Graham Adams: Low-calibre hit jobs on Seymour miss mark

Attacks over Atlas, Snapchat and Treaty bill fall flat.

One aspect of Sir Edmund Hillary’s character that endeared him to generations of New Zealanders was his willingness to give advice to school children when they phoned him for help with their homework about his exploits, including his conquest of Mt Everest. 

A particularly charming story recounted that when a pupil contacted the famous mountaineer and philanthropist one evening, he asked if they would mind ringing back after he had finished his dinner so he would be able to give their questions his full attention.

We now have to assume, however, that if the crack investigative teams at Newsroom — or the recently departed Newshub — had heard of Sir Ed’s generosity to a young person they would not have applauded his kindness and unpretentiousness but instead run a story implying there was something just a little creepy about a middle-aged man talking to a young student even though they had contacted him.

The media coverage about David Seymour briefly responding in 2016 to Snapchat messages from school students (all of eight years ago) can be seen partly as a crisis of journalistic integrity as media organisations scramble to decide if they want to follow the editorial policies of Britain’s redtops such as the Sun — with all the clicks such sensationalism brings — or to engage in serious journalism. 

More significantly, by stooping to tabloid smears, journalists are exposing their hostility towards Seymour far too obviously. They are inadvertently revealing just how much he rattles them — not least their concern over how successful he might be in challenging their enthusiastic promotion of an ethno-state in which having a single Māori ancestor can confer significant rights that other New Zealanders don’t enjoy.

The Snapchat stories on Newsroom and Newshub were so excruciatingly lame they managed to make Mihingarangi Forbes’ attempt last December to paint Seymour as a puppet controlled by the Atlas Network look sophisticated — even though she was obliged to bend the facts about Australia’s Voice referendum well beyond breaking point to bolster her shaky case that sinister forces were at work to promote his proposed Treaty Principles Bill.

And it’s not only journalists who are afflicted with David Seymour Derangement Syndrome. Last week there was another clumsy attack on his Bill as unethical and untrustworthy because it will allegedly rely on an “extremely inaccurate translation” which lacks “objectivity” as well as “cultural sensitivity and awareness”. Twenty-seven “professional translators of te reo Māori” — including Stacey Morrison, Amiria Stirling and Piripi Walker — signed an open letter to members of the government and opposition parties listing their objections to a bill they simply can’t have seen (given it hasn’t been tabled yet) and their demands about how it should be dealt with.

What is truly jaw-dropping is the open letter appears to ask that Seymour’s view of what the Treaty means for New Zealand in 2024 should be prevented from being debated in Parliament. Apparently, no rival interpretation to the one the signatories and their colleagues approve is permissible.

The signatories write: “It is not sufficient that the National Party have publicly stated that they will not support the Bill past first reading and select committee.” They ask Luxon to “not allow the Treaty Principles Bill to be introduced to Parliament until it can be publicly confirmed that the translation that is foundational to it has been professionally completed and verified, and that rigorous quality assurance by professional and suitably qualified translators has been completed to the satisfaction of those translators”.

To join this exclusive translation club, it appears to be obligatory to accept that Māori never ceded sovereignty in 1840 and to reject “the right of the New Zealand government to govern all New Zealanders” as well as “the concept of equality before the law”.

In fact, it’s a linguistic club with such restrictive entry requirements that even the pre-eminent Māori statesman Sir Apirana Ngata — whose face adorns our $50 note — undoubtedly wouldn’t have qualified to join given he maintained rangatira had ceded full sovereignty to Queen Victoria. Yet if anyone is looking for expert credentials to bolster an appeal to authority, Ngata’s law degree “included honours in constitutional history, something which gives his position on sovereignty and the Treaty even greater credence” — as Ewen McQueen notes in his book One Sun in the Sky.

The four-page letter uses the word “ethical” or “ethics” 10 times, and “truth” four times, as touchstones for the signatories’ own integrity. It is obvious its writers assume the interpretation of te Tiriti behind Seymour’s forthcoming legislation has been made in bad faith.

It is true that Seymour’s proposed redefinition of the Treaty principles — a draft of which has been made public — is audacious and will outrage some people because it does not refer directly to Māori. But it is hardly novel for the Treaty to undergo radical reinterpretations. As just one example, linguistic analysts have long argued that “taonga” in Article 2 has changed from the very specific meaning in 1840 of “booty taken in war” (which made perfect sense after the Musket Wars) and possessions such as waka, taiaha and greenstone patu (as Ngata later defined it) to its current interpretation of anything that Māori prize or treasure. Thus “taonga” has arguably gone from meaning the tangible spoils of war to include radio spectrum, te reo Māori and assorted cultural practices.

What is ironic is that Māori activists who are so quick to describe te Tiriti as a “living document” when its reach is being expanded in their favour fall curiously silent about its flexible status when someone like Seymour wants to expand its clauses to cover all New Zealanders. Then it suddenly becomes fixed and immutable.

Parliament’s Legislation Design and Advisory Committee itself acknowledges, “The Treaty is a living document. This refers to the common understanding that the meaning and application of the Treaty will change as society and circumstances evolve…” In contrast to 1840 when the Treaty was signed, New Zealand society has, of course, evolved into such a vast melting pot of ethnicities — including extensive intermarriage with Māori — that Seymour has concluded it requires redefinition to include all New Zealanders.

It should be noted that the signatories often seem confused about the difference between a translation and the possible implications and scope of the words used in that translation; in their letter, “meanings and intentions” and “translation” are repeatedly muddled. For the record, Seymour says he has relied on Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu’s 1989 English translation of the Māori version of the Treaty, which has been approved by the Waitangi Tribunal.

After demonstrating the exorbitant value they place on their own interpretation of te Tiriti, the signatories presumptuously ask the Prime Minister and the National Party to provide “the names, translation qualifications and credentials of any people involved in the translation of te Tiriti that led to the proposed Treaty principles, including those who undertook peer review and quality assurance”.

Most will guess that the signatories are angling for names to demonstrate their own supposedly superior qualifications and experience, which would allow them to dismiss anyone else as ill-informed and inadequately credentialled to establish the true meaning of te Tiriti. The heretics who have advised Seymour would undoubtedly be publicly hanged, drawn and quartered if they were reckless enough to put their heads above the parapet.

On TVNZ’s Breakfast show last week, host Jenny-May Clarkson tried her luck in extracting the names of those advisers. Act’s leader wasn’t biting. He said he had worked with “heaps of people” on the wording and the concepts behind it but, “If you want to make the argument that if you work with a certain person your views are valid and if you didn’t they’re not, then I’m not going to buy into that… I don’t think they need to be named and called out for having been part of those conversations.”

Although he said he welcomed the letter being made public because it raises “some of the debates New Zealand needs to have”, Seymour wasn’t impressed with the proposition that self-declared “experts” should be the ultimate arbiters of the parameters of the conversation.

Seymour returned to his fundamental question — Whatever the Treaty says or doesn’t say, can New Zealand continue to prosper as a nation if some citizens, by accident of birth, enjoy more civic and political rights than others? 

Clarkson made it clear she didn’t want to enter that debate. She wanted to keep the interview firmly focused on the translators’ letter. And for very good reason. Seymour has posed a killer question — and journalists know it.

Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.