By Chris Trotter*
Perhaps it was just as well Omicron’s Red Light put paid to this year’s Waitangi celebrations. Too much is moving at speed on the front we used to call “race relations”. An embittered series of polemical exchanges on the Treaty Grounds would not have facilitated the clear and calm thinking so urgently needed on the nature and ultimate purpose of the “Treaty partnership”.
Such decisions as have been made: the new history curriculum, Māori representation in local government, the Māori Health Authority, Three Waters; have only whetted the appetite of an increasingly impatient younger generation of Māori nationalists. Those older activists who see the bi-centenary of the Treaty’s signing in 2040 as the best finishing post for a te Tiriti-based constitutional transformation will likely be disappointed.
Driven by the 15-strong Labour Māori Caucus, which must, itself, keep an eye on the even more unabashed radicalism of the Māori Party. Aided by a mainstream news media determined to make good the historical harms inflicted upon Māori by its deeply prejudicial coverage of New Zealand race relations. The drive towards constitutional transformation has acquired an momentum that cannot now be easily, or painlessly, slowed.
Interviewed by leading Māori journalist Julian Wilcox for the first broadcast of RNZ-National’s new programme, Māpuna, on Saturday (5/2/22) newly appointed Māori Land Court judge, Aidan Warren, warned of the growing impatience evident among rangatahi. It is becoming increasingly difficult for older Māori, Warren observed, to counsel patience successfully. Simply pointing to the rapidly increasing numbers of strategically located Māori professionals is no longer enough. Māori society is experiencing that most frightening of social phenomena, a “revolution of rising expectations”.
Armed with the well-honed arguments of Māori lawyers, historians and political activists, and marching to the beat of their own musicians, young Māori activists are unlikely to wait another 18 years for the construction of a new, te Tiriti-based, Aotearoa to be completed. After 182 years of Pakeha domination, the emerging consensus among young Māori activists seems to be that the time for waiting is over.
What, then, are they likely to make of David Seymour’s “State of the Nation” address of last Friday? (4/2/22) In what some commentators have already described as an updated version of Don Brash’s in/famous “Nationhood” speech to the Orewa Rotary Club, Seymour offers those New Zealanders yet to be persuaded of the need for a te Tiriti-based constitution the following, potentially inflammatory, propositions:
The next Government will not be able to simply stop doing new things that divide New Zealand. We will have to actively push back against the divisive idea that there are two kinds of New Zealanders.
We will need to remove the constant references to the Treaty from the law and replace it with a commitment to liberal democracy. One person, one vote, and equality for all in a multi-ethnic nation state.
It means removing co-governance structures from healthcare, from resource management, infrastructure, and education. It means going through the statute books and removing the distinctions in law that hold my Māori ancestors as legally different from my European ones.
The election of a National-Act government in which the balance of right-wing parliamentary forces made the implementation of these highly contentious policies a non-negotiable element of any coalition agreement would be potentially calamitous. The immovable object of right-wing Pakeha resistance to te Tiriti-based constitutional change would meet the irresistible force of youthful Māori nationalism (with plenty of Pakeha allies in tow). Something, or someone, would have to give up – or in.
It probably wouldn’t be Māori. As AUT’s Ella Henry told Moana Maniapoto in the course of Māori Television’s excellent Waitangi Day programming: when set against an historical backdrop extending back 3,000 years across the Pacific, the 200 years of Aotearoa’s European colonisation is just “one bad day”.
There was a time when those same European colonists spoke piteously about “smoothing the pillow” of the dying Māori race. And yet, the tangata whenua are still here.
Would voters really be willing to test the practicality of Act’s programme to effectively roll back the judicial, institutional, political and (most importantly) the economic and social progress of the last 50 years? More to the point, would National? How many New Zealanders, when push came to shove, would be willing to embrace the repressive measures necessary to nullify the inevitable Māori resistance? Is it not more likely that a majority would opt to avert such a potentially tragic course by voting for a less combustible coalition?
But, even if they did, the challenge of te Tiriti-based constitutional transformation remains. Would it not be better for Labour, the Greens, and even National, to grasp the nettle and simply hand over the whole question to a constitutional convention?
Using the recent Chilean constitutional convention as a model, the first stage of the process would be the nationwide election of delegates. Not only would this require the four-fifths of the population who are non-Māori to decide what sort of future they favoured, but it would also require the Māori promoters of a te Tiriti-based constitutional transformation to come out from behind the closed doors where, to date, so much of their detailed discussion of what their new Aotearoa might look like has taken place.
Māori have, quite understandably, been reluctant to state too openly, or with too much detail, exactly what their preferred future would look like. Their preference has been to let their revolution unfold from the top down in a series of fait accomplis impervious to popular challenge from below. To spend the next 18 years very slowly boiling the Pakeha frog.
The consequences of this strategy are already ominously clear in Act’s reactionary propositions. If “co-governance” is perceived in terms of 15 percent of the electorate imposing its will on the other 85 percent, then it’s a non-starter. Which is why, as many of the participants in Moana Maniapoto’s Waitangi Day discussion were at considerable pains to explain, co-governance should be viewed not simply as a means of restoring Māori mana, but also of radically expanding the horizons of all the human-beings who have made Aotearoa their home.
Do Labour and the Greens have the courage to demand that all New Zealanders either put up, or shut up, by voting for or against the constitution eventually presented to the electorate by the Convention? Does National?
The colonial state of our fathers is slowly but surely breaking up. If we are to avoid Antonio Gramsci’s “morbid symptoms” – the product of an old system that is dying while its successor struggles to be born – then all of us will have to find the courage to dream dreams and see visions of an Aotearoa in which both tangata whenua and tauiwi can grow and flourish.
Politics as usual is no longer capable of delivering an Aotearoa worth living in. It is time for a new net to go fishing.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
61 Comments
Does decolonisation mean removing capitalism?
“That decolonialisation means somehow undoing capitalism – does that mean socialism? I don’t think that Aotearoa was a socialist society pre-colonisation”….”Reducing all Maori lived reality down to the single factor of being a colonised people, within a colonial capitalist system, fails to account for the growing divisions that exist within Maoridom itself”
https://yournz.org/2019/01/06/what-does-decolonisation-of-aotearoa-mean/
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that the only thing that righted the ills & injustices of colonisation was time. At least 300 years of it. Thus the Saxons colonised the Britons and then the Normans did the same to them and everything eventuated into let’s say the British Isles, or Great Britain or whatever. New Zealand is still very young in ancient civilisation terminology but it is now modern times. Old father time is hard pressed to smooth over and elongate change and development as might still have been expected in 1840. Education, literacy is hugely more abundant, speed of communication lightening fast in comparison, and with that the power of the media, including social, vastly more formidable and influential. For instance the like of Mussolini or Hitler do not need to start off on soap boxes today do they. There is no easy answer. There are radical elements in NZ society at every point of the compass and the division becoming more and more starkly etched. There is plenty of means at tilting at one another, and publishing the drama, and already this is spilling out onto the streets. The last two years has brought much of this to the surface. 2022 looks troublesome. Inflation up, up and away, mortgage rates rising, rents rising, essentials petrol, electricity, you name it everything is rising. A perfect storm is gathering. Wish I could offer some solutions but sure as hell government intervention based on racial issues with subsidies attached, are not. All I can say is take care of your home and family as a first priority. Undeniably self interest but highly doubtful anyone else will.
"Business Desk’s Tech Editor, Henry Burrell, was on the job, however.
He reported that under the deal, signed in Parliament on Wednesday, an ongoing allocation of 20% of future national commercial spectrum allocations will be given at no cost to a Māori spectrum entity.
Seeding funding of $32 million will also be given to the new entity over five years."
“It recognises the critical role Māori are able to bring to the telecommunications sector.”
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/m%C4%81ori-recognised-telecommunica…
https://pointofordernz.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/most-media-are-tuned-in…
My view of Waitingi Day, 6th February.
It is the day Pakeha and Maori joined and decided to come closer in the political, governing and cultural arenas..
It is a Work in Progrezz. The operative word is Progrezz.
As long as that is kept in mind & sight, we will be okay.
All the Best, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Does righting the wrongs of the past mean we have to endure new wrongs? Co-governance means suspending democracy and giving 17% of the population 50% of the vote. Remember the American Revolution catch cry 'No taxation without representation'. Why should i pay full taxes when my vote is worth less than half of someone else's? And therein the dilemma - how to right the wrongs without breaking the country. That means carefully calibrated solutions not simplistic revanchism. Without better debate we'll get the simplistic reaction from the right that sets us off down the hard path.
Great comment.
CT makes some interesting statements and quotes some people here that are worthy of discussion; "Māori Land Court judge, Aidan Warren, warned of the growing impatience evident among rangatahi" impatient for what? Tino Rangatiratanga does not necessarily require a Maori government. Indeed Maori are disproportionately represented, per head of capita, in greater numbers today in government than at any other time. If that is not enough for them, what will be? Do Maori want democracy of dictatorship - perhaps they need to define their expectations? The current representation is clearly not satisfying the radicals, so to get what they want are they prepared to run rough shod over Maori too? Starts to sound like a dictatorship. Are they waiting for economic opportunity. well all the other rangatahi Pakeha are waiting for that too. Waiting for a Government to establish an economy nationwide that creates real jobs, which pay decent wages with solid conditions.
In the meantime while we are bombarded with a message of how racist we are, we are also bombarded with racism from Maori against all things non-Maori.
I’m strongly considering ACT, went TOP last time. But I’ll have to apply strategy this time. The first thing that needs to happen is that Labour are out.
I was drawn in by the “zero base government”. NZ hasn’t really had a shake up since 84 and it’s about time. Layers upon layers of waste. The unproductive elevated at the expense of those who do and pay for everything.
There’s no easier answers though.
I'm in a quandary. Didn't vote last general election. Didn't like any of the parties. Unfortunately not voting still helps some party. This time around need to vote to get Labour/Greens out but based on the poll a day or so ago it's going to be difficult. A vote for ACT is essentially National right and I can't see ACT having much influence on National policy. Seymour will get a cabinet post of some description to keep him happy, "the baubles of office" similar to Winnie.
We New Zealanders cling to a myth that, deep down, we are rather nice people, brown and white, & that our small differences can be solved by simply,..."having a conversation" (to use modern idiom)
Is there a nation in the world that doesn't have a disaffected group that feels hard done by. Is there a nation that hasn't been embroiled in violent confrontation from time to time?
Even agreeing that violence solves nothing, are we to be the only nation that solves human combativeness by peaceful means?
I think we at least need to start discussion with end realities in clear view.
My own observation is that there is far less Maori activism today than there was in the past. I can't think of any names. Where are people today like Tama Iti, Donna Awatere and Dame Whina Cooper?
It may be that I don't get out as much or that I am not exposed to a single news source like television once was. No TV for me at all these days and just pursuing my own interests on the Internet.
It seems like Trotter is just trying to stir stuff up. Most young Maori people probably just want to be normal modern people or are thinking of migrating to Australia. It's really anachronistic to refer to people as Maori this or that. It's time these distinctions all ended. I stand with Seymour. People's origins, their appearance, their physical differences shouldn't be something that needs mentioning.
Are we about to see an unintended consequence of the governments lack of genuine consultation/education with all NZ over the co-governance models?
In a small rural community there is a battle going on where a govt agency and iwi got together with staff of (Edit)another local govt agency in what appears to be an attempt to circumvent genuine community consultation (never making time to meet with community) and ride roughshod over the local community. Community got to hear about the plan and are fighting back, putting said(edit) 2nd local govt agency between a rock and a hard place now.
Turns out there are many 'white' community members who can lay claim to a whakapapa, are aware of their history and in some cases traditions of their Maori ancestors, and many have never being interested in becoming involved in the local marae. These (intergenerational) community members are leading the charge against iwi and govt agency. At a recent community meeting one such member said Maori have a rite to challenge and be challenged in such a situation and they were exercising their right to do so. Govt agency rep then appeared to question if the community member even had the credentials to have a whakapapa (they don't 'look' Maori) and informed the community present that 'we will not be backing down'. The community replied 'bring it on'. An invitation has been given to iwi and govt agency to meet with a small group of 'community Maori' to sort this out. Whether the iwi/agency will break with their usual reply of 'sorry cant find a date/time that is free' is yet to play out.
Are we going to see more Maori, who don't identify as such, to 'find their Maori voice' and start challenging govt/iwi outside of urban NZ? It is not just the older community members ticked off in the above community, but equally rangitahi some of who have represented their iwi. Trotter says young rangitahi will not wait, but will we see urban based iwi/rangitahi v rural based iwi/rangitahi as an unintended consequence?
At 180 years the Treaty has aged out. Indeed the modern interpretations are a threat to democracy. Remove it.
Love and children have destroyed the idea there are two separate peoples.
More like five million individuals who could be grouped in multiple and overlapping ways. Viva diversity.
The best way to manage that is democracy. One vote each.
This is part of an email i received today from the Greens.
- Enabling the Waitangi Tribunal to revise settlements, including recognition of increased land values since redress was provided
- Establishing a Hoki Whenua Mai fund to enable whānau/hapū to reacquire dispossessed Māori land
- Reinstating the power for the Waitangi Tribunal to make recommendations in relation to privately owned land
- Establishing a new legal right of first refusal for mana whenua over raupatu land, operating outside the Treaty settlement framework
- Establishing a registry that allows private landowners to elect to give the right of first refusal over the purchase of their land to mana whenua when they sell it.
Now, I have never supported Don Brash and indeed, have voted Green on environmental grounds. This however, is way beyond anything I could support.
I would be interested in the views of others.
I also voted for the Greens 3 times on environmental grounds. Before that I usually voted National.
But the last time I voted labour for the same reason "climate change is this generations nuclear moment" (yea right, what a lie that was).
The Greens have gone full on radical Maori as well.
Not sure what's going on in NZ, but no one seems to care a hoot about climate change etc.
Thank you Chris. This clarifies what some might think about Seymour's words last week. I for one, am utterly over the treaty which has been abused & dishonoured (including re-written) by just about everyone at some point along the journey. It is today a document of distrust, again, from just about all sides, and is a truly divisive issue within our culture, & increasingly so. Having said that, the answers or options, are also as elusive as the trust is, but a reset is needed, & quickly, if this land is to have future worth living.
I personally would like to see Aotearoa-New Zealand become a republic & the Chilean example is a possibility of how things could play out. But one thing is obvious, this NZ govt is currently incapable of implementing anything sensible in any area of policy, let alone race relations. However, the alternatives are probably equally ineffective, at this point in the cycle.
But he is right also. Bring on the open discussion. Bring the young Maori revolutionaries out into the open so we can all listen, learn, discuss in depth & look to the future, together preferably.
CT spent his life trying to get people to join his longed for socialist project - with not much to show for it .
This new marketing line is " either convert to the cause .. or those scary young Maori radicals are going to get ya " . Not going to be effective either.
In contrast to Seymours speech, both Luxon's and Ardern's were full of typical political rhetoric, saying a lot of words, but not saying anything meaningful that you measure anything against.
The reason being of course, when both National and Labour have said something that can be measured, they have failed miserably.
I often find it interesting to reverse the accepted norm. I also like playing with numbers.
If we severely restricted immigration then within one generation our 83% non Maori population would become 69% non Maori. 2 generations 47%, 3 generations 22% , 4 generations 5%. At that point, about 100years hence, we would not have any racial problems, could just about all vote on the Maori role, adopt what ever Maori cultural practices we wished. Only recent arrivals would then be confined to a minority voice in governance through the non Maori vote, which is probably appropriate for for them for a generation or two.
The inane proposals of Marama Davidson and the Greens Party regarding ongoing and never ending redress for Maori is a clear example of why I personally struggle to celebrate Waitangi Day as our country's special day. I just cannot see how we can ever be a united people proud of our own place in the present world when there is this constant up-scaling of the guilt trip the likes of Davidson promotes. What was the point of the Waitangi Settlement process if it was never going to reach an end-point?
To date the equivalent of ~ $2.3b has been settled (note, that is not paid out). Our tribe is still negotiating settlement and the numbers are truly underwhelming and include things such as a council park that will always be a council park. The cash component is 40% of the settlement value, something like $1,250 per head. That's why we have not settled yet.
So maybe, just maybe, if the settlements were actually meaningful and not just .66% of 1 years economic activity then we wouldn't be talking about it. I mean, do you really think British settlers took .66% of 1 years economic activity?
You don't have to subscribe to the Green's policy (I don't) to see that Treaty Settlements have fallen some way short of even an entry-level attempt to compensate Maori.
Maoridom's fight for greater economic and social equity isn't going to go away, not with National in power either - it's here to say. It's a theme across Australia, Canada and the US. You can sit behind a nom de plume calling for the Treaty to be cancelled, but I dare you to go public with that. Why people can't find the time to ask a few questions, visit a marae I realy don't know.
I didn't say that you referred to that, did I really need to spell that out? You questioned why Treaty settlements are being revisited.
It is mentioned in several earlier comments such as
by KH | 7th Feb 22, 12:46pm
Remove the treaty entirely. That would get my vote. And lots of others would vote that way too I suspect.
Te Kooti, even Kelvin Davis is quoted as saying the following in response to the Greens now wanting to up the ante on the extent of Treaty settlements:
"The impression I got from the whole of the Greens' policy is it's a bit like painting the Harbour Bridge: after a generation, we're almost at the end of the settlements, and now they want to start them all over again, like painting the Harbour Bridge - you finish and then you start again,"
Totally agree and been saying it for years. An agreement between British and Māori is of no relevance in modern day NZ. We have significant Chinese, Indian and other multi cultural communities now and this crude agreement is well past its used by date. Get rid of it.
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