Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 10/10/23

Someone should explain to the PM that “co-governance” does not engender “fear” – but it does raise a vital issue of rights

Point of Order found the Hipkins government had nothing to announce, report or condemn, when we checked its official website early this afternoon.

It was much too busy – we imagined – stomping for electoral support.

But – stop press: Two bits of news had been posted by the time we had completed this Buzz.

We will examine them in a later post. They were –

Latest from the Beehive

10 OCTOBER 2023

Port Waikato by-election date announced

The Port Waikato by-election will be held on Saturday 25 November, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced today.

Government confirms improved quota system to support dairy exports

Following a review of the dairy quota allocation system, the Government will progress changes to the system in order to maximise opportunities for our dairy exporters.

Because the news about the by-election and the dairy quota had not been posted at time of writing, Point of Order turned to what is being said on the hustings.

Alas, that exposed us to the great dollops of humbug that are being injected into what ministers are desperately saying in their efforts to discourage us from supporting their opponents. And yes, those opponents shamelessly seem to think the best way to combat humbug is to generate more of it and throw it back.

Monitoring all the humbug is Mission Impossible. But it was hard to avoid Labour leader Chris Hipkins encouraging political parties to be bold on pro-Māori initiatives instead of creating fear around co-governance.

This implies that a government must endorse co-governance (in which circumstances and to what extent is not being made plain) to be able to implement policies that help Maori – or Maori can’t be helped without co-governance.

But co-governance is a comparatively recent concept, introduced in small doses for specific management purposes while Chris Finlayson was Minister of Treaty Negotiations .

Does Hipkins seriously believe Maori had never been helped by governments before that?

According to RNZ, Hipkins said it was unfortunate that the centre-right parties had created uncertainty and fear around co-governance.

It was nothing to be afraid of and had been working successfully in many areas for years, he said.

And that’s where he needs to be banged to rights. He is fudging what happens to be a critical question of rights.

Graham Adams had hoped to sort Hipkins out and dissuade him from further dissembling earlier this year, when he wrote:

The assertion that non-Māori have “nothing to fear” from Māori being given disproportionate power in New Zealand is such a reflexive staple of left-wing discourse it has become a cliché. Unfortunately for the left, this line is hardly soothing to many voters — it only makes them wonder if they should take a much closer interest in the government’s stealthy co-governance agenda.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins routinely uses the “no fear” factor to deflect criticism. In the weekend, at a meeting on a South Auckland marae, he said:

“I say as a non-Māori that other non-Māori have nothing to fear from the establishment of a Māori health authority.”

As Adams pointed out, telling critics they have nothing to fear is not an argument – it’s a condescending ploy to cast opponents as irrational and anxious.

It will come as little surprise that Jacinda Ardern — who often preferred to emote about issues than analyse them — frequently used “nothing to fear” as a defence. When John Campbell raised the question of co-governance with her in an exit interview in April, she asked disingenuously:

“Why be afraid of having Māori at the table? Why be afraid of that?”

The reality is that Māori have long been at the table in modern New Zealand politics, not least having had a guaranteed presence in Parliament since 1867 through the establishment of the Māori seats. The burning question now is whether Māori should be given places only as the result of due democratic process or also from a particular interpretation of the Treaty mandating an equal partnership.

Other commentators have noted that New Zealander have a choice between governance under modern-day notions of a Treaty partnership, in which some citizens are accorded special rights thanks to their ancestors arriving in this country ahead of anyone else, or a democracy, in which we all have the same citizenship rights and entitlements.

Adams boiled it down to this: opponents of co-governance would object to any group — whether Rotarians, Anglican bishops, farmers or former All Blacks — sitting “at the table” with voting rights if they hadn’t been put there through the democratic exercise of “one person, one vote of equal value”.

By promoting the “nothing to fear” line of cant, government ministers avoid debating the main thrust of the objections raised by democrats.

As Adams put it:

They avoid acknowledging that most opponents have a strong and principled objection to the radical interpretation of the Treaty that has led to unelected iwi representatives holding immense power in areas including Three Waters and the RMA reforms. They are also reluctant to acknowledge that most opponents’ objections spring from a deep sense of fairness rather than fear. Instead, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet oscillate between implying that critics are racist or fearful.

Tellingly, Adams observed, both Ardern and Hipkins had avoided defending democracy publicly.

Asked by Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q&A whether Māori had disproportionate voting power in forming the Regional Representative Groups that oversee strategy in Three Waters, Ardern dismissed the suggestion it was undemocratic as “simplistic”.

In March on Q&A, Hipkins told Tame:

“I believe there is nothing undemocratic about co-governance”.

But his government has overseen law changes in which 16 per cent of the population are being given power equal to the other 84 per cent in a swathe of areas including planning laws, water management, health and education.

It supported the law change that cleared the way for two Ngāi Tahu representatives – appointed by the tribe, not elected by the people of the region – to sit on on the Canterbury Regional Council with full decision-making rights.

And it is bound to want to push its partnership ideology even further, if it gets another three years in office.

Let’s see – when the votes have been counted – whether voters would rather Hipkins does not get the chance, not because of “fear” but because they hold dear the idea that government should be of the people, by the people, for the people.

Under that system of democracy, of course, none of “the people” claim or expect to be given rights that are greater than the rights exercised by all the others.

Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton