Earning The Huia Feather.

Still Waiting: Māori land remains in the hands of Non-Māori. The broken promises of the Treaty remain broken. The mana of the tangata whenua languishes under racist neglect. The right to wear the huia feather remains as elusive as ever. Perhaps these three transformations are beyond the power of a Pakeha Labour leader to accomplish?

THE NEW ZEALAND LABOUR PARTY is 108 years old. By a wide margin, that makes it this country’s longest-lived political party. In all those 108 years, however, Labour has never given itself anything other than Pakeha leadership.

In spite of its claim to be the historical custodians of New Zealand’s progressive traditions, on the question of race Labour has allowed itself to be outstripped by all the other political parties currently represented in Parliament.

National elected Simon Bridges, the Greens chose Metiria Turei and Marama Davidson. Act’s leader, David Seymour, has been acquainting himself with his Māori roots for several years now. Te Pāti Māori speaks for itself. And then there’s Winston.

But the list of Labour’s leader’s is like a flour sack – white from top to bottom.

On the face of it, this is strange. Back in the 1920s, the Labour Party published a popular newspaper called The Maoriland Worker – “Maoriland” being in common usage on both sides of the Tasman as an alternative to “New Zealand”.

It is interesting, however, that as Labour edged ever closer to power in the 1930s, The Maoriland Worker became (much less colourfully) The Standard. Keen to pick up the votes of those who eked a living off land that had once belonged to Māori, “Maoriland” had simply become too contentious a word for Labour to retain.

Labour’s association with the Ratana Church, which ultimately delivered all the Māori seats into Labour’s hands, might also be supposed to have significantly improved the prospects of a Māori politician becoming Labour’s leader. Especially when one considers the fact that it was only Labour’s hold on the four Māori seats that allowed it to go on governing between 1946 and 1949. Had the Māori seats not existed, National would have assumed office a whole three years earlier than it did.

When the Ratana leader and prophet, Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, first met the Labour leader, Michael Joseph Savage, in 1936, he is said to given him four objects: a potato, a broken gold watch, a pounamu hei-tiki, and a huia feather.

The potato symbolised the loss of Māori land, along with the sustenance it provided; the broken promises of the Treaty of Waitangi were represented by the broken watch; and the precious greenstone carving stood for the mana of the Māori people. Restore these three, prophesied Ratana, and Labour will have earned the right to wear the huia feather – the sign of chiefly status. So precious were these taonga to the Australian-born Savage that, when he died in 1940, they were buried with him.

If T.W. Ratana really did possess the foresight attributed to him by his many thousands of followers, it is to be wondered who it was that he saw, looking far into the future, wearing the sacred huia feather: a Pakeha, or a Māori?

Last night, in England, the leader of Labour’s Māori caucus, Willie Jackson, was accorded the same honour as the New Zealand Prime Minister, David Lange, when he addressed the members of the Oxford Union. Curiously enough, debating at Oxford University is not the only thing the Labour List MP has in common with Lange. Jackson’s home in Mangere Bridge formerly belonged to the charismatic Labour leader.

It was on Lange’s watch that the changes which transformed New Zealand economically and socially, “Rogernomics”, were introduced. At the end of that process, however, the three transformational challenges embodied in T.W. Ratana’s three symbolic gifts to Mickey Savage remained unmet.

They still are.

Māori land remains in the hands of Non-Māori. The broken promises of the Treaty remain broken. The mana of the tangata whenua languishes under racist neglect. The right to wear the huia feather remains as elusive as ever. Perhaps these three transformations are beyond the power of a Pakeha Labour leader to accomplish?

And they cannot be carried out behind the scenes, quietly and bureaucratically. Willie Jackson and his Māori colleagues tried that route – and it cost Labour the Treasury Benches. If the three transformations of T.W. Ratana are to be accomplished, then it will only happen in the full light of day, with the backing of all New Zealanders – Pakeha as well as Māori.

Labour will not shake off its political lassitude until it gives a Māori MP the chance to fulfil Ratana’s expectations – and earn the huia feather.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 24 May 2024.

Leading Labour Off The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

He’s Got The Moxie: Only Willie Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum.

IT’S ONE OF THE LEFT’S favourite games. (And, quite possibly, one of the Right’s as well.) Imagining Aotearoa-New Zealand in “x” number of years.

Over the weekend (18-19/5/24) Labour’s leader, Chris Hipkins, opted for Aotearoa-New Zealand 2040 – the bi-centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. In a lengthy speech, he described for the delegates to Labour’s Auckland Regional Conference a world in which all of their party’s policies have been brought to fruition. It’s an Aotearoa-New Zealand in which Labour’s political opponents have seen the error of their ways, and nobody is indelicate enough to offer the slightest objection to Labour’s plans.

Nearly a century ago this sort of utopian speculation was the stuff of popular songs. One of the most memorable was Harry McClintock’s 1928 hit, “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”. McClintock was a shrewd enough entertainer to deliver his utopianism satirically:

In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

There’s a land that’s fair and bright

Where the handouts grow on bushes

And you sleep out every night

Where the boxcars all are empty

And the sun shines every day

On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees

The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings

In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

Hipkins, by contrast, takes himself, and his vision of the future, very seriously. On education, he had this to say:

In 2040 Labour has sparked a love of learning. Kids are in a hurry to get to school, because schools have been transformed. Teaching and learning has been re-focused to bring out the best in every child, rather than stuffing things into them. Schools and teachers have been empowered to reject the 20th century factory model of schooling for one that focusses on 21st century skills like problem solving, creativity, teamwork, adaptability and resilience alongside core basics like reading, writing and maths. Practical life skills like home budgeting, how to prepare a healthy meal, and how to look after your own health have also been taught in schools, leaving kids better prepared for life beyond the school gate.

In other words, Labour’s intention, the moment it is returned to power (with Hipkins at the helm) is to force New Zealand educationalists to once again embrace the discredited pedagogical regime that sent New Zealand’s students tumbling down the international league-tables of effective education.

No longer will New Zealand parents have to worry about their precious offspring being subjected to “the 20th century factory model of schooling”. (That would be the model that guaranteed literacy and numeracy, and “stuffed” kids full of useful general knowledge about the way the world works.) Ahead of the Three Rs, on Hipkins’ twenty-first century Big Rock Candy Mountain, children will learn “problem solving, creativity, teamwork, adaptability and resilience”. Meanwhile, their international competitors in Asia and Africa will be emerging from their school gates with the skills needed to acquire nation-building degrees in science, technology and mathematics.

Confronted with this sort of social-liberal dogma, the criticism that Labour has, like the Bourbon rulers of France, “learned nothing and forgotten nothing”, seems particularly apt. At the upper levels of the Labour Party hierarchy there would appear to be an unshakeable belief that the way forward for New Zealand is both well-understood and well-tested. Election defeats notwithstanding, the party’s policy agenda must remain unchanged.

According to this faction, those who suggest a fundamental re-think of the options Labour has placed repeatedly before the electorate should be ignored. Hipkins and his caucus allies are adamant that the party must not succumb to the pressures of populism. The embittered and ambitious individuals who now control Labour’s Policy Council may propose all manner of radical solutions, but they are all well aware that, as the date of the next election draws near, the power to dispose (as in ‘fix’, ‘decide’ and ‘determine’) will always be reclaimed by the parliamentary party.

In other words, dramatic shifts in Labour Party policy can only be effected by a change of leader, and that, in turn, is only possible following the formation of a party faction large enough to guarantee an easy caucus victory (two-thirds or more) for the challenger. The question, therefore, becomes: Is there anyone in Labour’s present caucus capable of assembling the numbers required to topple Hipkins and turn Labour in a new direction?

A number of commentators have pointed to Kieran McAnulty as a possible contender for the No. 1 spot. Superficially attractive as a leadership candidate, McAnulty has steadfastly refused to deliver even the slightest hint that he is, or might become, a serious candidate for the leadership of his party.

Signalling interest in the top job doesn’t always have to be blunt and obvious, it can be delivered subtly in the form of a joke; by forcefully endorsing developments in “sister” parties offshore; or – most commonly – by denying interest in such a pro-forma fashion that the contrary message is conveyed. McAnulty has done none of these things. When he disclaims all interest in replacing Hipkins, he should probably be believed.

Carmel Sepuloni’s name has also been mentioned as a possible contender. It is, however, most unlikely that such a loyal lieutenant would seek to replace her leader in any circumstances other than his stepping-down from the party leadership voluntarily. Sepuloni has been Hipkins’ fierce and reliable ally for so long that it is stretching credulity to suggest that she might become his challenger – rather than his successor.

Which leaves only Willie Jackson. Alone in Labour’s caucus, Jackson has what the Americans would call the “moxie” to mount a serious challenge. The fact that Jackson straddles three of Labour’s key voting blocs: working-class Kiwis, Māori, trade unionists; equips him admirably, as a left-wing politician, to challenge directly the soft, middle-class centres of Labour’s box of chocolates.

Only Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum. In much the same way as Richard Nixon was the only president who could have successfully sold the USA’s rapprochement with China, Jackson is the only New Zealand politician capable of “selling” a Tiriti-based Aotearoa as the best means of uplifting both working-class Māori and working-class Pakeha.

Labour’s ad campaign for the Māori seats in 2017, in which the urban, working-class lives of most Māori were lovingly depicted, and which secured all seven seats for Labour, points the way. With a minimum of tweaking, the messaging and imagery of that 2017 campaign could reposition Labour in a way which would allow it to shrug-off its “woke” middle-class voters to the Greens. Certainly, if Jackson opted to lead the charge for significant and progressive tax reform within the party, he would have scant difficulty in organising a populist left-wing faction behind him.

At the very least, a Jackson tilt at the Labour leadership would be of huge assistance in bringing the party down off its Big Rock Candy Mountain.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 20 May 2024.

Who’s Going Up The Media Mountain?

Mr Bombastic: Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to expanding social justice. 

WILLIE JACKSON is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also offered up ten names for Jackson’s consideration. The idea is not a bad one, especially in light of Labour’s success in bringing together a similar collection of experts to discuss the pros and cons of New Zealand signing up to Pillar 2 of AUKUS. It won’t work, however, if there’s only one song-sheet.

The cynics among us will no doubt wonder aloud why Jackson, when he was the Minister of Broadcasting and Communications, did not think to summon a similar colloquium to chart a path forward for the country’s struggling Fourth Estate. It is certainly highly frustrating to see former Labour cabinet ministers calling upon the good and the great to debate the burning issues of the moment in circumstances where they are structurally powerless to give force to their advice.

It would seem that Labour is only keen to listen and discuss policy with New Zealanders when giving practical effect to their ideas is impossible. Once in office, however, the opinions of those Labour deemed worthy of consulting whilst in Opposition rapidly lose their persuasive power. Those masters of deflation, the Public Service are quick to prick their new masters’ policy balloons. Big ideas are prone to creating big consequences – and by no means all of these are favourable. Best to leave the difficult business of devising and implementing policy-change to the professionals.

Few political observers would blame Jackson for telling these “professionals” to bugger-off. After all, they were the ones who spent months and months chewing over Labour’s plans for merging Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand into a single public broadcasting entity. They were also the ones who oversaw the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars on private consultants. Not that this lavish spending on “expert” advice in any way empowered Jackson and his colleagues to offer the voters a succinct and compelling explanation of the merger plan. Perhaps there wasn’t one. Perhaps that’s why, in spite of the vast sums already spent, Chris Hipkins knocked the entire project on the head.

Would the names advanced by The Daily Blog Editor do any better?

Certainly, the academics on Bradbury’s list, Professor Wayne Hope, Dr Joe Atkinson and the key figure in AUT’s “Journalism, Media and Democracy” (JMAD) research team, Dr Merja Myllylathi, have all, over many years, written and spoken out forcefully on what they perceive to be the strengths and weaknesses of the New Zealand news media.

Ironically, the media they wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to expanding social justice. The challenge now, for these wise members of the academy, is to explain why the media they wanted is not what so many of its readers, listeners and viewers wanted.

Perhaps the seasoned journalists on Bradbury’s list of media luminaries could help them? Although it’s possible that John Campbell, Barbara Dreaver, and Mihi Forbes are not entirely sure that being on the list of a radical left-wing blogger is something that will necessarily rebound to their advantage.

Most media observers would hail Dreaver as a journalist of the old school: that is to say, a gutsy television reporter who has always worked tirelessly to uncover the facts, and then been content to let those facts speak for themselves. Campbell and Forbes, by contrast, often come across as fully-paid-up members of Team Truth.

Given that the truth is not always factual, and the facts don’t always align with the truth, the work of journalists like Campbell and Forbes tends to be the sort that raises hackles. As Bradbury’s academics are, perhaps, only now discovering: the Great New Zealand Public is more in love with the tellers of “good yarns”, than they are with the campaigners for the right (or should that be left?) kind of morals.

Few would dispute the wisdom of putting Myles Thomas on a list of New Zealanders seeking to rescue the Fourth Estate. As the spokesperson for Better Public Broadcasting Trust, Thomas brings a refreshingly Alexandrian approach to the Gordin Knot that is New Zealand broadcasting policy. 

Anyone who can tell a parliamentary select committee: “TVNZ’s annual budget is roughly $300 million. For the cost of just $5 a month per capita, New Zealand taxpayers could fully fund TVNZ so that it need no longer rely on any advertising at all”, is blessed with a very sharp intellectual sword indeed! Sharper, certainly, than Jackson’s blunt old blade.

It is not very likely that the “Old School” Gavin Ellis, former NZ Herald Editor and university lecturer, and the bombastic Mr Bradbury would have got along very well had Fate thrown them together in the same newsroom or classroom, and yet, Ellis’s name is also there on The Daily Blog editor’s list.

Fiercely loyal to his beleaguered profession, Ellis struggles, like all of us, to square the circle of a Fourth Estate that is crucial to democratic politics, with a Fourth estate that can no longer command the advertising revenue that made people like himself such key players in the game. Ellis knows that social media has already transformed the game of politics, and not necessarily for the better, but he can come up with no better remedy for the desperately ailing “legacy media” than for the state to help it to dip its bucket into the New Media giants’ “rivers of gold”. In the meantime, Ellis, like AUT’s Myllylathi, is at pains to fend off all those critics who cry: “Physician, heal thyself!”

Quite why Matthew Tukaki and Michael Wood appear on the list of media sages is anybody’s guess. Bradbury has friends in Te Ao Māori, and the Labour Party, but even so …

Conspicuous by their absence from Bradbury’s list are the critics of, and challengers to, the Fourth Estate that Jackson is now so keen to rescue. And, right there, is the besetting sin of both the Labour Party and the besieged bastions of broadcasting and the print media – a dread of giving those whom they perceive to be their enemies access to the microphone. Twenty years ago, key players in the Fourth Estate would have recognised that for what it was: cowardice – and dumb cowardice at that.

All the “summits” in the world will avail their organisers nothing, if all they are willing to listen to are their own fears.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 22 April 2024.

Time To Choose.

To Have And To Hold: And now, as if the malevolent spirit of the times has not destabilised our world enough, New Zealanders’ adherence to the values and processes of democracy is being put to the test. Once again, the dividing line is horizontal, not vertical, with the “decolonising” project of Māori nationalism sundering the supporters of democracy from the partisans of ethnic exceptionalism. 

TO BE POLITICAL in the fourth quarter of 2023 is not easy. Yes, New Zealand has just passed through a general election, but the outcome of that contest was signalled well in advance by the polls. That the government lost came as no surprise, even if the vehemence of the electorate’s judgement came as a shock to many of the defeated party’s supporters. But, it wasn’t Labour’s thrashing, and the victory of the Right, that made politics so hard. The explanation for the souring of political discourse here, and around the world, may be traced to Southern Israel, Hamas’s hideous rampage of 7 October, and the furious reaction of the Israeli state.

These events have hacked a bloody line through religious faiths, political movements, parties, families and friendships. Where people stand in relation to that dividing line is determined by many factors. Their understanding of history. Their perception of what politics should, and should not, permit. The reach of their hate. The strength of their love. The persuasiveness of their fear.

Significantly, the line runs horizontally, not vertically. Where one stands on the Israel-Hamas War is not a straightforward matter of Left versus Right. On both sides of the classical divide, friends and comrades draw away from each other: blue and white above the line; red, white, green and black below.

Discussing the times and the morals with an old comrade, just a few days ago, we reflected on the fast decreasing utility of the terms “Right” and “Left”. He recalled the ease with which, as much younger men, we were able to sort the issues of the day into neat ideological piles; separate the protagonists from the antagonists; and know a kind of ontological peace. Now, he told me, the only political idea with which he still identifies unequivocally is Democracy. In the past, he proudly proclaimed himself a socialist. Today, he would own to being a “radical democrat” – nothing more.

And now, as if the malevolent spirit of the times has not destabilised our world enough, New Zealanders’ adherence to the values and processes of democracy is being put to the test. Once again, the dividing line is horizontal, not vertical, with the “decolonising” project of Māori nationalism sundering the supporters of democracy from the partisans of ethnic exceptionalism. Like Palestine, the meaning, purpose, and future of Te Tiriti O Waitangi has become an issue over which an amiable ‘agreement to differ’ is no longer possible.

The day that was always going to dawn has arrived. The day when the unmandated revision of the meaning, purpose and scope of the Treaty of Waitangi runs into the numerical majority of New Zealanders who, according to the pollsters, have run out of patience with the “Treatyists” insistence that ‘Non-Māori’ have an open-ended obligation to acknowledge and fulfil what are now their unabashedly revolutionary constitutional claims. This loss of patience has taken the form of the Act Party’s democratic counter-revision of the Treaty: a political formula it seeks to ratify with a referendum involving – and binding – the whole adult population of New Zealand.

The political leadership of Maoridom, and their Pakeha supporters, have been quick to declare their opposition to any resolution of Treaty differences by way of counting votes. The former Minister of Māori Affairs, Willie Jackson, has warned that elements within the Māori world are willing to “make war” on any attempt to re-write the Treaty’s meaning. (That the Waitangi Tribunal and the Judiciary have been doing exactly that for the best part of 50 years appears to have slipped the former minister’s mind.)

Considerably less ferociously, the distinguished Treaty historian, Dame Anne Salmond, has also taken up an anti-referendum position. Writing for the Newsroom site, she argues that “the idea of putting the ‘principles of the Treaty’ to a popular vote is unjust and unwise, and should not be entertained by any responsible government ….. a referendum on ‘the principles of the Treaty,’ given its populist appeal to the majority and its inflammatory potential, is not the right (tika) way to conduct this kind of discussion. It would be unjust and divisive, inciting extreme views in all directions and fostering misinformation, anger and ill-will.”

The central difficulty with Dame Anne’s position is that it fails to acknowledge that the manner in which the (re)interpretation of the Treaty has been carried out since the passage of the Waitangi Tribunal legislation in 1975 has not been all that “tika” either. The re-conceptualisation of New Zealand’s democratic system of government was undertaken by institutions and individuals not subject to the judgement of the citizenry. Attempting to re-construct the nation’s constitutional edifice without reference to those obliged to live within it was always a very risky venture.

Dame Anne is not alone in her view that holding a referendum on the Treaty would not be wise. Rather than leave the decision to the electors, the former National Party Defence Minister, and present Law Commission member, Dr Wayne Mapp, argues for a Royal Commission of Inquiry “charged with coming up with an acceptable set of ‘Principles of the Treaty’, that could form the basis of legislative definition of the principles. The term itself is a creature of statute but it has never been statutorily defined. So over the last 36 years the Courts have fulfilled that role, supplemented by the bureaucracy.”

Presumably, Dr Mapp is channelling the wisdom of King Solomon, since nothing less would be required to select a panel of Royal Commissioners acceptable to all the parties involved in the Treaty Debate. Any line-up receiving the thumbs-up from Iwi leaders, Te Pāti Māori and Willie Jackson would, almost certainly, get the thumbs-down from David Seymour and Winston Peters. Which is, precisely, why a referendum is necessary.

Dr Mapp is not convinced. “The reason why I oppose a referendum is that it will be an explicit removal of minority rights. Māori are a minority, mostly contained in the 18%. They will not agree to an ACT imposed definition of the principles of the treaty. I am well connected to Māori views on this matter, primarily through my wife [Denese Henare - C.T.]. I know the level of response and division that such a referendum will cause.”

Once again, the apparent absence of concern at what manner of response and division might ensue when those Mapp describes as “conservative senior politicians” are successful in persuading Christopher Luxon to rule out a referendum. Clearly, the levying of war against the Crown is something only Māori have the wit to threaten.

And, therein, lies the conundrum Luxon will have to face. If he bows to Māori threats to “make war” on his coalition government by scotching Act’s referendum proposal, then what’s next? What does he suppose will be the lesson drawn by those Māori determined to persist with co-governance, with Three Waters, with the Māori Health Authority?

“The last thing National needs over the next 3 years is an intemperate ‘debate’ over the principles of the Treaty.” Opines Dr Mapp. “There is a smarter approach to this issue.” So the Crown has insisted, ever since the 1980s, when it became frightened of what Māori might do if it dared to say “No”. But, it was those “smarter” approaches, driven by fear, that prompted the decisions that have led us, concession by concession, one legal judgement inspiring and empowering the next, to this present position. Thus we find ourselves located, dangerously, between a rock and a hard place.

But, being political has never been easy – not even when one takes the easy way out. The moment always arrives when a choice has to be made. Democracy? Or Ethnic Exceptionalism? And what determines the choice? That, too, does not change:

Our understanding of history. Our perception of what politics should, and should not, permit. The reach of our hate. The strength of our love. The persuasiveness of our fear.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 13 November 2023.

Threatening “Consequences”.

Warning Shot: The former Māori Development Minister, Willie Jackson, predicted civil unrest on a scale “five times, ten times” worse than the 1981 Springbok Tour protests if the Act Party’s referendum on Te Tiriti O Waitangi goes ahead.

“CONSEQUENCES” – it’s a word that acquires an ominous quality in the mouths of political radicals. As in: “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from its consequences. Or, as Te Pāti Māori’s Debbie Ngarewa Packer expressed it, when asked what would happen if the Act Party secured its referendum on Te Tiriti from its new coalition partners: “We have always said there will be consequences.”

In both contexts the word is freighted with menace. It is impossible to miss the threat which the word is now required to bear. What the political radical is saying to the person about to avail herself of what is perhaps the most fundamental of all human rights is chilling.

“Of course you can speak out on this issue, but you are surely not so naïve as to believe that your little speech will be the end of it. Giving voice to such opinions cannot help but leave a very black mark on your record. It’s the sort of thing that goes down in an employee’s personal file. Your chances of promotion may be limited very seriously by giving voice to such views. Still, it’s entirely up to you. Just remember, though, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from its consequences.”

If you were a public servant harbouring serious doubts about the wisdom of enshrining “decolonisation” and “indigenisation” at the top of your ministry’s priorities, and you had let it be known that it was your intention to speak out against the idea at the next staff training day, and your supervisor delivered that not-so-subtle warning to you the night before, would you go ahead with your plan? Or would the consequences of going ahead with your “little speech” cause you to scrap the whole idea?

Are we really free to express ourselves if, by doing so, we place our livelihood, our entire future career, at risk? If that’s what’s at stake, then doesn’t the exercise of our freedom of expression take on a fraught, almost existential, character? Like the German citizen of the Third Reich who, in obedience to his Christian faith, conceals a Jewish family in his attic. Simply by showing compassion for his fellow human-beings, that man is risking arrest, imprisonment and death. When those are the outcomes of displaying human compassion; of obeying the Christian injunction to “love thy neighbour”; is it not reasonable to suppose that the exercise of love and compassion will diminish?

Attaching dire consequences to any aspect of human behaviour must be seen as a means of reducing or eliminating that behaviour. If speaking out against “decolonisation” and “indigenisation” in a government ministry could cost the speaker their career, then the chances of it happening will be reduced dramatically. A climate of fear and compliance will be created in which the only safe speech is that which conforms to the policies and plans of the people in charge. The language of consequences all-too-easily shades into the language of totalitarianism.

It is difficult to attribute anything other than an intention to intimidate the incoming government to Debbie Ngarewa Packer’s statement to RNZ. Or to Willie Jackson’s comments to Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q+A current affairs programme. The former Māori Development Minister predicted civil unrest on a scale “five times, ten times” worse than the 1981 Springbok Tour protests if the Act Party’s referendum goes ahead. Both politicians are laying out the consequences of a coalition partner making it possible for citizens to cast a vote on the role and scope of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements. It is suggested that massive civil disturbances – quite possibly violent in nature – will be the result if this classically democratic mechanism is employed to resolve significant differences in the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Compare the response of these two Māori nationalists with those of the people who opposed the introduction of proportional representation, assisted dying, and decriminalisation of cannabis. Did the “anti” side of these debates, or the “pro” side for that matter, threaten massive civil disturbances if their will was thwarted by the democratic process? No, they did not, because the referendum is generally acknowledged by all those who adhere to the democratic values of New Zealand society to be the best method of resolving controversial issues rationally and peacefully.

What other conclusion can be drawn from the statements of Debbie Ngarewa Packer and Willie Jackson, except that they reject the principle of majority rule that underpins the entire democratic system of government. And, if that is true, then New Zealanders will find it difficult to resist the conclusion that these two politicians’ preference, and the preference of the Māori nationalist movement generally, is for a system of government that accords the right of veto to a minority of the population.

Because, what else is being demanded here but the right to prevent certain political policies from being implemented? Not by virtue of winning an election fought, at least in part, on the political policies in dispute, Not by winning a referendum called to determine, finally, which course of action should be followed. But by warning of the consequences of allowing the offending policy to be implemented over the minority’s objections. Or, in the language of the mafioso enforcer: “Nice little country you’ve got here, it would be a real shame if something happened to turn it into a hell-hole of civil strife.”

How, then, should the incoming government respond to this threat of consequences? The largest party of the coalition currently in formation, National, has rejected Act’s policy of a Treaty referendum as “divisive and unhelpful”. But this is nonsense. A great many of the policies espoused by National, Act and NZ First are “divisive and unhelpful” – not least their pledge to abolish Fair Pay Agreements. But, the fact that a great many people are opposed to National-Act-NZ First policies will not prevent them from being implemented. It’s one of the principal reasons for holding democratic elections, to provide governments with the mandate needed to proceed with their policies over the objections of the opposition. The question, therefore, is not whether Act’s policy is “divisive and unhelpful”, but whether it is justified.

And, if it is justified, then the incoming government must decide how to respond to the threatened consequences of allowing Act’s referendum to be put before the people. The answer to this question is as clear as it is daunting: no government can allow its conduct of national affairs to be determined by threats of massive civil disturbance and/or political violence.

Successfully applied once, the minority’s consequences – its veto – will be applied again, and again, and again, until the political will of the majority has been set at nought. Either that, or, unwilling to be ruled by the minority, the majority will develop a sequence of consequences intended to secure results considerably more to their liking.

This essay was originally posted on the Democracy Project website on Monday, 6 November 2023.

Secretive Constitutional Reform Is Political Kryptonite.

Dangerous Stuff: The moment it becomes clear to non-Māori New Zealanders just how violently Te Pāti Māori’s reforms would re-arrange the country’s constitutional furniture their reaction is likely to sink any chance of a centre-left victory. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, talk of serious constitutional reform has the effect of Kryptonite on most New Zealand politicians.

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM is Kryptonite to our political leaders. New Zealand’s No. 8 wire constitution, largely unwritten and characteristically informal, has been deemed “rough enough” by the country’s two largest political parties. In both National and Labour, excessive interest in the topic is not career-enhancing – being taken as evidence of the political trainspotting to which most “ordinary” Kiwis are violently allergic.

This allergy has only gotten worse as the political salience of Te Tiriti o Waitangi has increased. The alacrity and energy with which National and Labour politicians kick Tiriti-based constitutional reform down the road is remarkable. That republican proposals regarding the monarchy are similarly postponed to some nebulous future time, merely confirms our politicians’ aversion to serious constitutional debate.

The politicians’ aversion to substantive constitutional reform is perfectly understandable when set against the New Zealand electorate’s strongly-held conviction that Parliament is – and should remain – supreme. Formalising our constitutional arrangements in writing would lead, inexorably, to the Judiciary adjudicating constitutional disputes. The idea of appointed judges having the final say over the actions of our democratically-elected House of Representatives has never gone down well in these parts.

Like it or not, however, the pressure to enshrine Te Tiriti at the heart of our constitutional structures continues to grow. “What to do about ‘The Treaty’?” is certain to be one of the key questions dominating the forthcoming election campaign. This is not because our political leaders have finally decided to bite the bullet on constitutional reform, it’s because Māori activists – both legal and political – have finally forced the issue onto New Zealand’s short-term political agenda.

Both of the major parties have been caught in a pincer-movement. From the left, Te Pāti Māori (TPM) has made it clear that constitutional reform must be part of any coalition and/or support agreement involving itself, Labour and the Greens. From the right, the Act Party is insisting that any conservative coalition government must commit itself to, first, defining te Tiriti’s meaning and scope, and then, confirming that definition by referendum.

The moment it becomes clear to non-Māori New Zealanders just how violently TPM’s reforms would re-arrange the country’s constitutional furniture their reaction is likely to sink any chance of a centre-left victory. By the same token, an affirmative referendum vote for a re-definition reducing Te Tiriti to a mere constitutional flourish would unleash racial conflict on a scale not seen since the land wars of the 1860s.

Presumably, it was thoughts of this sort that prompted the Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, to warn New Zealand’s minor parties against announcing bottom-lines that neither Labour nor National can accept without setting themselves up for a fatal electoral backlash. Hipkins’ (along with the Opposition Leader, Christopher Luxon’s) problem is that neither TPM nor Act can afford to be seen abandoning their principles for the baubles of office. Both parties’ electoral strength has been built upon their very public determination to stand firm even when all those around them are bowing to “mainstream” pressures.

The uncompromising positions adopted by those parties operating beyond the pale of political orthodoxy are what you get when orthodox politicians’ refuse to both sanction and participate in genuine constitutional debate. But if, by their refusal, those same orthodox politicians believe that serious constitutional debate can be stifled indefinitely, then they are wrong. If the non-Māori political establishment was unwilling to countenance constitutional reform, the Māori political establishment – in the guise of the Iwi Leaders Forum – were determined to set the wheels in motion.

It was in 2010, at a meeting of the Iwi Chairs’ Forum, that a proposal for Matike Mai Aotearoa, the Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, was first laid upon the table. By 2012, Matike Mai, led by Margaret Mutu and the late Moana Jackson, was ready to begin developing and implementing “a model for an inclusive Constitution for Aotearoa based on tikanga and kawa, He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Niu Tireni of 1835, Te Tiriti o Waitangi of 1840, and other indigenous human rights instruments which enjoy a wide degree of international recognition.”

For more than four years, up and down New Zealand, Māori gathered to impart their ideas about constitutional transformation to Matike Mai. For the most part, Non-Māori New Zealanders remained unaware that such a process was underway. Certainly, only a very small number of Non-Māori understood the radical character of the undertaking. In the words of the Working Group’s final report:

The Terms of Reference did not ask the Working Group to consider such questions as ‘How might the Treaty fit within the current Westminster constitutional system’ but rather required it to seek advice on a different type of constitutionalism that is based upon He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti. For that reason this Report uses the term ‘constitutional transformation’ rather than ‘constitutional change’.

Mutu and Jackson clearly considered this approach to be optimal, but, from the perspective of those seeking constitutional reform proposals with significant buy-in from Māori and Non-Māori alike, Matike Mai was emphatically sub-optimal. Its recommendations, untested by the responses of Non-Māori, could hardly avoid becoming political Kryptonite. The moment the Non-Māori population became aware of what Matike Mai was proposing, things were going to get extremely messy.

The change of Government in 2017 hardly improved matters. Now vested with all the powers of the Executive, Labour’s Māori ministers opted to continue down the constitutional reform path unaccompanied by the Non-Maori Treaty partner. Commissioned by Nanaia Mahuta, the extraordinary He Puapua Report (kept under wraps until the 2020 general election was safely out of the way) rehearsed many of the radical constitutional ideas first mooted in Matike Mai. When, inevitably, the contents of He Puapua was leaked to the public, Jacinda Ardern and her Non-Māori colleagues could not back away from it fast enough.

And, as if Matike Mai and He Puapua weren’t enough, there was also a constitutional consultative process of extraordinary design moving inexorably towards its scheduled conclusion. This exercise was notable for its division into two separate stages.

The first stage was restricted to Māori. Only when their recommendations had been finalised would Non-Māori be asked to respond. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson received the Māori-generated constitutional proposals he refused to put them before Cabinet. He then (wisely) decided to halt the entire exercise until after the election.

In the light of this extraordinary history, it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that those charged with managing the discussion of New Zealand’s future constitutional arrangements have been guilty of appalling cowardice. Rather than insist that any and all discussion of the nation’s constitutional future takes place in the full view of its citizens, the representatives of both Treaty partners found it more expedient to do their talking separately and behind closed doors. Inevitably, this secretive process has given rise to profound misgivings, especially among the Non-Māori majority. The Labour Government’s shameful lack of transparency has allowed fear and doubt to grow about the motives and intentions of the Māori minority. This has contributed to an unnecessary and distressing deterioration in New Zealand’s race relations.

To prevent matters deteriorating further, Labour and National should both undertake to defer any significant constitutional change until there has been a opportunity for all New Zealanders – Māori and Non-Māori – to engage openly, and without fear of “cancellation”, in discussing and debating the full range of options for how their country might be governed. It is not in the least reasonable to assume that a durable constitution can be drafted in the absence of untrammelled popular participation.

Political Kryptonite can only be rendered harmless by exposing it to the remedial effects of direct democratic sunlight.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 15 May 2023.

Does Chris Hipkins Have The Spinal Steel To Force A Change In Labour’s Course?

A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is able to steer Labour into less contentious and more bounteous electoral waters, then Jacinda Ardern’s sacrifice will not have been in vain.

IT REMAINS to be seen whether Chris Hipkins can overcome the political contradictions which drove his predecessor from the prime-ministership. Jacinda Ardern resigned her office in recognition of her personal incapacity to confront and overcome the problems that were driving her government inexorably towards defeat. When she told New Zealand that she had “nothing left in the tank”, Ardern was courageously acknowledging that after five-and-a-half years of unrelenting crisis management, she simply could not summon the energy for the political fight required to save her government, her party, and, ultimately, her country.

In many respects Ardern was the author of her own misfortune. In dealing with core challenges confronting the New Zealand state – practically all of which are traceable to the consequences of colonisation – the former prime-minister had demonstrated both excessive cultural generosity and insufficient political realism.

Predictably, the resulting “revolution of rising expectations” so clearly evident among Māori, especially young Māori, has generated an equal and opposite political reaction among the Pakeha population – especially older Pakeha – which is driving the electorate sharply to the right. The prospect of arguing her caucus, her party, and a good chunk of her electoral base into abandoning Labour’s commitment to the radical decolonisation project of its Māori caucus was simply too big an ask for Ardern – so she quit.

A prime minister possessed of less “kindness” and goodwill would have coldly informed Labour’s Māori leadership from the get-go that their programme of constitutional transformation was much too broad and far too radical to impose upon an electorate insufficiently prepared for such a revolutionary “break in the wave” of New Zealand’s political evolution. Ardern should have put it bluntly to Willie Jackson and Nanaia Mahuta, that prior to any enduring legislative changes being attempted by her own, or any, government, the unavoidable philosophical, cultural, and practical political arguments would have to be won – decisively.

All-too-clearly, such an ultimatum was never put to Labour’s Māori caucus. Like so many well-educated and well-meaning Pakeha, Labour’s non-Māori MPs – led by Ardern – were unwilling to challenge the programme being promoted by their Māori colleagues. Fearful of the charge of racism, and mindful of the bitter recriminations that followed Helen Clark’s 2004 Foreshore & Seabed legislation, the Prime Minister and her caucus waved through policies that could only be described as revolutionary.

Except, of course, they were not described – not to the broader electorate. Mahuta commissioned the report that became known as He Puapua in so quiet a fashion that Labour’s NZ First coalition partner was unaware of its existence. The electorate was similarly kept in the dark concerning the document setting 6th February 2040 – the 200th anniversary of the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi – as the date by which the transformation of New Zealand culturally, politically and economically was to be accomplished.

When, inevitably, the document was leaked, and the public acquired some inkling of what was being considered, Prime Minister Ardern was forced to deny unequivocally that the document in any way represented official government policy. By this stage, however, the electorate was growing sceptical.

That scepticism was not diminished when the full extent of Nanaia Mahuta’s “Three Waters” legislation became known. Putting to one side the bitter controversies arising out of the Labour Government’s handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic, no other government initiative has aroused so much public opposition and suspicion as “Three Waters”. Indeed, it has become a talisman for that part of the electorate which purports to feel the political ground shifting under its feet – even as its government lies, prevaricates, and at times appears to be led by the nose by those with the most to gain from the “Three Waters” legislation’s passage.

And still the case for co-governance, decolonisation and indigenisation is not made. The construction of an argument from first principles may indeed have been accomplished by the project’s Māori initiators, but, if it has, then it has been presented in the absence of Pakeha, a critical news media, and always behind firmly closed doors.

Moreover, it is not a case which the Māori Development Minister, Willie Jackson, is prepared to put in front of his Cabinet colleagues. He knows that, even among Pakeha as sympathetic as Labour’s, the arguments and recommendations contained therein simply would not fly. In recognition of their sheer unacceptability, Jackson has announced his determination to keep the revolutionaries’ interpretation of te Tiriti o Waitangi and its constitutional implications under wraps – at least until the general election is out of the way.

But it is precisely this sort of political cynicism that is fast eroding Labour’s support in the opinion polls. “Three Waters” may be the leading cause of voter disillusion, but it is merely emblematic of the voters’ growing unease that this government is hell-bent on doing things to them, rather than for them.

In considering Labour’s deteriorating electoral position, and its causes, over her summer break, all the while contending with the unrelenting torrents of misogynist and conspiracist hate pouring down upon her head from social media, Ardern correctly concluded that the task of righting Labour’s ship was beyond her powers. Without Winston Peters’ ability to stare down her Māori caucus, Ardern had conceded far too much ground to Jackson and Mahuta, more than she could hope to reclaim personally.

Boxed into a corner ideologically, electorally, and personally, Ardern rightly concluded that her best (and only sensible) move was to exit the game entirely. Only someone coming into the top job fresh, and unburdened by the concessions of five-and-a-half prime-ministerial years, could entertain the slightest hope of prevailing upon his colleagues to change course.

There is little doubt that Ardern’s successor, Chris (“Chippy”) Hipkins, has the necessary spinal steel to demand, and be given, a new set of political co-ordinates. On the vexed questions of co-governance, decolonisation and indigenisation, the new prime minister need not even repudiate the Māori caucus’s revolutionary ambitions, merely state the obvious truth that they have so-far failed to convince their fellow citizens that such radical constitutional changes are either necessary or desirable. In the same breath, he can then reassure the Pakeha electorate that Labour will never connive in the arbitrary imposition of a new, ethnically-bifurcated, constitution from above. To be accepted, constitutional changes must first be ratified, democratically, by all the people.

Were Hipkins to make this position clear to the Māori leaders gathered at Ratana – that they must win the debate for change before attempting to legislate their programme into being – a significant fraction of the Pakeha electorate, quite possibly a winning fraction, would be both relieved and reassured. As a consequence, both the National and Act parties would be forced to discard some pretty important face cards from what had been their very strong electoral hands.

In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If “Chippy” is able to steer Labour into less contentious and more bounteous electoral waters, then Jacinda Ardern’s sacrifice will not have been in vain.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 23 January 2023.

Willie Jackson’s New Network Will Go Fishing For a New Audience.

Train Wreck: Perhaps the easiest way to describe what Willie Jackson’s new public broadcaster will be like, is to set out clearly what it will not be like. It will not be fair. It will not be balanced. It will not perceive itself as a platform upon which all New Zealanders, espousing all manner of ideas and opinions, will be made to feel welcome. 

WHY CAN’T WILLIE JACKSON make a case for the merger of Radio NZ and TVNZ?

Last Sunday, on the Q+A current affairs show, he told his host, Jack Tame, that he wanted an “entity” to match Britain’s BBC and Australia’s ABC. Great! Were New Zealanders to be treated to a new public broadcaster modelled on the BBC and the ABC, the country would forever be in the Minister of Broadcasting’s debt.

Unfortunately, Jackson was just blowing smoke. The entity he is in the process of creating will not be the least bit like the BBC or ABC. So unlike them will it be, in fact, that it is actually safer for the Minister to give New Zealanders as few details as possible. Hence his unwillingness to make the case.

So, what will this “entity”: this Frankenstein broadcaster, cobbled together from the dead bodies of New Zealanders’ existing public radio and television networks; actually be like?

Perhaps the easiest way to describe what Jackson’s new public broadcaster will be like, is to set out clearly what it will not be like.

It will not be fair. It will not be balanced. It will not perceive itself as a platform upon which all New Zealanders, espousing all manner of ideas and opinions, will be made to feel welcome. That sort of public broadcaster – of which the BBC is undoubtedly the exemplar – strives to present itself as a mirror: an institution in whose productions the nation expects to see itself reflected – warts and all – and is not disappointed.

But surely, that must be what Jackson and his colleagues have in mind? One would hope so. But if that was indeed the sort of public broadcaster Labour is planning, then, just like the BBC and the ABC, it would be steadfastly non-commercial. More bluntly, it wouldn’t be supported in any way, shape, or form – by advertising.

From the very beginning, however, Labour’s made it plain that the merged entity will rely for a goodly chunk of its income on the sale of advertising. That decision, alone, shows that, regardless of the Minister’s protestations, the entity he has planned will be nothing like the BBC or the ABC – which rely upon a broadcasting licence fee, and direct state funding, respectively. Insert advertisers into the broadcasting equation, and pretty soon all your left with is a schedule dedicated to attracting the highest number of eyeballs, by catering to the lowest common cultural denominators.

That is why Radio NZ is the only real public broadcaster left in New Zealand. Its National and Concert Programmes are rigorously non-commercial – a status they enjoy by virtue of the fact that the entire network is funded by the taxpayer. It is this complete independence from advertisers and sponsors that makes Radio NZ’s diverse selection of programmes, catering to all manner of tastes, possible.

Television NZ, by way of contrast, is utterly dependent on the advertisers’ dollars. It’s programming is dictated by the ratings. If not enough people are watching, then advertisers demand a discount, and the network’s revenues fall. If more viewers are keen to watch FBoy Island than an historical drama, then it’s the reality TV show that gets the prime-time slot. Which is why there are so few historical dramas, and so many reality TV shows, on prime-time NZ television.

Forty years ago, New Zealand’s public television networks, heavily subsidised by a broadcasting licence-fee, and with the amount of advertising strictly regulated, was as dedicated to producing the broadest possible range of high-quality programmes as public radio still is today. The full commercialisation of TVNZ – yet another gift of the Rogernomics era – would undoubtedly have been Radio NZ’s fate had it not been for its huge, highly-educated, and politically-engaged audience’s ability to keep it out of the private sector’s withering grip.

Which brings us back to the original question: Why can’t Willie Jackson defend the merger of RNZ and TVNZ? The answer is brutally simple: Radio NZ currently broadcasts to the wrong demographic. It’s listeners are too old, too white, too well-educated, and insufficiently “woke” to be herded in the direction Labour favours.

That is why Willie Jackson is so determined to merge Radio NZ with TVNZ. He needs a new net with which to go fishing for a new audience.

He neither needs, nor wants, RNZ’s existing listeners.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 December 2022.

Jackson's Trap.

Tight Spot: Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson has been left holding a draft implementation plan for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which is too radical to present to Cabinet, but which its authors refuse to re-write. Much broader public consultation has been promised once the plan is released, but time is short, and the clock is ticking.

WILLIE JACKSON is caught in a trap of his own making. Three groups, tasked in April with developing a detailed plan for implementing the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) have steadfastly refused to play the bureaucratic game the Minister for Māori Development has forced upon them. In essence, they have delivered Jackson an offer neither he, nor the Cabinet, can accept. Their “Declaration Plan”, clearly politically unacceptable, has been kept under wraps for months.

Non-plussed, Jackson asked the plan’s authors: unidentified representatives of Te Puni Kokiri, Pou Tikanga (Iwi Leaders Group) and the Human Rights Commission; to present a revised document for Cabinet’s consideration by July. With November fast approaching, the document’s authors have yet to respond. It is difficult to interpret this tardiness as anything other than a deliberate effort to run down the clock on Jackson. The Declaration Plan’s authors appear confident that their failure to adhere to the Minister’s consultative timetable will make it virtually impossible to organise an effective public response prior to the 2023 General Election.

Clearly, a high-stakes hand of political poker is being played out here. It is hard to interpret the Declaration plan’s authors’ failure to meet Jackson’s deadline as anything other than an act of deliberate defiance. What has prompted their non-compliance?

The most obvious answer is to be found in the unusual ordering of the “Declaration Plan’s” preparation. Rather than gather a broadly representative group of cultural, political and legal experts to develop a blueprint for UNDRIP’s implementation – something in the nature of a Royal Commission of Inquiry – Jackson initiated a round of consultations with Māori groups across the country, and then tasked TPK, the Iwi Leaders Group and the HRC with producing a “first draft” of the results. Once endorsed by Cabinet, this draft Declaration Plan was to be presented to the whole population of New Zealand for consideration, comment, and revision.

Now, any Māori ethno-nationalist worthy of the name will immediately recognise Jackson’s action-plan as a crude mechanism for forcing tangata whenua to water-down their proposals to the point where a Pakeha-dominated Cabinet will find them acceptable. This signed-off Declaration Plan must then be subjected to all the slings and arrows of Pakeha racism – the mouthpieces of which will undoubtedly demand even more watering-down. By the time the process is complete, New Zealand’s plan for implementing UNDRIP will be so anodyne that even Jair Bolsonaro could give it the thumbs-up!

It is worth recalling at this point that a comprehensive “Declaration Plan” already exists. Commissioned by the then Minister of Māori Development, Nanaia Mahuta, in 2019, the He Puapua report, sets forth a step-by-step process for bringing Aotearoa into full compliance with UNDRIP by 2040 – the 200th anniversary of the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Kept under wraps by Jacinda Ardern’s government, He Puapua was clearly regarded as far too radical to be placed before the New Zealand electorate in 2020. When, inevitably, the document found its way into the public domain, the newly-elected Labour Government was quick to deny that its proposals were – or would ever be – in any way driving Government policy. The Prime Minister curtly ruled-out He Puapua’s plan for a Māori upper-house of Parliament.

The institutions brought together by Jackson can hardly have missed the unspoken terms-of-reference underpinning their endeavour. Under no circumstances were they to present a Declaration Plan as radical as He Puapua. Not only that, but Matike Mai Aotearoa: Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, an impressive consultative exercise in its own right, commissioned by the Iwi Leaders Group, and conducted under the guidance of the late Moana Jackson, which, itself, provided powerful inspiration for the authors of the He Puapua report, was also to be consigned to the “too-radical” basket. So constrained, the authorial group might as well have subtitled their Declaration Plan “Uncle Tom’s Report”.

Nevertheless, the institutions tasked with drawing up the Declaration Plan had no option but to serve. That being the case they seem to have agreed that the whole exercise should either produce a document worthy of UNDRIP, or, if that proved impossible, come to nothing.

This is what they appear to have done. Jackson was presented with a Declaration Plan which, almost certainly, incorporated the core ideas of both Matike Mai and He Puapua. Given the extent of consultation within Maoridom which preceded and informed the Matike Mai working-group’s report; and in light of the courageous creativity of He Puapua, the draft Declaration Plan’s authors could hardly have done otherwise. By any reasonable measure, Matike Mai and He Puapua are the truest reflection of the Māori ethno-nationalist position. If Jackson’s group didn’t back-up the work already done, then they risked being written-off as latter-day kupapa.

Jackson, meanwhile, is left holding a draft Declaration Plan he can’t present to Cabinet, and which its authors refuse to re-write. And, the clock is ticking. When he meets with the authors on Friday (21/10/22) what are Jackson’s options?

He could threaten to release their draft plan to the public, reasoning that the reaction of most Pakeha would be so negative that the whole process of fulfilling New Zealand’s obligations under UNDRIP would come to a shuddering halt. If he was feeling particularly embittered and Machiavellian, he could further argue that the racist backlash would be so powerful that the Government would have to abandon, at least temporarily, its whole co-governance agenda – Three Waters in particular. Could they not produce a document that would reassure Pakeha that UNDRIP was no threat: a document that would actually make the introduction of co-governance easier? Isn’t Māori control of water worth a little bit of watering-down?

Shrewd arguments, certainly, but they don’t get Jackson out of his trap. He simply can’t escape the fact that to meet the requirements of UNDRIP – let alone te Tiriti – the Crown will have to cede an unacceptably large amount of its sovereign power to Māori. As a Minister of that Crown, it is more than Jackson’s warrant is worth to place such a proposition upon the Cabinet Table. In the Realm of New Zealand there can be only one Crown.

Moana Jackson, the authors of He Puapua, and the authors of the draft Declaration Plan: all reached the same conclusion. Neither UNDRIP nor te Tiriti o Waitangi will ever be fully realised in the Realm of New Zealand. To fulfil the promises of these documents a wholly new kind of state will be required – one so radically different to the state New Zealanders presently inhabit, that their acceptance of it could only be secured in the conditions of a full-scale revolution.

And not even Willie Jackson can sell a full-scale revolution to this Labour Government.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 21 October 2022.

A Bridge Of Insufficient Strength.

Not Strong Enough: There is no short-cut from our colonial past to a bi-cultural future. Surely, following this flood-ravaged fortnight, the Prime Minister realises that, when the waters rise in fury, bridges get swept away.

A GREAT DEAL can be learned from the metaphors politicians choose to illustrate the challenges they are required to overcome. At the recent gathering of Māori and Pakeha leaders at the Māori King’s Turangawaewae marae, the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave us the metaphor of te Tiriti o Waitangi as a bridge. Somehow, she suggested, New Zealanders must be brought safely across this fragile structure. Her job is to lead them.

Listening to the Prime Minister, I was reminded of the compelling final scene of the movie The Man Who Would Be King, in which Sean Connery strides bravely towards safety across a swaying rope bridge. Behind him, enraged tribesmen hack away furiously at the anchoring cables. Beneath him, a yawning chasm waits to swallow-up the foolhardy Scottish soldier.

Certainly, it is difficult to escape the notion that the Prime Minister perceives this present moment to be one of considerable historical danger.

Behind us lies the old society of colonial New Zealand. A society based upon assumptions of racial superiority. A society founded upon the dispossession of the Māori. A society riven by multiple inequities and injustices. Ahead of us lies Aotearoa – the new bi-cultural nation in which a “partnership of the races” will expunge the inequities and injustices of our racist past.

Across this perilous gap between yesterday and tomorrow, the Prime Minister has suspended the Treaty. She offers us her hand – and bids us cross.

The problem with Prime Minister Ardern’s metaphor is that far too few New Zealanders believe the Treaty is strong enough to carry them across the chasm. They fear the chaos into which their country will be plunged if the bridge proves unequal to the burden imposed upon it. They simply do not share the Māori people’s unwavering confidence in a document once referred to by a Chief Justice of New Zealand as “a simple nullity”.

Even those enthusiastic about a bi-cultural future for Aotearoa-New Zealand are beginning to express their doubts about the “official” interpretation of the Treaty as a “partnership between races”. Dame Anne Salmond, for example, writing for the Newsroom website, reminds us that race is “a colonial idea with an ugly history, associated with slavery, genocide and the dehumanisation of others, and utterly inimical to respecting [New Zealanders’] ‘tapu and mana’.”

Pakeha conservatives, on the other hand, listen to what they judge to be the exaggerated and essentially self-serving claims of Māori historians and lawyers who would have us believe that te Tiriti o Waitangi is Magna Carta and the United States Constitution all rolled into one unchallengeable fragment of Holy Writ. Their reading of New Zealand history and New Zealand law simply cannot be squared with what is fast becoming the “official” explanation of the Treaty.

For far too many New Zealanders the Prime Minister’s invitation to step onto her bridge to the future is an invitation to catastrophe.

Perhaps there would be a higher level of confidence in the Treaty’s strength if the Prime Minister was better able to explain its corollary – “co-governance”. So eloquent on other subjects, Jacinda Ardern becomes uncharacteristically tongue-tied when invited to “sell” the concept behind what her critics characterise as Labour’s racially-charged and electorally unmandated policies – most particularly Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s “Three Waters” project.

This inability to explain co-governance is not restricted to the Prime Minister. The attempt by her Māori Development Minister, Willie Jackson, to reassure New Zealanders that they have nothing to fear from this “new” variant of democracy has succeeded only in frightening the bejesus out of them. If this is what lies on the other side of the chasm bridged by the Treaty, then the Sixth Labour Government should not be surprised at the number of Kiwis declining to make the journey.

In the wise words of Dame Anne: “Rather than seeing the Treaty as a ‘bridge’ across a chasm of misunderstanding, in the spirit of ‘pernicious polarisation’, perhaps Te Tiriti can be visualised as a meeting place where different groups of New Zealanders come together in a spirit of tika/justice, pono/truth, and aroha to share ideas, resolve injustices and seek peace with one another.”

There is no short-cut from our colonial past to a bi-cultural future. Surely, following this flood-ravaged fortnight, the Prime Minister realises that, when the waters rise in fury, bridges get swept away.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 August 2022.

How “New” Is Our Democracy?

A Living Democracy - But Not A Tyranny Of The Majority: Wellington voters gather outside The Evening Post newspaper offices to see the results of the 1931 General Election posted.

The face of New Zealand and democracy has changed dramatically in the past few years and we need to reflect New Zealand’s new identity and democracy in our main media entities.

Willie Jackson, NZ Herald, 5 July 2022.

HAS NEW ZEALAND’S DEMOCRACY really “changed dramatically” in the past few years? I suppose it all depends on how you define “democracy”, “dramatically” and “the past few years”. Let’s start from there, and then work on to explore the motivation behind such a bold political assertion.

There are very few countries in the world that can boast a continuous democracy as old as New Zealand’s. Our population became fully enfranchised in 1893 when the Liberal Government extended voting rights to women. The United States would not reach that democratic milestone until 1920, and women would not be fully enfranchised in the United Kingdom until 1930. If one of the key indicators of a democratic nation is the right of its people to vote in fair and regular elections, then New Zealand can hold its head high.

Another feature of a working democratic system is whether the will of the majority of voters is reflected in the character and composition of their government. In this regard, New Zealand’s record is less exemplary. Since the acquisition of self-government in 1852, New Zealand has experimented with a number of electoral systems.

The “Two Round System”, for example, pitted the two highest polling candidates of an initial open round of voting against each other in a second, run-off, ballot. It was designed to ensure that, ultimately, a Member of Parliament represented a true majority of the electors. It lasted from 1908 until 1914. Another, the so-called “Country Quota”, weighted the votes of electors living in rural areas more heavily than those of urban voters. This blatantly anti-socialist measure lasted from 1881 until 1945!

Underpinning both of these measures, however, was the electoral system known as “First-Past-The-Post (FPP). To win an FPP election it was necessary for a candidate to win more votes than any of his/her rivals. Not more than all the votes of his/her competitors combined, you understand, only a simple plurality. The candidate with the most votes (which may, or may not, have constituted a majority of the votes) won.

Obviously, FPP can easily lead to a situation in which the governing party is able to win a majority of parliamentary seats with considerably fewer than half of the votes cast. In an election where three or four parties of roughly equal strength are seeking the electors’ support, the outcome is not Majority Rule, but the rule of the most popular minority. Since it is clearly unhelpful, in terms of preserving political legitimacy, to have a clear majority of voters feeling unrepresented, the grim arithmetical logic of FPP drives the political class inexorably towards a rigid two-party system.

In the 1920s and early-1930s, New Zealand voters had three major parties to choose from: the Reform Party, the Liberal (later the United) Party, and the Labour Party. In no election between 1919 and 1938 did any single political party ever secure more than half the votes cast. FPP notwithstanding, however, New Zealand only boasted a genuine two-party system for five elections (1938, 1943, 1946, 1949, 1951) The Labour/National duopoly was broken in 1954 with the advent of the Social Credit Political League. It would take until 2020 for a single New Zealand political party to, once again, secure more than half of the popular vote.

The switch from FPP to Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) in 1996 was certainly the most dramatic change to New Zealand’s democratic machinery since the National Party abolished the Legislative Council – New Zealand’s unelected (and largely decorative) Upper House of Parliament – in 1950.

New Zealanders voted for MMP in response to what was widely perceived as a lack of democratic political agency. With Labour and National both committed to neoliberal economic and social policies, many New Zealanders felt politically disenfranchised. Voters dreamed of electing Parliaments in which heterogeneous assemblages of genuine representatives would enable the formation of governments much more closely attuned to the people’s will.

Their hopes were not fulfilled. MMP certainly allowed political parties to select candidates more reflective of the gender, ethnicity and sexual-preference makeup of the New Zealand population, but the House of Representatives continued to be dominated by National and Labour. Those smaller parties that did manage to make it into Parliament dutifully lined-up with one or other of the two major parties in coalitions that only very rarely produced anything even remotely challenging of the neoliberal status quo.

Regardless of the drama, or lack of it, it would seem that, over the course of the last 100 years, the more that New Zealand’s democratic rules have been changed, the more its fundamental political impulses have remained the same. It is, however, possible to make one important observation: the larger the winning party’s share of the popular vote (now known as the Party Vote) the more permanent its subsequent alterations to the country’s face tend to be.

The problem, of course, is that the most recent alterations have been executed without a mandate. The last time a political party sought, and got, a decisive electoral mandate to change the face of New Zealand it was 1972. (Some might say 1938!) Certainly, over the past 35 years, the biggest and most alarming instances of facial surgery (Rogernomics, Ruthanasia) have been accomplished without the patient’s informed consent – or an anaesthetist!

It is to be hoped that Willie Jackson’s use of the past tense when describing the dramatic changes to the face of New Zealand democracy is inadvertent. It is certainly difficult to make a case for the will of the majority of New Zealanders being any easier to impose today than it was 30 years ago. The “tyranny of the majority” that Willie complains of finds no confirmation in our political history: neither in the Pakeha world, nor Te Ao Māori.

The truly scary thought is that Willie sees the obstacles to achieving effective democratic majorities as a feature, not a bug, of our present system. If his idea of a new and improved New Zealand democracy is one in which, once again, the most determined minorities get to rule, then the change he is describing is not so much an uplifting electoral drama, as a political sucker-punch to the face.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 7 July 2022.

Willie Jackson's Problem.

On The Horns Of A Dilemma: The essence of Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson’s problem is that he can neither withdraw, nor water-down, the Draft Plan for implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering political fire from Maori. His Pakeha colleagues face the same problem – in reverse. If the Labour Cabinet signs up to UNDRIP/He Puapua, then it can kiss the 2023 election good-bye.

WILLIE JACKSON HAS A PROBLEM – a big problem. Since 2017, he has led the charge to secure more resources for Māori and, by winning them, has assumed a pivotal political role in the quest for Tino Rangatiratanga. With Jackson’s successes, however, have come heightened expectations of more. Just how high Māori hopes have grown is manifested in the contents of the Draft Plan for implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) So alarming are the recommendations contained in this document, that the Māori Development Minister is refusing to present it to Cabinet.

Jackson’s refusal is highly significant. If the plan has a promoter of Māori economic and social development as stalwart as Jackson shaking his head, then the Draft Plan must be effectively indistinguishable from the He Puapua Report.

Therein lies Jackson’s problem. The moment the He Puapua Report entered the public arena it was too late to order it shredded. It had become a ticking political time-bomb that could only be defused with the co-operation of all sides of the Māori sovereignty debate. It’s only saving grace was that it was not – yet – an official government document. This was a godsend for Jackson and the Labour Government. They had been given a few crucial months to do whatever was needed to prevent a potentially fatal political explosion.

It explains why Jackson and his colleagues asked Maoridom to develop its response to the UNDRIP/He Puapua challenge first, ahead of Pakeha, and behind closed doors. They were hoping that, perceiving the revolutionary character of He Puapua, the good and the great of Maoridom would bend all their powers to reshaping its recommendations into something Jackson’s Labour colleagues – and the rest of New Zealand – could live with.

Unfortunately for Jackson and Labour, that is not what happened. After 70 hui, held across the country, the mood of Maoridom was made strikingly clear. UNDRIP was a hard-and-fast commitment. The radical vision of He Puapua was not to be to be finessed away with fine phrases. Rangatahi, the rising generation of young Māori nationalists, would accept nothing less than a full-on, Te Tiriti-driven, co-governed and bi-cultural Aotearoa.

How radical is the Draft Plan? It is revolutionary. How else to describe its call for one justice system for Pakeha and another for Māori? The late Moana Jackson would be proud of the document, because, essentially, it reflects his vision of the future. The softly-spoken revolutionary’s body may lie with his ancestors, but his spirit is strong among that part of Maoridom for whom Tino Rangatiratanga and Mana Motuhake have become non-negotiable components of Aotearoa’s future.

That “responsible Maoridom” decided not to come through for him, or Labour, must have hit Willie Jackson hard. So hard that he was forced back onto that most traditional of Labour precepts: the fundamental decency and common sense of the New Zealand working-class. Jackson’s interim solution to the Draft Plan’s ideological inflexibility is to divide the intellectuals and ideologues responsible for He Puapua from ordinary, hard-working, Māori New Zealanders:

I know what the average Māori will think and they’re not walking around every day thinking about the United Nations’ Declaration of Indigenous Peoples – they’re thinking about their housing, their health, their education.

This would sound a lot more convincing if Jackson’s Pakeha colleagues had not been aggressively selling the notion that Māori housing, health and education will only improve when the rest of New Zealand starts living up to Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s implicit promise of “partnership”. Generally-speaking, working-class people have more on their minds than politics. But, they aren’t deaf. Tell them that their future and politics are intimately entwined often enough, and loudly enough, and, eventually, they’ll start paying attention. Quite unintentionally, Labour may have kicked-off a revolution of rising expectations.

Such is the essence of Jackson’s problem: he can neither withdraw, nor water-down, the Draft Plan without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering political fire from Māori. His Pakeha colleagues face the same problem – in reverse. If the Labour Cabinet signs up to UNDRIP/He Puapua, then the party can kiss the 2023 election good-bye.

Jackson understands this completely:

You can imagine some of the wants or asks from [Māori], but as I remind them, it’s not just about them. It’s about what do we want to do as a government and how do we want to honour that declaration and how do we realistically go forward getting people to recognise there are indigenous obligations without them thinking we’re going to take their houses off them.

Which is, of course, why the revolutionary He Puapua Report should have been shredded the moment it passed from the hands of the Māori nationalist dreamers who wrote it, into the possession of those who do politics for a living.

Still, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody no good. Labour’s crisis is Te Pāti Māori’s red, white and black opportunity. Any watering-down, let alone withdrawal, of the Draft Plan will be seized upon by Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as proof positive of Pakeha Labour’s perfidy. After five years of promising Māori the moon, after repeated pledges to institute co-governance, the Labour Government will have proved that, when push comes to shove, it is no more willing than any other coloniser to surrender its white privilege.

And to Jackson’s colleagues in Labour’s Māori caucus, Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer will jeer: “Fool me once, shame on you: fool me hundreds of times, and I must be a Māori Labour Party MP!”

Except, being roundly castigated by Te Pāti Māori is probably the best response Labour could hope for. Virtuously upholding democracy by rejecting the separatist recommendations of the Draft Plan is about the only way this Government can remain electorally competitive. It would certainly allow Jackson to sharpen his class-based critique of Māori society. (Which as a strategy, would be even more effective if he could just to point to tangible gains for working-class Māori in housing, health and education!)

Not that National and Act can afford to just sit back with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy the fun. If the Right/Left poll numbers remain relatively even, then the parliamentary support of an enlarged Te Pāti Māori – pumped-up by the protest votes of all those Māori outraged by a Labour betrayal even bigger than the Seabed and Foreshore, may prove critical to National and Act being able to form a government.

What price will Te Pāti Māori extract from National for its support on Confidence and Supply?

When John Key put that question to Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia in 2008, the answer turned out to include the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 5 July 2022.