise of a “super-faction”. This is characterised by a critical mass of the population being enrolled in a single movement – usually guided by a single leader. The growth of a super-faction is a portent of imminent socio-political disaster.

By now, readers should be anxiously joining the dots between Professor Walter’s research into civil wars and the developing political situation within New Zealand. Certainly, the necessary ingredients for serious strife are all here: the drift towards anocracy; the stoking of ethnic antagonisms; and the perceived downgrading of once-dominant groups. The question now, is whether or not New Zealand has (or is fast acquiring) factions.

Some New Zealanders might argue that the last five years have witnessed the emergence of what might colloquially be described as the “Woke Faction”. Encompassing liberal-left politicians, the Judiciary, upper-echelons of the public service, most of academia, and powerful elements within “progressive” businesses and the news media, the Woke Faction is united primarily by its intention to make New Zealand – Aotearoa – confirm more strictly to te Tiriti o Waitangi. It intends to achieve this goal by actualising the idea of a “partnership” between Māori and Pakeha, and embedding the practice of co-governance in all state institutions.

In terms of institutional power and the influence it wields, the Woke Faction is fast approaching the status of a super-faction. While the conduct of free and fair elections remains a part of New Zealand political life, however, the potential for creating a super-faction immeasurably larger than the Woke Faction remains considerable. It would be composed of that part of the population (overwhelmingly Pakeha) who firmly believe that they are already in, or very soon will be, the process of downgrading.

Should the ultimate harbinger of national doom, that figure nominated by Professor Walter as the “Ethnic Entrepreneur”, appear upon the scene, the rents in the social fabric of New Zealand may become too wide to be stitched back together.

New Zealanders are far from unfamiliar with Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Winston Peters and Don Brash both fit Professor Walter’s description. Neither of them, however, created a super-faction powerful enough, or sufficiently driven, to unlock the Gates of Hell.

We should not be surprised, however, if/when someone arrives with the key.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 July 2022.