There’s Method In Shane Jones’s “Racist” Madness.

Kicking The Hives Of "Ngati Woke": Shane Jones knows that the most effective way to build support for a radically revisionist “Population Policy”, is to provoke the initiators and defenders of New Zealand’s existing population policies into demonstrating their bitter opposition to any serious, broad-based debate about the country’s current immigration settings. 

WHAT IS SHANE JONES trying to do? In speaking so insultingly about the Indian student community he must have known he’d attract the ire of the people he calls “Ngati Woke”. Was he being provocative just for the hell of it, or did he have a more coherent political motive for courting accusations of racism and xenophobia?

While it is always unwise to overestimate the thoughtfulness of politicians, many of whom do not think through the consequences of their off-the-cuff public utterances, I do not believe that Shane was simply blurting. In my view, there is some pretty solid method to his allegedly “racist” madness.

Matt McCarten was fond of telling his comrades in the left-wing Alliance that under MMP it really doesn’t matter if you piss off 95 percent of the voters, so long as 5 percent of them want what your offering. It would seem that the same blunt analysis is currently driving NZ First’s electoral strategy. In practical political terms this means that the party will do whatever it takes to stay in the game – no matter how disruptive or potentially divisive.

At the heart of this new strategy lies what Jones has identified as NZ First’s “Population Policy Debate”. The party is clearly determined to home-in on New Zealanders’ rising anger over immigration. The evidence is mounting that New Zealand’s unaffordable housing crisis; the cost blow-outs in its public health system; the pressure on its schools, and the difficulty so many unskilled workers have in lifting themselves out of wage poverty; may all be traced back to the unprecedented flood of immigrants pouring into New Zealand over the past two decades.

The fact that the country’s population is set to top 5 million this election year, five years earlier than predicted; and that Statistics NZ is predicting an “Asian” population of between 1.2 and 1.4 million by 2038, has alarmed many Pakeha New Zealanders. Their fears have been further stoked by demographic projections indicating that over the next 20 years the European population of New Zealand will fall from its current 70 percent to 66 percent. Given that, 20 years ago, Europeans made up 80 percent of the New Zealand population, the trend is very clear. Racially-charged anxieties are rising, and NZ First – as it has done so successfully in the past – intends to exploit them ruthlessly.

The most effective way to build support for a radically revisionist “Population Policy”, is to provoke the initiators and defenders of New Zealand’s existing population policies into demonstrating their bitter opposition to any serious, broad-based debate about the country’s current immigration settings. NZ First is aiming to build a persuasive political narrative around the idea that the startling changes to New Zealand’s demographic profile are the result of a 34-year-old conspiracy involving this country’s intellectual, bureaucratic and political elites.

At the heart of this conspiracy, NZ First will argue, was the elites’ disgust at what they saw as this country’s de facto “White New Zealand Policy”. The framers of what would soon emerge as New Zealand’s brand new “multicultural” population policy, acknowledged the Pakeha majority’s strong preference for maintaining the existing ethnic balances in New Zealand society, but chose not to treat it as determinative. The majority, they argued, was racist and wrong: it should not be trusted – or heeded.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, NZ First leaders like Shane Jones will argue, the initiators of this new Multicultural New Zealand policy were equally unwilling to consider the preferences of the indigenous Maori population. Notwithstanding their passionate anti-racist rhetoric, the multiculturalists would have been aware, right from the start, that their policy, if successfully applied, would eventually result in immigrant communities expanding continuously until they overwhelmed (at least numerically) the Maori population.

“What does it really say about the elites’ actual commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi,” NZ First will ask, “that they have been willing to oversee a process which, according to Statistics NZ’s 2017 projections, will see ‘Asians overtake the Maori in ethnic share within the next five years, and will make up more than one in five – or 22 per cent – of the population by 2038’?”

These questions have the potential to unleash the same sort of populist-nationalist fervour that brought the world Brexit and Trump. They evoke exactly the same feelings of having been excluded from the policy conversations that mattered; the conversations that resulted in devastating changes to the life-worlds of ordinary people. NZ First’s strategy is clearly to bring these conversations out into the “public square” where everyone can hear them, and where their originators can be challenged and interrogated.

Crucial to the strategy’s success will be the gathering of examples of elite spokespeople deriding and dismissing those who dare to breach these policy taboos. Jones’s comments regarding Indian students were obviously designed to elicit just such a response – and they succeeded brilliantly. Just consider the following sentence from a Newsroom opinion piece headed “Why Jones is wrong about Indian students”, released yesterday (3/3/20) under the names of the University of Otago Vice-Chancellor, Harlene Haynes, and Otago Professor of International Relations, Robert Patman:

“Today, all states are confronted by security, economic and environmental challenges that do not respect territorial borders and cannot be resolved by populist-nationalist politicians promising to ‘take back control’ of national sovereignty in New Zealand or anywhere else.”

Clearly intended as a slap-down, the opinion piece played directly into Jones’s and NZ First’s hands. It will be held up as powerful proof of the elites’ scorn for ordinary people’s concerns. Not only that, it will serve as a demonstration of just how much of a lock multiculturalism has on academia, the media and mainstream politicians.

In this regard, National is especially vulnerable. An important element of its election strategy involves the electoral destruction of NZ First and the incorporation of its vote into National’s tally. But, just consider what would happen to National’s support among older anxious Kiwis, if NZ First was to highlight the fact that upwards of 75 percent of Chinese-New Zealanders vote National.

Suddenly, National’s strong support for the Multicultural New Zealand policy would take on a very different complexion. Suddenly, they would be charged with keeping the immigration flood-gates open for selfish electoral purposes. To hell with the kids who cannot get so much as a toehold on the property ladder! For every 10,000 adult Chinese migrants, National nets 7,500 votes. Ain’t “diversity” grand!

All those woke journalists working so assiduously to rid Parliament of Winston Peters and NZ First may yet be given cause to rue their actions. It was the veteran political journalist, Richard Harman, who only a few days ago responded when asked, on a RNZ podcast, to account for the relative mildness of populism’s influence on New Zealand politics, by observing that:

“Maybe we owe Winston Peters some thanks for this. New Zealand First, back in the nineties, picked up on those populist, nationalistic themes that we’re now seeing expressed in a much more extreme fashion [overseas]. We’re relatively lucky that our populist party – New Zealand First – has behaved in a very democratic and quite reasonable way over the years.”

That may be about to change.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 5 March 2020.

Has Shane Jones Just Saved NZ First?

Counter-Puncher: The “activists” and “radicals” (his own words) from the Indian community who took such strong exception to Shane Jones’ remarks about Immigration NZ’s treatment of arranged marriages, may end up bitterly regretting their intervention. Jones is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to his critics.

SHANE JONES may just have come up with a sure-fire MMP threshold-busting election strategy. He has committed NZ First to formulating a comprehensive “population policy”. If handled adroitly, this exercise will likely evoke a strong electoral response from “native” New Zealanders. Almost certainly powerful enough to guarantee the party’s return to Parliament.

Since the mid-1980s, both Labour and National have followed the population policy first enunciated in the 1986 Review of Immigration Policy commissioned by the Labour Party Immigration Minister, Kerry Burke. In essence, the Burke Review was about engineering New Zealand’s demographic transformation. From a “white” country – albeit one with an indigenous adjunct – New Zealand was to become a multicultural nation. NZ First has consistently opposed this policy. It has not, however, found a way of moving beyond rhetorical flourishes about “Asian Invasions” towards formulating a clear, “first principles” population policy of its own. That may be about to change.

The “activists” and “radicals” (Jones’ words) from the Indian community who took such strong exception to his remarks about Immigration NZ’s treatment of arranged marriages, may end up bitterly regretting their intervention. Jones is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to his critics. He is, however, the sort of highly-educated individual who understands the wisdom of taking controversial issues right back to first principles. Shrewd enough, also, to recognise the advantage of undertaking such an exercise in relation to the rapidly changing shape of New Zealand’s population.

Unlike the young commentator on Maori issues, Morgan Godfery, Jones recognises the threat posed to tangata whenua by the dramatic expansion in the number of immigrants from China and the Indian sub-continent. In the space of less than 40 years, the percentage of the New Zealand population designated “Asian” has undergone a seven-fold increase: from 2 percent to 15 percent. If this extraordinary rate of increase continues, then within the next decade the “Asian” population of New Zealand will overtake that of Maori. Godfery insists that this need not be a problem since, in relation to the political position of the indigenous people, it is the Treaty of Waitangi that counts – not the size of the Maori population. Godfery’s optimism is heroic.

A population policy is, however, about a great deal more than mere immigration statistics. It begins, as the Burke Review does, by asking questions about what sort of country New Zealand should be. Back in the mid-1980s, the assumption of the Review’s authors was that New Zealand was much too deeply rooted in the values and prejudices of its colonial past. Though they did not express it in terms as explicit as our trans-Tasman cousin’s “White Australia” policy, New Zealanders subscribed to exactly the same notion that immigration should be shaped by the existing racial contours of the nation. This view limited the countries-of-origin of any new arrivals to the British Isles, North America, North-West Europe, Australia and the island micro-states of the South Pacific. The Burke Review dismissed this stance as racist and short-sighted. The Empire was dead. New Zealand and the rest of the world stood on the threshold of “The Asian Century”.

In the years since Jim Bolger described New Zealand as “an Asian country”, to the present day, the implications of the Burke Review’s repudiation of the “cultural fit” approach to immigration have revealed themselves in demographic and cultural changes that have altered New Zealand dramatically, if not irrevocably. Crucially, the whole process was facilitated by the consistent support of both major parties. Politically, it is not wise to challenge the “Multicultural New Zealand” consensus. Not unless you enjoy being called a racist and/or a white supremacist.

Jones may not enjoy being called a racist, but he is unwilling to let such taunts deflect him from what he clearly perceives to be his duty to defend the cultural and political integrity of his homeland. In this he is (like his leader) hugely assisted by his indigenous identity. Eight hundred years of continuous occupation of these islands gives Maori a slightly more solid position from which to pronounce upon Aotearoa’s core values than people who have been here for eight hundred days. It allows him to become the spokesperson for all those who have lost patience with a political class that point-blank refuses to listen to anyone whose views run counter to the official multicultural consensus.

The problem facing the political class of New Zealand (along with just about every other western nation) is that the impatience of these dissenters has grown to the point where its potential for serious political disruption is obvious to anyone with the slightest trace of populist ambition. And Shane Jones has considerably more than a trace.

Taking the NZ First membership back to first principles on immigration would likely produce a policy radically at odds with the official consensus. New Zealand would, in all probability, emerge from this exercise as a unique mixture of indigenous and western values: an egalitarian, secular and democratic nation under no obligation whatsoever to subordinate – or even adapt – its cultural values and political institutions to the needs of people arriving here from other parts of the world. To those who do not like this version of New Zealand, the members and supporters of NZ First would doubtless reiterate Jones’ advice to catch the next plane home.

It is not difficult to grasp why, all around the world, the immigration issue has become the ideal opener for some very large cans of worms. It feeds directly into just about every facet of life under neoliberalism. Jones and NZ First may begin by formulating a radically different population policy, but from there they are certain to move into a host of other contentious issues.

Not the least of these is likely to be the role played by the mainstream news media in defending the neoliberal/multicultural consensus. It is probable that Jones already perceives the enormous political benefits of casting the nation’s media as mouthpieces for the unmandated transformation of New Zealand’s society and culture. Alongside the “radical” and “activist” immigrants who daily assail him, he will be able to set “woke” journalists. Their increasingly shrill attacks, far from harming NZ First, will only highlight how little they have in common with “garden variety” New Zealanders. What else can they be but “enemies of the people”?

Neither Labour nor National will be able to do very much to counter this strategy. Their complicity in the creation of multicultural New Zealand precludes them from doing anything more than mumbling embarrassingly about immigration numbers. The Greens, naturally, will be rendered incandescent with rage by the “racism” of their partner in government. To no avail. Providing Jones is equal to the task of describing the New Zealand his party’s population policy is determined to preserve, protect and defend, NZ First’s worries about clearing the 5 percent MMP threshold can be put to rest – and Winston reassured that he has chosen a worthy successor.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 7 November 2019.