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.
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.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz.
12 comments:
I think the truth, Chris, is a little simpler and less cerebral than you're suggesting. I know your account makes Willy seem more considered but anyone with eyes can see he's only concerned about one race and getting as much as he can, at the expense of everyone else.
Recent polls have shown Labour tanking. A steady decline over the past 12 months. Only a group of idiots (admittedly our current government can pass for this, even on a good day) would continue enacting policies that are directly responsible for it.
What they're doing now is desperately backing off the gas...just after they started down the steep hill of racism and division.
They're hoping enough Kiwis are still dumb enough to give them another chance in 2023 if they ease back now.
Then, they'll carry on with their racist, divisive agenda, after deliberately not including it in their upcoming manifesto, knowing that they've got another 3 years to turn NZ into an ethno-nationalist state!
Proof that the hidden, unmandated, unmanifestoed He Pua Pua report WAS ALWAYS Labour Policy.
The fact he now is caught between a rock and a (very) hard place is of their own doing.
The question is how much will New Zealanders suffer for the unobtainable, undemocratic and unreasonable expectations?
Labour will push forward as may items of this Maori agenda this year as they can. Next year, election year, they will tone it down to attract back their voter base.
Fortunately, those of us who are not adherents to apartheid, as you should
be Chris, are now awake.
Where do the ordinary workers come into all this? Labour are no longer a party for the workers. Ordinary everyday, salt of the earth Kiwis turn your sights away from these, in my opinion, corrupt people.
Let's be a little more direct about what's happening.
Willie Jackson and others are seizing the opportunity given to them by a weak and naive Jacinda Ardern, to seize power for themselves. There is in effect a civil war going on without the violence and bloodshed of war.
Unfortunately, ordinary Kiwis are asleep to this reality and many naively do not see the distinction between ordinary Maori who are decent people with expectations grounded in everyday realities and the greedy Maori elite who are grabbing power to implement their elitist class-based regime.
The Mahuta royal family is at the top of the tree, with the likes of Jackson, Tamahere and Morgan sucking on the teet to extract whatever milk they can.
Yes - the latest comment starts to look at the reality. The fact is that Willie Jackson has little if any tribal connections-he is urban Maori who are at the bottom of the pecking order in Maori society. Mahuta must regard him as beneath comtempt.
MSM media seldom if ever report about tribal rivalries or the Maori social order and while Trotter characteristically overthinks the issue and uses his usual verbose delivery - the fact is that there are as many gradations in this power grab as factions in society.
Until the torpid New Zealand public wakes up to fact that their democracy is being demolished before their very eyes we are going to see more and more of this divisive racist agenda leading ultimately to a failed state.
We saw the same hijacking of The Lange government by the Rogergnomes in 1984.
If it was wrong for england to colonise nz, and they want all the offspring of the colonisers, and their westminster health system and democracy booted out as well, fine. Negotiate with the queen, give those of us with british ancestry british passports so we can leave. When this all kicked off in zimbabwe about 10 years back, many of them had uk or dutch passports so they could return to europe if they wanted to.
Anonymous - that was a much needed change - pity the transformation was never completed we would not be in this mess now — a rising tide floats ALL ships.
Ardern has no idea what is going on around her. Ardern's legacy is temporary in nature, arguably being the way she handled covid which will soon be forgotten.
Mahuta is the real power in this country, and is forcing permanent changes to New Zealand democracy. Mahuta's legacy is far more permanent and larger in scope than Ardern's, who sits in the corners twiddling her thumbs mostly.
Meanwhile according to his utterances on RNZ on Sunday 3 June, glib Willie intends to saturate the replacement RNZ service with even more maori twaddle programming than blights the service now. Presumably to adapt or convert the population for the pending maori total takeover of NZ.
Shock - horror..!! But I submitted FOR "3 Waters". I commented that if they passed it, that would pretty much guarantee their overthrow come the 2023 election. (If we ever get another free and democratic election).
Correction above. Willie's discourse on the fate of RNZ and TV1 was on Sunday last, 3 July.
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