Advocacy Journalism: Should a radical resetting of Auckland City’s priorities ever be undertaken in the way the “expert witnesses” quoted in Kate Newton's "White Noise" investigation (posted on the RNZ website on 21/1/19) suggest, then it would entail a profound redistribution of municipal resources away from the leafy suburbs and towards the city’s poorest and most marginalised communities. To believe that Auckland’s upper- and middle-classes would sit idly by while this was happening is fanciful in the extreme.
THAT RICH, OLD, WHITE PEOPLE dominate decision-making in New
Zealand hardly qualifies as news. Having taken barely a quarter-of-a-century to
dispossess its indigenous Maori inhabitants; rich, old, white people set about
creating a society and an economy in their own image. In terms of whose views
count, the New Zealand of today differs only marginally from the New Zealand of
150 years ago. Why, then, was RNZ moved to produce “White Noise”?
The tag-line for RNZ journalist Kate Newton’s investigation
summed it up nicely: “It’s our most culturally diverse city, but older,
wealthier, Pakeha people have the loudest voice when it comes to shaping the
city’s future.” What follows is a series of geographical, social and statistical
vignettes featuring four Auckland suburbs: Devonport, St Helliers, Avondale and
Mangere. Emerging from Newton’s examination of the data is the entirely
unsurprising conclusion that older, richer and whiter Aucklanders forward more
submissions to Auckland Council than anybody else.
The truly intriguing question arising out of Newton’s “White
Noise” (reported in depth on RNZ’s Morning
Report of 21/1/19) is: How did the national public broadcaster expect its
listeners to respond? Were they supposed to be shocked and horrified at this prima facie case of white privilege?
Were RNZ’s listeners (a very large percentage of whom will be older, richer and
whiter than the average Kiwi) supposed to be wracked with guilt? Were Auckland
listeners, in particular, expected to contact their local board members and/or
councillors and demand that something be done to counteract this
all-too-obvious racism?
The answer could very easily be “Yes” to all of the above.
One of the people Newton turns to for “expert” commentary on the findings of
her investigation is Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw, currently a senior associate at
Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy
Studies. The Institute’s website describes Berentson-Shaw as a
“researcher, writer and communicator, interested in the values that inform the
development and implementation of evidence-based policy”. The Institute is not,
however, the only body with which Berentson-Shaw is associated. She is also the
co-director of a “think and work tank” called “The Workshop”. This collection
of high-powered social activists describes its vision as: “a more inclusive New
Zealand” driven by “compassion and manaakitanga
to others”. Exactly the sort of group to take umbrage at the fact that rich,
old, white people are exercising a disproportionate degree of influence over
the future direction of Auckland and (presumably) the rest of Aotearoa-New
Zealand.
In Newton’s posting on the RNZ website, Berentson-Shaw is
described simply as a “public policy researcher”. Her co-directorship of “The
Workshop” is not mentioned, nor is there any reference to the latter’s
unabashed enthusiasm for thinking about and working towards radical social and
economic change in New Zealand society. Newton’s failure to fully inform her readers
about Berentson-Shaw’s political mission casts a worrisome shadow across the
entire “White Noise” investigation.
Also absent from Newton’s investigation is any significant
reference to the decisive relationship between social class and political power.
Her readers are asked to focus on the ethnicity, age and household income of
those participating in the Auckland Council’s consultation process. Unexplored
were such factors as whether those participants were unskilled wage-workers or
salaried professionals. Closely related factors, such as levels of educational
attainment, were similarly neglected.
These are significant omissions. Not least because had
social class and educational attainment been the focus of Newton’s study, then
it is entirely possible that instead of old, rich, white people emerging as the
villains of the piece, the culprits would have turned out to be self-interested
members of the highly-educated middle- and upper-classes. Viewed through this
lens, the degree of exclusion of ethnic communities would have taken on a very
different aspect. Indeed, it would almost certainly have confirmed that
people’s political influence is principally determined by their position in the
socio-economic hierarchy – not by their age and/or ethnicity.
This conclusion may have been considerably harder to sell,
however, than one fixing the blame on old, rich, white people. For a start,
class and conflict go together in a way that leaves precious little room for
inclusion, compassion or manaakitanga.
Should a radical resetting of Auckland City’s priorities ever be undertaken in
the way Newton’s “expert witnesses” suggest, then it would entail a profound
redistribution of municipal resources away from the leafy suburbs and towards
the city’s poorest and most marginalised communities. To believe that
Auckland’s upper- and middle-classes would sit idly by while this was happening
is fanciful in the extreme. The very skills and advantages identified (and
implicitly condemned) in Newton’s posting would be turned instantaneously to
the task of bringing such a redistributive exercise to a shuddering halt.
It would not be a pretty process. The ugly intent of
protecting class privilege would be carefully masked in the populist rhetoric
of racial defence. Not all of Auckland’s ethnic communities would opt to
identify with the poor and the brown. Nor would the rest of New Zealand. One
has only to recall the fate of Labour’s “Closing The Gaps” initiative; or the
extraordinary reaction to Don Brash’s Orewa Speech; to appreciate the political
fragility of Newton’s optimistic assumptions.
The closest “White Noise” comes to anticipating this kind of
push-back is in its description of Old, Rich and White Auckland’s jeering
dismissal of “Generation Zero’s” vocal endorsement of the Auckland Unitary Plan
in 2016. Newton describes an incident in which the representatives of this
highly articulate group of young professionals found themselves under attack in
a hall filled with elderly white property-owning opponents of the Plan. That
naked self-interest could express itself with such shameless antagonism clearly
came as a shock to these youthful champions of progressive urban design.
The core mission of change agents such as “The Workshop”,
“Generation Zero” and, one suspects, journalists like Newton herself, is to
find a way around the political obstacles erected against “progressive” reform
by self-interest and prejudice. “White Noise” attempts to do this by
delegitimating the contributions of well-heeled, well-educated and well-connected
Pakeha Aucklanders, so that a more just distribution of the city’s resources
can be effected. Whether or not this is viewed as a worthwhile project will
depend, almost entirely, on the reader’s ideological standpoint. The question
for RNZ’s managers is whether or not investigations like “White Noise” should
be undertaken by a supposedly politically neutral public broadcaster at the
taxpayers’ expense?
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 24 January 2019.
