Laws takes issue with TVNZ’s extensive coverage defending DEI policies and linking them to the Treaty of Waitangi. He points to a 13-page article criticising Donald Trump’s rollback of DEI initiatives in the US while advocating their expansion in New Zealand.
The article, he says, presents DEI as an unquestionable good while dismissing concerns about its impact on meritocracy and governance.
Central to TVNZ’s argument is an illustration depicting “equity” versus “equality”—a common DEI talking point. In the equity model, a young Māori boy is given an extra boost to “level the playing field” with taller individuals. Laws argues this visual misrepresents fairness, as it suggests that some groups require automatic advantages, regardless of ability or effort. “The real message here,” he says, “is that some people will never achieve on their own, so we must artificially elevate them.”
Laws asserts that:
“The moment you tell Māori folk, ‘You poor bastard, you’re disabled because you’re Māori, you’re not good enough,’ you’ve just delivered the most racist message possible.”
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Central to TVNZ’s argument is an illustration depicting “equity” versus “equality”—a common DEI talking point. In the equity model, a young Māori boy is given an extra boost to “level the playing field” with taller individuals. Laws argues this visual misrepresents fairness, as it suggests that some groups require automatic advantages, regardless of ability or effort. “The real message here,” he says, “is that some people will never achieve on their own, so we must artificially elevate them.”
Laws asserts that:
“The moment you tell Māori folk, ‘You poor bastard, you’re disabled because you’re Māori, you’re not good enough,’ you’ve just delivered the most racist message possible.”
12 comments:
It isn't only state funded media but state funded anything that promotes DEI, but as a result they are all the complete opposite of what they claim to be. The public service is anything but inclusive.
If anyone has not yet discovered Law's interviews and comments on the Platform must be the most rational and objective poitical and general comment available in NZ today. All in direct plain language.
All my dictionaries, admittedly old, define equity as fairness. Yet in NZ it seems now universallyy to be interpreted as equality of outcome.The stretch seems to be that only equality of outcome is fair. I am undecided which of my contemporaries I would prefer equality of outcome, fairness, equity with ; those often somewhat lonely very industrious who have made fortunes or the (especially maori) with a myriad children, grandchildren etc and seemingly endless idle time to socialise.
The current NZ convention seems to be that equality is taken to mean equality of opportunity, not necessarily equality of outcome. Little wonder many find it all confusing ,tiresome and beyond them.
Equity is a rather slippery concept. Until the late 19th century there were the Common Law courts and the Courts of Equity in the UK. The latter had been where people went who felt they had been badly treated by the Common Law courts, mostly because of some technicality associated with the Writs. When the Equity Courts were abolished, it was proclaimed that equity should prevail in the Common Law courts, but nobody bothered outlining exactly what that meant.
'Fairness' is a rather abstract term. Certainly it can mean making allowance where initial disadvantage is present, such as disability, but it does not mean waiving qualification and skill requirements for positions that have an impact on public safety and security such as medicine, air control tower personnel, etc.
There are plenty of brown people in NZ, most of whom are leading productive lives.
Is Maori brown different ?
When did being Maori start being regarded as a disability?
About the late 1960s I think.
Agree - his truth-telling is unique - he's the best.
Under the "DEI" system, equity is actually a handicap event.
The rot set in with the American Declaration of Independence which asserted "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" If that were the case we would have no need for IQ tests and we would never know about the Bell Curve that shows how, as a population, we are born with a wide range of intellectual potential. Equality of outcomes is therefore clearly a biological impossibility, given that folk at the left-hand end of the curve can never match the potential of those down the other end. Jordan Peterson has done a lot of work in this area and is seriously concerned about the reality that a person with an IQ of under 83 is untrainable to do anything useful in our modern technological society. And that represents around 10% of the population. So the big question then arises, if equality of outcome is biologically compromised at birth, what's the point of creating equality of opportunity when it seems it will have no effect on outcomes? And that has nothing at all to do with race, gender, melanin levels or any of the other socially divisive factors at play in New Zealand today. The blunt truth is that all men are not created intellectually equal and therefore have different potentials. That's got nothing to do with fairness; that's life, and no amount of DEI wokeness can do anything about it.
>"if equality of outcome is biologically compromised at birth, what's the point of creating equality of opportunity when it seems it will have no effect on outcomes?"
But it does, as it provides individuals with a range of options with regard to education/training and career pathways some of which they will be unsuitable for owing to a lack of cognitive skill or other attributes, but others of which they will be competitive in. The range of possible outcomes may be narrower for some than for others but it remains important that young people he exposed to them all and be able to make informed choices.
With respect Barend, I doubt that young people have the capacity to make informed choices about their potential. That's the job of the education system. The likely high achievers must be identified early and encouraged to reach their potential. They are our future as a nation. Those at the lower end of the intelligence distribution only need to be taught enough to survive in society without becoming a life-long burden on the State. Streaming at secondary school was once used in furtherance of this objective. Unfortunately it succumbed in the face of a hostile social climate that deemed it inequitable to encourage some students at the expense of others. The outcome was the fundamentally flawed NCEA programme where nobody was allowed to fail. Sure, every student was provided with equality of opportunity, but they failed anyway because many simply did not have the ability to recognise the opportunity, let alone grasp it.. As Peterson shows, at least 10% was always going to fail. But a lot of public money has been wasted along the way trying to prove otherwise. Money that could have otherwise have been spent promoting excellence or even just lifting the performance of the mediocre.
There was once a simplistic view of 'success' that regarded academic prowess as being at the top of the tree while more 'menial' skills were at the bottom. But as countries such as Germany, Japan and Sweden have found, technical and vocational education represent 'successes' of their own. There need be no 'failures' in a system where young people are headed into programmes culminating in viable careers. Dual enrolment at tech/school is another very viable strategy in this regard as it gives meaning to schooling to youngsters who otherwise see no point in it. The NCEA enables schools to personalise study programmes for their seniors. The tools are all there to make NZ high school education become one of the best, it is just a matter of using them properly.
The Public Service Act 2020 ably enabled by the Public Service Commission is dripping with DEI and most Govt Depts have DEI advisors! Until that is amended nothing will change.
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