A Real Revolution?

Secret Revolutionary? “I think the general public is not aware that we are going through huge revolutionary changes in the country and, in fact, we have taken that such a long way, there is no going back.”  –  Dame Claudia Orange

SUPPOSE THEY MADE A REVOLUTION, and nobody noticed. Suppose the “Cabinet Office” ordered the nation’s public servants to implement an unmandated revolutionary transformation of New Zealand, and they complied. Suppose one of the leading authorities on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Dame Claudia Orange, confirmed that this revolution was, in fact, a done deal.

This is what Dame Claudia told the NZ Herald’s Audrey Young:

I think the general public is not aware that we are going through huge revolutionary changes in the country and, in fact, we have taken that such a long way, there is no going back.

Now, forgive me, but my understanding of revolutionary change is that it does not, and cannot, take place without the “general public” being aware. The active participation of the people in replacing a regime that has, in their eyes, lost all political legitimacy, is pretty much the definition of a revolution. The idea that not only could such a profound upheaval have taken place, but also gone past the point of no return, without the people either noticing it, or sanctioning it, is, quite simply, absurd.

So what should we call a programme initiated by the “Cabinet Office” (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet?) with the ultimate intention of transforming the nation’s constitutional arrangements in such a way that the “consent of the governed” need not be confirmed by democratic means?

Given that New Zealanders have lived through such a transformation before, when the programme of ruthless economic “reforms” known as “Rogernomics” was unleashed upon them without warning, and without an electoral mandate, between 1984 and 1987, then it seems only fitting that this latest attempt to impose transformational change from the top down be described in the same manner. What New Zealanders have been experiencing since 2019 is a “bureaucratic coup d’état”.

Indeed, the parallels between 1984 and the present are uncanny. In 1984, the incoming Labour Government, led by David Lange, was presented by its Treasury advisors with “Economic Management” – essentially a blueprint for Finance Minister Roger Douglas’s radical transformation of the New Zealand economy.

Prior to the 2020 general election, a similar transformational blueprint, “He Puapua” was handed to the Minister for Māori Development, Nanaia Mahuta. Commissioned by the Minister in 2019 to envision a pathway to the full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “He Puapua” dovetailed neatly with the “Cabinet Office’s” instructions regarding Te Tiriti.

The parallels do not stop there. Three years after “Economic Management”, the Treasury presented the re-elected Labour Government with “Government Management” – a detailed blueprint for adapting the instruments of state administration to the needs of the new “free market”.

Three years after “He Puapua”, the re-elected Labour Government has been presented with two reports, “Ki te whaiao, ki te ao Mārama” and “Maranga Mai” both commissioned by the Human Rights Commission and reflecting the advice of some of the most radical Māori nationalists in New Zealand. Among a host of revolutionary recommendations, the “Maranga Mai” report concludes:

Reform of central and local government systems is also needed to reduce and eliminate institutional racism which cause inequities and inequalities for Māori in outcomes. This reform should uphold and align these systems with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, by following the foundational work and recommendations set out in Matike Mai Aotearoa and He Puapua reports.

Were the recommendations of “Matike Mai Aotearoa” and “He Puapua” to be followed, the manner in which New Zealanders are governed, and the rights and privileges they are heir to, would indeed be transformed – out of all recognition.

Race Relations Commissioner, Meng Foon, has responded to the reports by committing himself to the long-term goal of “Eliminat[ing] racism in Aotearoa in all forms, in all organisations whether it’s government, non-government organisations, businesses, amongst our communities.”

New Zealanders anxious to learn how this elimination might be accomplished – especially given the Human Rights Commission’s acceptance that racism and white supremacy are baked-in to New Zealand society – should probably study the “re-education” centres established by the Chinese Government in Xinxiang to eliminate radical Islamist ideology from all mosques, schools, organisations, businesses and communities of the Uighur people.

It is difficult to believe that Labour could be contemplating a bureaucratic coup-d’état even more destructive than Rogernomics. If they are, then – this time – they will provoke a real revolution.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 10 February 2023.

Not Debating The Constitution

The Sound of One hand Clapping: The taxpayer funded "Constitutional Conversation" has so far demonstrated little inclination to facilitate a genuine debate on the Treaty's already entrenched place in the legal, administrative and political life of New Zealand. This unwillingness to either recognise or supply a visible platform for the nay-sayers betrays the "Conversation's" essential artificiality. A manufactured consensus is no substitute for a bloody good argument.

 

I DON’T GET ANGRY very often. I’ve been around too long, seen history repeat itself too many times, for all that malarkey. Just occasionally, however, I stumble across something that truly infuriates me.

 

Like discussions billed as debates where everybody is actually on the same side.

 

No, I’m not talking about TV3’s “The Vote”. What’s got my dander up is a four-part series being hosted by the NZ Centre for Public Law (NZCPL) entitled “Debating the Constitution”. All four encounters to be broadcast subsequently on Radio NZ National.

 

And, yes, the series is indeed a response to the Constitutional Review which emerged from the horse-trading between the National and Maori parties following the 2008 General Election.

 

The same review that has been the occasion for more than a little teeth-gnashing among those Pakeha who have declared themselves perfectly happy with New Zealand’s present constitutional arrangements, thank you very much, and who have voiced deep suspicions of both the motives behind its creation and the outcomes intended by its protagonists.

 

Now, you might be thinking: Well there’s the opportunity for a genuine, rip-snorting debate! And I’d be the first to agree. There are a host of noisy individuals who would’ve leapt at the opportunity to voice their doubts and suspicions concerning the whole Constitutional Review initiative.

 

And that’s what has got me all hot under the collar.

 

I’ve examined the personnel invited to participate in this exercise by the NZCPL and can I find any of the names associated with the political movement that has sprung up to oppose the Constitutional Review?

 

No, I can’t.

 

And it’s not as though it would have been at all that difficult for the NZCPL to locate these folk. All it needed to do was send out invitations to the membership of the defiantly christened “Independent Constitutional Review Panel” – a ready-made Negative Team comprising Professors Martin Devlin and James Allan; Associate Professor, Elizabeth Rata; Law Lecturer, David Round; journalist and author, Mike Butler; and the former Act MP, Muriel Newman.

 

Well, I looked through the list of “Debating the Constitution” participants and not even one member of the Independent Constitutional Review Panel was included.

 

The names I did see surprised me not at all. Before my eyes was a veritable roll-call of the good and the great; the wise and the just; the righteously indigenous and the guilty descendants of the Maori people’s wicked colonial oppressors.

 

Here’s a sneak peek at just some of the NZCPL’s line-up: Dame Claudia Orange, Sir Geoffrey and Dr Matthew Palmer, Moana Jackson, Dr Maria Bargh, Professors Margaret Wilson, Elizabeth McLeay and Andrew Geddis, Jim Bolger and Colin James.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, every one of these illustrious individuals is capable of contributing mightily to a polite “discussion” of our constitutional arrangements. More than a few of them could also say much that was useful about its origins and political ramifications. But, seriously, do any of them strike you as people likely to hoe into the Review with the passion of its self-identified opponents?

 

The NZCPL’s list of speakers is not going to generate a debate on this important topic. No, these folk are going to deliver an academic seminar on the exercise to an audience which will almost certainly be comprised of like and equally lofty minds.

 

It was only after my father was posted to Wellington in 1969 that I encountered the delicious word “twee”. From the moment I heard it used in a sentence I have cherished it. No other word in the English language captures the mixture of exclusivity and effeteness that twee so wonderfully expresses.

 

And twee is exactly the right word to describe this series of debates-that-aren’t-debates.

 

What could have been a down-and-dirty verbal slug-fest; a chance for these grand personages to endure a rare encounter with New Zealanders who most emphatically do not share their “sound” views on the Treaty of Waitangi, bi-culturalism and New Zealand history; an opportunity to squeeze all the poisons inflaming the open wound that is New Zealand race relations into public view – has been missed.

 

And that not only makes me angry, it also makes me sad.

 

As a people, we used to be more open and courageous than this. When Jack was a good as any snooty professor, and a debate was still a bloody good argument.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 5 April 2013.