David Round: Thoughts for our Time - Article 13

Although it may be a slight digression from the main direction of these columns ~ and I risk being accused of being part of a ‘white feeding frenzy’, in the words of the head honcho of one of the growing number of Maori Parties ~ it may be of interest to consider several recent ‘reports’ about what a dreadful country we are.

The United Nations Organisation, about which many of us may justifiably have mixed feelings, conducts periodic reviews of how nations are doing in implementing their obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The UN appoints a rapporteur ~ a fancy French word which can mean ‘reporter’ or ‘stenographer’ ~ who will, if past experience is any guide, swallow with very little investigation every moan and complaint made by the self-appointed and very comfortably off spokespeople for our ‘oppressed’ minorities.

Such a process is currently under way. And I have three such moans sitting in front of me, intended for the guidance of the current rapporteur. One is from the Aotearoa Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Law, based in the University of Auckland; one from the Maori Law Society, and one from our very own Human Rights Commission. You need not read them. Reading them will not make you a better person, or even a better-informed one. You would hardly recognise our country from their descriptions. They could, indeed, all have been written by the same person. They are all full of the same stuff. Everything is wrong, racism is rising, and what we desperately need is a constitutional transformation ~ and ~ you will not be surprised to hear ~ an enormous amount of extra funding.

It is not just in the usual places that racism lurks. It appears that the gang patch legislation is racist, because there is a preponderance of Maoris among gang members. Benefit settings are racist, because there are more Maori on benefits. Ditto laws about Kainga Ora and residential tenancies. (A pattern is emerging here! But that is all right, because we are also required to address the ‘root causes’ of all these disadvantages ~ which means, of course, even more foolish policies, taxpayer generosity and national bankruptcy.) Indeed, the Maori Law Society even thinks a proposed member’s Bill to ‘recognise male and female in purely biological terms’ is racist, because there is, evidently, a deeper traditional Maori understanding of sexuality.

To call these documents ‘reports’ is to misuse the word. They are not ‘reports’ ~ they are lists of demands from greedy self-interested interest groups. ‘Follow the money’; in Cicero’s phrase, ‘Cui bono?’ ~ to whom is the benefit? Who stands to gain? Well it is not us. Nor is it the poor and homeless and desperate, the alleged beneficiaries of the reports’ concern. They may receive a few scraps that fall from the table, but the chief beneficiaries will be the sort of people who write these ‘reports’ ~ the academics, the lawyers, the administrators and managers and consultants and bureaucracies, the well paid people in comfortable offices, all those people who do absolutely nothing useful and are paid very generously for doing so. In the past I have called them the lenocracy, and the Professional Managerial Class, the PMC. One could just as well call them our Nomenklatura ~ the network of loyal people in the important positions.

Funding, funding, funding. And more funding. Where will it all go? Towards equity focussed frameworks, community partnerships, independent constructive accountability mechanisms, culturally responsive initiatives, cultural responsiveness, consultation with impacted communities, funding for community initiatives to strengthen social cohesion...

Under all these fine if somewhat vague words, a tyranny is being imposed upon us. The signs are staring us in the face. Our last Prime Minister, after all, labelled as ‘simplistic’ the idea of democracy as being ‘one person one vote’. Willie Jackson, high in the Labour Party, has said the same thing. Democracy is so last century! Whose votes will count for more then? Well, it will obviously have to be the wise people of the Professional Managerial Class. They know better than we do. They are the members of the Maori Law Society and the University of Auckland and the Human Rights bureaucracy. These people already make it clear that we do not matter.

This is something worth noting about these ‘reports’ ~ that they do not even mention us. We are invisible. We simply do not figure at all in their calculations. Nor is there even the slightest consideration about how their desired future apartheid paradise might survive and prosper in future. The question is never even thought about. ‘We are entitled to Maori sovereignty. Give it to us. Or else...’. That is the sum total of the argument. Every non-Maori’s existence is assumed only for the purposes of being an everlasting exploitable milch cow. Claire Charters, author of the Aotearoa Centre for Indigenous Peoples (and also co-author of the notorious He Puapua Report) considers that from New Zealand’s beginning as a nation we have had a ‘profoundly racist constitution’ which does not recognise Maori sovereignty. We need a constitutional ‘transformation’, then, to recognise that part-Maori are the master race, and the rest of us are to be a slave people. This should be established in our constitution. The Maori Law Society wants the United Nations to ‘record the constitutional status of the Treaty and the Waitangi Tribunal....’

I have argued in the past that we should avoid a new constitution of this country like a plague, because it would inevitably have to mention the Treaty, and any mention would then immediately be seized upon by our political judges and perverted into some fundamental legal status for the ‘principles’, as those comfortably insulated lawyers explore exciting new intellectual possibilities for sabotaging our country. But this demand is for something even more blatant ~ an open constitutional recognition of continuing Maori ‘sovereignty’ over the whole country.

You cannot help but wonder how serious these people are. Do they honestly believe that the vast majority of this country’s population would allow themselves to be turned into an exploited helot population? Well, I suppose they could point out that our elected leaders have not shown much great opposition to the programme so far. Why not ask for more?

The PMC is now concerned that social cohesion is fraying. The Human Rights Commissioner in his report even recommends funding for ‘community infrastructure to strengthen social cohesion’. Might it not be worth reflecting on the reasons for this, before we rush in to ask for more funding for propaganda? Why might social cohesion be fraying? Might it be, at least in good part, that public patience with increasingly greedy and preposterous Maori demands is wearing thin? If it is not that, then what other part of the diversity project is to be blamed? Why is a decline in social cohesion not a signal for serious reassessment of where we are going ? Would that not be a useful project for a Human Rights Commissioner actually concerned about how we can all live together in a harmonious and prosperous country? Or is our country’s future welfare not in his brief?

In this situation, demands for Maori sovereignty are throwing fuel on the flames. An increasingly radicalised and discontented fringe, always ready to listen to rabble rousers, will consider Maori sovereignty nothing more than its legitimate right. If they do not receive it, then our country will increasingly be confronted by smouldering resentment, at least, and quite possibly some sort of ongoing campaign of violence. Some parts of the country ~ parts of the central North Island, Northland, the East Coast especially ~ might be areas where the Crown’s writ no longer really runs. ( Perhaps, though, that is the sort of future we might have to accept. As I shall argue again later, the time may come, and sooner than we expect, when we will just have to see a certain....decentralisation....of New Zealand. I see little reason why the central North Island and I should be in the same country. Or Auckland, for that matter....Or Wellington, indeed....)

And most certainly, if the opposite were to happen ~ if a New Zealand Parliament were ever to even flirt with the possibility of recognising Maori sovereignty, whatever exactly that might mean ~ then at that point we would certainly start to see armed resistance to legal authority, and things might start to fall apart quite rapidly.

But getting back to the human rights industry ~ one of these reports, as I say, came from the Human Rights Commissioner. It is very clear from his report that we should always be upholding the highest standards of care for the safety and diversity of every single citizen in this country. One would expect no less from an office dedicated to the noblest and best in the grand human project. Surely.....

And yet ~ to our great surprise, I daresay ~ or perhaps not ~ the human rights industry does not live up to its own high standards. There is an interesting complaint currently being considered by the Human Rights Review Tribunal. It involves an argument between LAVA (Lesbians Action Visibility for Aotearoa) and the Wellington Pride Festival. The Festival had cancelled LAVA’s booking for a stall after it became aware that LAVA believed that women could not have penises. I must say that on this matter at least, I am with LAVA.

You may not have heard of this case, however, because the Tribunal granted the Pride Festival a suppression order forbidding all reporting of the proceedings except by ‘accredited’ journalists. Since none of our mainstream media displayed any interest in reporting the case, this effectively meant that there would be no report at all. But then Helen Joyce, a very respected journalist from that very respectable periodical The Economist, appeared, and asked the Tribunal for permission to sit at the media table.

Now just before we go any further ~ would we not be entitled to expect the Human Rights Review Tribunal to be the brightest beacon in our human rights galaxy? Surely it should always be a shining example to us all of the highest standards of behaviour? If they cannot get it right, then who can? And yet, this same sublime paragon of noble virtue not only made an initial order clearly intended to shield itself from public exposure, but then, when Helen Joyce appeared, refused to allow her to report on the case at all, on the very flimsy pretext that, coming here from overseas, she was not subject to those worthy public watchdogs, the BSA and the Media Council, and so could not be ‘accredited’ here. If you have any doubts that the Tribunal’s motive was a desire to shield itself from public scrutiny, consider that it even forbade Ms Joyce to take notes from the public gallery.

(The suppression order followed, incidentally, controversy over statements by the president of the National Council of Women that ‘the concept of biological womanhood is outdated’ and that the presence of trans-identifying men in leadership positions is effectively the presence of women in leadership positions.....Kate Sheppard would surely be turning in her grave! )

The Human Rights Review Tribunal, in other words ~ the people who, more than anyone else, should be setting a shining example to us all ~ these people are attempting to conduct their hearings in secret. Secret tribunals, secret processes and judgments ~ this is the stuff of the Spanish Inquisition, and novels by Kafka.

Increasingly, power considers itself unaccountable; and considers that it need not be accountable, because of course the people wielding power are the right sort of people with the right sort of opinions.

The same sort of people run these tribunals as run our universities and bureaucracies and legal system, and write ‘reports’ such as those described here.

Let us remember Lord Acton’s well-worn but very wise observation. Power tends to corrupt. Whoever has it. That includes public officials here. No magic law promises that our own bureaucrats and judges acquire superior virtue by means of their positions. They hunger for power, just like everyone else. This is why we have a democracy in the first place ~ because we can never trust our rulers not to abuse their positions.

The agenda of these three ‘reports’ is racist, stupid and destructive, and part of a grand project to dismantle our country and its worthy democratic values.

David Round, a sixth generation South Islander and committed conservationist, is an author, a constitutional and Treaty expert, and a former law lecturer at the University of Canterbury.