Public Address - Hard News (Home)

The politics of resentment is no way to run a country | Feb 23, 2004 11:07

It generally takes something pretty substantial to drag our media around from the day-to-day focus on personalities and press releases and towards coverage of an issue in depth, but our sudden swelling of public feeling on race is clearly such a thing.

Unsurprisingly, the New Zealand Herald is making the best fist of it so far. The Weekend Herald's Digipoll findings on Maori issues were interesting. People surveyed objected overwhelmingly to "special" treatment for Maori, but, when pressed, more than a third of respondents could name no area in which special treatment occurred. Eighty seven per cent said that the special treatment had little or no effect on themselves personally. Some people expressed concern about things that simply aren't going to happen, such as purported claims for oil and gas reserves, which are officially and emphatically off-limits.

The poll itself seemed at least partially devised to generate a headline: its questions are heavy with the words "special" and "specialist". You're never going to get New Zealanders to admit anyone else is "special". Thus, more than half of the respondents declared themselves opposed to "specialist Maori schools" and two thirds to "specialist Maori health services".

And yet the answers to the identical questions otherwise phrased - "Do you think Maori students should have the opportunity to learn more about their culture than is practical in mainstream classrooms?" and "Do you think Maori should be encouraged to deliver health services to their own communities, especially if that is shown to improve results?" - would presumably (well, you'd damn well hope) be different.

The paper's excellent Review and World section was largely given over to the issue, and focused on interviews with Pakeha middle New Zealanders from Glenfield and Putaruru (would be it churlish to point out that Glenfield doesn't represent me? Couldn't they have chosen a slightly funkier suburb? Birkenhead, perhaps?).

Among the people interviewed, there even seemed to be widespread opposition to scholarships from The Maori Education Trust and iwi organisations - which, so far as I can tell, make up the majority of those available. So not only should Maori get no public help to improve their lot, they should be prevented from helping themselves? (When you've finished sucking on that one, ask yourself whether the people who found or bequeath to trusts should be told by the government what they can do with their money.)

I don't think people really think that. The main feature story described the landscape thus:

We found a reaction that goes beyond the redneck voice of talkback radio and that crosses barriers of gender, status, age and distance. The comments of Putaruru and Glenfield residents were interchangeable.

But their verdict is also confusing: many who say we should all be treated equally also believe targeted assistance "to help Maori off the bottom" is fair enough. The same people who say "we are all New Zealanders" believe Maori culture should be encouraged.

"We should all come under the same rules," says a builder in his early 30s. Then: "I don't mind if Maori get a little more for education if they are going to come out of their slump."

Pregnant housewife Maria Lopez, 33: "I think the special treatment should be to conserve their language and culture and to keep traditions alive - but not in health or education."

And although most believe Maori do get special assistance, they struggle on the details of which areas, what form and how much. A retired Glenfield man summed it up for many: "It's basically everywhere."

None of this makes for a coherent or rational policy, as National, even as it revels in its stunning revival, is acknowledging. Across three different forums this past weekend - the Herald stories, the following day's Sunday Star Times, last night's 20/20 programme on TV3 - it proved almost impossible to discover exactly what National would and would not do in government.

The certainty of the original briefings around Brash's Orewa speech - made from the relative safety of an apparently hopeless electoral position - has dissolved. Back then, the Maori Television Service was unambiguously for the chop.

Now, in the Herald's interview with Brash, he hedges: MTS is "inefficient" (he thinks the money would be better spent on schoolbooks - but wouldn't they be "special" too?), but "there is an obligation on the Crown to support the Maori language."

In the same story, he was asked the question: To be consistent, should you not also be abolishing health, welfare and education programmes based on such things as gender, age, disability and region. Why is race-based targeting so much more objectionable? His answer:

Good question. I'm not sure I know the answer to that.

But isn't that a question you should know the answer to before you embark on this sort of thing? He continued:

I think there are some things which are specific to women, for example. Some health problems are specific to women, some health problems are specific to men. I can't think of anything in health or education which is specific to Maori.

So I think a case can be made that there are some things which are peculiar to gender and peculiar to age. I can't think of anything that is peculiar to race.

Try diabetes and rheumatic fever, to both of which Maori have a genetic disposition. Maori also suffer higher rates of all cancers, other than skin cancer, than non-Maori. I happen to suffer from gout, a condition most common among Pacific Islanders. Do I object to the fact that much of the public health material available on the condition is oriented towards Pacific Islanders? No. Of course not. And even where public health issues can be slated home to lifestyle - high rates of smoking among Maori, say - does it make sense to scrap "racial" programmes aimed at change? Murray McCully, the key figure behind the new stance, gave confusing, and confused, answers to Ruth Berry from the Herald:

Back to smoking and McCully has decided Maori smoking programmes pass the test - as long as there are other smoking programmes for non-Maori (there are).

So some "race-based" programmes are okay?

It ceases to be "race-based" if similar programmes for others exist, he says, which appears to contradict the key test he just laid down for the housing programme.

This is problematic because aside from a handful of capacity building programmes, the vast bulk of Reducing Inequality programmes targeting only ethnic groups do sit alongside other programmes for other groups.

Under the smoking logic most Reducing Inequality programmes would therefore not be "race-based" after all.

"I accept there's no easy simple test to this," McCully says.

Brash was similarly evasive in another feature interview in the Sunday Star Times:

But here is another surprise. Asked if he would abolish all government Maori scholarships if he got into power, Brash replies: "Ah, I'd like to think about that. I'd like to consider the case fully. All I'm saying at the moment is I think there are serious dangers in this. . ."

But wouldn't the voters expect that an opposition leader who said the scholarships had bad effects would abolish them as PM? "Aah, I think they would expect an opposition leader to say they have bad effects and therefore we will look carefully at the issue to see whether there are countervailing benefits. I can't see those at this point."

So there's no guarantee that he would abolish any scholarships? At this point, there is a flash of anger from the normally unflappable politician. He pauses, leans towards Richard Long, his chief of staff, and snaps: "Ah, this guy is damn good at twisting words, isn't he?"

The treble was completed by Gerry Brownlee, who as he was toured by 20/20 around "racial" Maori and Pacific Island health schemes in South Auckland, didn't seem to be able to find a single one that he would close down. That's hardly surprising. Much of what is being railed against is neither excessive or the product of "political correctness gone mad", but merely pragmatic. And if National does make the Treasury benches next year, most of it will suffer no more than a change of name, at most.

I am glad that National is being more circumspect about how it would wield the "racial" axe - and there are certainly worse predicaments to be in than having to lower expectations while you lead the polls - but the genie is out of the bottle now. People have been explicitly told they are being done down and deprived.

The Star Times has taken a harsher line against National's policy than other media - notably in its ill-advised comparison of Brash with Pauline Hanson - but across the print media, with the exception of familiar nutters like Garth George and Frank Haden, almost all the argument has taken issue, often sharply, with National's policy stance. Does this mean that journalists form an arrogant intellectual elite, distanced from the people? No, just that people whose practice is to assemble and compare facts are likely to be more circumspect on this issue than people speaking from the gut.

And, lord, the facts can be hard to come by. Yesterday, following a discussion on the issue on Chris Laidlaw's Sunday Morning programme on National Radio, Laidlaw read out two emails: one was a Muriel Newman-style bit of nonsense on the Moriori myth; the other an anecdote from a woman who had heard that Maori were able to attend university without paying fees.

The former went, lamentably, uncorrected. But Steve Maharey's office called to point out that there was no truth in the latter. I suspect there'll be a lot of media-monitoring and speedy rebuttal going on in the next few weeks. And that's fair enough. The degree of misinformation and misunderstanding on this issue is astonishing.

The Laidlaw discussion was interesting in itself. Tau Henare - who regards himself as National's great brown hope - seemed, most of the time, to be dutifully supporting both his party leader and the policies Brash wants to end. The talk got to the importance of capacity-building. "Look," he said. "If we need 1000 accountants, then the government will pay for that."

Er, no they won't, Tau. That's the whole point …

What was said on "tangi leave" was instructive too. Both Henare and Dr Ranginui Walker agreed that the days of the all-in three-day tangi were largely over. In the vast majority of cases, Maori go to a funeral and then come back to work like anyone else. The flap over this rests on the unspoken assumption that anyone with a brown skin is, potentially at least, a liar and a swindler. It's a miserable way to see your fellow New Zealanders.

And yet a few Maori act to foster just that impression. The kaumatua who tried to wriggle out of a drink-driving conviction on the basis that his arresting officer should have addressed him in te reo, for example. You can't drag your own culture into the gutter and then complain that it isn't respected.

So people have plenty of evidence of Maori misdeeds, and little enough - because that is the way news works - in the way of good news. Ironically, the most prominent examples of Maori greed and willingness to work the system have spring from people associated with the political centre-right: take a bow, Donna Awatere-Huata, Sir Graham Latimer and Tuku Morgan. Donna has done her party more good by failing so spectacularly than she ever did by succeeding.

The other irony, I suspect, is that the urge identified by National springs from the same place in our hearts as that thing against which National and its friends have long railed: the "politics of envy". We do have to "have the discussion", the government needs to make a clearer case for what it does, and iwi themselves need to show some initiative and improve their miserable performance in communications (where, for example, is a substantial poll funded by a Maori organisation?). And if there are real iniquities and inequities, let's be having them.

But in the end - and the National Party knows this as well as anyone - the politics of resentment is no way to run a country.

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Going to Evan | Feb 20, 2004 11:49

What with all the issues and everything, I haven't got around this week to writing something about going to see Evan Dando play on Tuesday night, if only so as to use the headline above. Dando was once the singer of the Lemonheads, one of the prettiest men in pop and a heroic consumer of illicit drugs.

He's no longer any of the above, but his voice is better than ever. It can seem that both his songs and his guitar playing are built around that relaxed, slightly melancholy voice. You can get a good idea of what his New Zealand solo gigs were like from his Live at the Brattle Theatre album, which I highly recommend (if you buy it via that link, we get a little kickback).

Dando had some obstacles to overcome - one group on the Dog's Bollix's dancefloor appeared to have turned up solely to shout drunkenly to each other for the whole gig (some of them were Irish, but that's no excuse) - but overcome them he did. He got rolling to the extent that when he came back for an encore, he just kept on playing, hauling out an array of cover versions, including a great performance of the Velvet Underground's 'I'll Be Your Mirror'. (Earlier, he had shaken up the somewhat devotional mood of the audience by reprising the Lemonheads' cover of Proud Scum's 'I Am A Rabbit'.)

But anyway, it was great, he was funny and affecting, and if he cared to pass this way again, I'd certainly be there. What with the White Stripes, the Strokes and the Flaming Lips, American rock music is certainly doing it for me these days.

And then there's the real world: while one half of National's leadership team, Gerry Brownlee, seems to be narrowing the scope of National's race revolution, Don Brash seems positively intoxicated by it. Yesterday, he declared he would withdraw funding from universities that run entry schemes for Maori students. This, one would think, was bullying enough.

But he went on to say something that can only be described as a lie: claiming that Maori students enjoy lower standards within courses - "the reality is they are not qualified for the job". This is outrageous, and I can't believe he doesn't know it. Unfortunately, it's already out there in the public domain and will fuel further resentment.

Let's take the Auckland University School of Medicine, which operates the Maori & Pacific Island Admission Scheme (MAPAS). Each year, it makes a number of places available through this scheme. The rationale is clear enough: (1) it is clearly useful to have Maori and Pacific Island doctors in addressing the obvious public health problems in those communities, and (2) on average, Maori and Pacific Islanders do not enjoy the same educational opportunities as the general population. Yes, of course, there will be exceptions to that, but it's a sound enough generalisation.

Here's the web page where the School of Medicine explains how to apply for MAPAS. You will notice that on the same page there are details of another scheme, Rural Origin Medical Preferential Entry (ROMPE), which is open to people who have had at least three years of their secondary education at a rural school, or come from other "appropriate backgrounds". The rationale, one would think, is very similar: those accepted will (1) probably be more willing and able to fill difficult rural practices, and (2) probably not have not enjoyed the same educational opportunities as people who went to schools in city suburbs. Don't expect Don Brash to start campaigning for the "human rights" of city dwellers, though. There's no mileage in that.

So Lianne Dalziel has defied the early betting and kept her job, for now at least. She's very lucky. It's not that she leaked something to the media - all politicians do that all the time. It's not even that the handwritten notes on the letter - not the letter itself, which was actually from the Refugee Status Appeal Authority - are legally privileged. It's that she lied about it right up until she had to answer the question in Parliament, where lying would have been a far more serious matter. This is the third time issues of honesty have come up on her watch. She's really lucky.

The Clark government has not been squeamish in the past about dismissing ministers who fail to meet standards, and it's interesting to speculate why that didn't happen here. It might simply be that they didn't want the damage, but the impression has been given that there is confidence that immigration officials did not pass on the letter (if they did, Dalziel's gone).

It now appears that the office of the Sri Lankan girl's lawyer, Carole Curtis, may well have faxed the letter to someone in Helen Clark's electorate office - but not, she says, the one with the handwritten notes and the drawing of a guinea pig on it. But Clark's electorate secretary, Therese Colgan, is prepared to swear an affadavit that that did happen. I met Colgan when a friend of mine worked with her a few years ago, and I have to say she does not strike me as the kind of person who would fabricate a detailed story and then offer to swear on it.

There are a number of elements of this business about which I am not sure what to think, but I do wish Curtis would stop referring to her client as a "little girl". Clearly, she has been through a terrible experience, but she is 16 years old. She is not a little girl, and to keep on referring to her as such is emotionally manipulative.

I would recommend reading the text of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority decision. It's not very long and it explains the reasoning behind the decision, including its belief that care was available for the girl in her home country, and doubts about the credibility of some evidence.

If you're going to credit the Authority's research and reasoning in the Zaoui case, it doesn't seem fair to dismiss it here. The authority's decision could have been trumped by the Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor making an exception on humanitarian grounds, but without knowing the standards pertaining to such ministerial decisions, or how often they are sought or made, I couldn't venture on the merit of his decision not to.

Meanwhile, a mad press release from Wayne Mapp had me briefly alarmed about the government's foreshore policy. But the transcript of the Wednesday Parliamentary Questions session he refers to does not, in fact contain any new or startling information.

National MPs were just fishing for a soundbite, which they have a right to do, and Mapp's excitable statement was justifiably ignored by the media. But it all goes out there into the public domain and maybe people will believe it. Anyway, the transcript itself - responses by Cullen and Wilson to questions from Brownlee and Mapp - is actually well worth reading as a summary of exactly what the proposed policy means

And, to conclude, a question of etiquette: earlier in the week, I'm in Grey Lynn, buying some vegetables. Among the other customers are a gay couple, shopping for a dinner party. The younger guy, in his early 30s, is what they call a bear: thick, dark hair over much of his torso, shoulders and back included. He goes to the gym and he's showing off.

I know this, because he's not wearing a shirt. Crisp, faded 501s, black leather belt, but no shirt.

So bear guy bowls up to the till as I'm paying for my mesculun salad, and his shoulder brushes against me. He's lightly sweating, although it's not a hot day.

I mean, tell me if I'm out of line here, but I'm thinking, it's 4.47pm at the vege shop, not 3am eternal at the club of your choice. This is wrong, right? I mean, eeewwwww …

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The mother of all debates | Feb 19, 2004 11:16

Am I the only one watching the story of the 16-year-old Sri Lankan girl with a growing sense of disbelief? For a start, would it kill One News to remind its viewers that she was sent home because, like hundreds of other people every year, she didn't meet the criteria for refugee status?

After initially lying to immigration officials - claiming political persecution - the girl and her grandmother changed their story to what appears to be the true one: that she was sexually abused by two members of her extended family. This is horrible, but it maketh not a refugee. The girl belonged in care in her own country - which, thanks to the actions of New Zealand officials, is where she now is. Sri Lanka isn't West Africa or Afghanistan.

On the other hand, what on earth did the Minister of Immigration, Lianne Dalziel think she was doing? At this point in the endlessly shifting story of what is claimed to be a privileged letter from the girl's lawyer, we now know that the letter - which appeared to carry potentially embarrassing jottings about a campaign to solicit public opinion should a Refugee Status decision go badly - was placed on a TV3 gallery reporter's desk by a member of Dalziel's staff. This, after Dalziel had told reporters she didn't know how it got there.

The matter of how her office actually got the letter is now mired in an odd-sounding tale of to-ing and fro-ing that somehow encompasses - and I bet this is going down a storm on the ninth floor - Helen Clark's electorate staff.

On the face of it, it simply didn't have to be this way. The applicants, having initially been dishonest, and eventually failing to meet the rules, had been flown home. Why try to trump the process by leaking the letter? And why take the foolhardy step of trying to exploit the ongoing rivalry between One News and 3 National News? It was amazingly dumb. Yes, there was clearly a degree of emotional manipulation going, with the help of media that had been given the story, but ministers are supposed to be above all that. It's a shocker and it'll probably get worse.

WTF is up with David Cohen? I realised yesterday that his February 5 Media Watch (no relation) column in the NBR (I couldn't find it online) contained the longish sentence: "But when a National Radio media show host can seriously liken the policy position taken by a democratically elected leader to the insane Pol Pot regime, then clearly something of a rather different order is going on."

Clearly, this referred to me, but I was stumped by it for a while. The implication a reasonable person might take is that I said that on National Radio. I didn't. I didn't say it at all. About two weeks ago, in Hard News, I used the phrase "year zero", in its common-enough sense of referring to something that sweeps away all that has gone before. For my own peace of mind yesterday, I Googled up some instances of it, and found it used in reference to September 11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and the teaching of English history in British schools, among other things. In most instances it appears in title case. I've used it myself before, in taking issue with a column by Denis Dutton.

Had Cohen actually printed what I said, and where I said it, and let readers make up their own minds, it might have been alright. But he didn't, and it's not the first time he's mentioned me in an odd and misleading way in his column (my name was the only one mentioned - twice - in a column last year on an unfortunate incident of plagiarism at Real Groove magazine, in such a way that a casual reader would have thought I had something to do with it, where my only connection to the magazine is that I write a column for it). Cohen and I have the odd thing in common, and we've had perfectly cordial correspondence at times. You know me, I don't mind a bit of ginger (he can bemoan my "pathological raving" as often as he likes) but I really wonder what goes on in his head sometimes.

So anyway, just in case: if anybody else thought I was "seriously likening" Don Brash to a psychopathic dictator who forcibly relocated city dwellers to the country, banned religion and money and ordered the slaughter of nearly two million people, I wasn't. For the further avoidance of doubt, I've made the dread phrase lower case. But really…

I do think National's new policy meets the definition of revisionism, for better or worse. A fair chunk of what the party is now promising to sweep away is its own handiwork - many of the people who did it are still there. And I'm a bit weary of being urged to "have the discussion" by a leader who lacked the courtesy to "have the discussion" with his own Maori Affairs and Treaty Settlements spokesperson, or with any senior Maori member of his own party, in forming his policy.

Mind you, I'm still not sure what National is proposing to do. In an impressive performance on Face the Nation last night Gerry Brownlee answered the question "What would you do?" with the undertaking to remove reference to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi from any law "where it is irrelevant, or creates two classes of New Zealanders."

Admittedly, he was pressed for time, but hasn't Don Brash been firmly promising to expunge all references to Treaty principles? And what happened to getting rid of the Maori seats, killing Maori Television, ending all "racial" public health and education measures, and then, after a breather, looking at getting rid of Te Puni Kokiri, Te Mangai Paho and the post of Minister of Maori Affairs? I've said since the day after Brash's speech that I thought much of this was not just unwise but virtually un-doable, and that many people seem to have extravagant and unrealistic expectations.

Anyway, this would be an opportune time for a digest of some more readers' emails on the matter over the past two or three weeks. Some emails have been abridged, and abusive messages from idiots have not been considered for publication…

Rona Ensor said this:

My 74 year old Maori mother who has despite my best efforts been a paid up member of the National Party for fifty years has done nothing but weep since his appalling speech. I have copied off your comments and sent them to her to reinforce her aggravation. Go look for Ngati Rangiwewehi's case in the Eastern Bay of Plenty Resource consent process over water supply for the Rotorua District Council, and see why Maori get really grumpy about the issues confronting the whole nation. The case was heard last week in Rotorua. The only media to cover it so far was Te Karere.

Rob Stowell had this point to make:

Informed debate on the "race issue" is vital. And while I could never vote for the man, I gather Brash does make one good point. We've built a legal edifice on the treaty that the document just wasn't designed to handle. It's small, it contains, even in the written Maori version, an important and unresolved internal contradiction (James Belich's analysis in "Making Peoples" is cogent and worth reading - actually the whole book is bloody good) and it just wasn't intended to take such weight. A new flag would be great, but far more important is something like a constitution. It would have to include the treaty, but would indicate where and how it's applicable. And it'd have to enshrine "one law for all" (which it seems to me is and always has been fundamentally the case, contrary to Mr Brash). The bigger the legal edifice we built on a shaky foundation, the more wobbly it'll get.

Daniel Barnes had further common on the dichotomy identified by our Labour-voting lawyer, between keeping faith with a contract (the Treaty) and pursuing equality as an absolute condition of human rights:

Your lawyer reader is correct in that in principle law must try to be equalitarian etc. and this seems to create difficulties of racially based rights.

However, I think the reply to that is based on an equally fundamental democratic principle, and that is the responsibility of a democracy to protect minorities. Minorities hand over their power of self-determination to a democratic government on the condition that they will be protected from the majority that will wield power. And for the majority, with power comes this responsibility. Clearly, governments have failed to live up to this responsibility to Maori in the past, and this should be, perhaps, the source of grievance claims.

The identification and definition of inviolable ethnic-specific rights seems a far more complicated and dangerous process to me, not to mention being basically anti-democratic. It seems to open up mutual intolerance, and fundamentalism.

Total focus on the Treaty itself is a mistake too, though it is undoubtedly a valuable document. I think this falls into a version of contractualism that ACT would be proud of, whereas ultimately a democratic state must be able to trump the power of a contract.

Brash forgets there's more than one principle to a democracy.

Idiot/Savant chipped in with a cautionary note on taking up such issues with Act Party MPs:

Another reason not to email Muriel Newman: last time I did it, my email address somehow ended up in the hands of her husband, who proceeded to spam me with an ad for his money management seminars and stock tips.

Privacy? Schmivacy! Clearly, he's just insufficiently pro-market, eh readers? Meanwhile, Philip Wilkie was concerned about the radical fringe of the Maori sovereignty movement:

These radical "Maori own everything" concepts have in the last decade gained much ground among a certain now politically and financially enabled minority of tribal Maori groups and yet any attempt to challenge these opinions has been either silenced with the racism word, or a patronising sneer about how us "emotional types" couldn't possibly grasp the complex legal niceties involved.

And yet it is simply axiomatic that pre-European Maori enjoyed NO common law rights, as such a concept simply did not exist at that time. And arguably when Maori signed up for Treaty of Waitangi, that in accepting the undoubted benefits of British citizenship as equals with the European colonists, they also signed AWAY any subsequent common law rights as indigenous peoples. Is it not a fair question?

If only the courts had seen it that way, it would have been so much simpler. But they haven't. Meanwhile, Andrew R wondered if there was another dimension to National's apparent leap into favour - and given the performance of Brash and Brownlee recently, he's probably at least half right:

Was just thinking that the massive switch to National in the polls (which may be brief), is perhaps not so much a reaction to the Maori speech content but to perceived leadership standing up in the National Party. Centre-right voters have been in the wilderness for years without a viable option. ACT, NZ First and National all have suffered from fairly major deficiencies - National especially, with no apparent policy and weak leadership. Centre-right voters have surely been waiting for something solid to hold on to - and Don Brash has given that, even if they missed the content of the speech. Politics is all about perception - and he seems to be playing that very well.
.... And I still don't like any of them!

Gregor Ronald went looking for the classical liberal high ground down the pub - and didn't find it:

I thought the [quiz] was brilliant (though I got 8/12 and felt suitably humble) so I printed the questions & answers, and took them to my neighbourhood Chch pub at Sunday teatime. The response? "I don't give a fuck about facts, these bloody Horis have got it coming."

Depressing...

Adam Pope had a bit more luck in his search [he didn't say which page he had referenced, so I've copied the relevant text from this one - RB]…

Just ferreted out the second principle of John Rawls' Theory of Justice:

Rawls maintains that people in the original position would choose the following special conception of justice:

(1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

(2a) Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and
(2b) are attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Thus Maori are enabled in a free society. I don't necessarily agree with it (it gets attacked very effectively by the communitarians) but provide it for your edification regarding liberalism.

David Moloney said this:

I did not do too well in the test but was often close with the financial answers. I have noticed in the past few years that normally liberal people I know have become very anti Maori. What triggered the change it would seem is the Maori Professors who claimed gas ,oil and the radio spectrum for Maori and the lecturing by the Associate Minister of Maori affairs whose father was a US Marine. All not very logical and I don't think that attitude is confined to educated liberals.

Christopher Dempsey didn't feel threatened:

Your analysis of the whole Treaty of Waitangi debate is refreshingly sane and sensible in what is rapidly becoming a wasteland of shrill people … As a 6/7th generation Kiwi, I've no problems dealing with Maori or ToW issues - it seems to me that only 3rd or 4th generation people have a problem with it. I don't feel threatened at all by Maori and feel a sense of partnership - a rather unique one at that.

Hadyn Green thought that "one law for all" had potential:

I love the one law for everyone stance, because most of us don't think of it past the issue that it is presented with (i.e. Maori land issues). One law for everyone also means that same-sex marriages will be legalised under a National government. That defacto couples will have EXACTLY the same rights as married couples etc. And a young Maori kid in Mangere who is picked up by the police while carrying knives and a loaded pistol will be released with a warning because his lawyer will argue that he "fell in with the wrong crowd" just like any former Auckland 'Land Baron'. [Note: I don't actually believe any of this will happen]]

Ross Barkman was thinking along similar lines:

One way to look at the balance between "treat everyone with absolute equality" and "affirmative action" or "honouring the Treaty" is to compare this debate with the debate over sexism. Now, most people now agree that treating men & women differently solely on the basis of sex is wrong.

But, hang on, doesn't that mean that health programs that target women, such as breast & cervical cancer screening, are "sexist"? Of course it doesn't - women have specific health needs that men don't. And vice versa, of course. So having health programmes that target the specific health needs of Maori is not "racist" or favouritism.

How about the programmes to get more women into the professions, into government and into senior management? While these may be less relevant now than they once were, are they not "sexist"? Again, no - they are an attempt to re-balance society and redress past wrongs. Maori have had the dirty end of the socio-economic stick in NZ since my ancestors arrived and took over, and now we need to work and invest, all of us, to change that.

Sometimes such things have been done in rather too blatant a manner - quota systems or guaranteed places for 'minorities' of any sort are always going to raise hackles. But does anyone seriously think that Maori (or women) are sitting back doing nothing towards their education or career, or not looking after their health, simply because they know that a relatively small extra provision is made for them when they need it? Give me a break...

Brent Wheeler had similar thoughts …

The economics of information helps us understand a bit here. We use terms to efficiently summarise information. One reason people may "pick" on racial terms is that they are an efficient way of summarising information. This can help and it can hinder. In health for example, if we want to identify groups of people with certain health "needs" (the non racial term?) an efficient way to do that is to identify certain racial groups. Racism? Not necessarily. Efficient? Very likely. The downside is we sometimes use words to summarise incorrect or judgemental information - so using race as an efficient information summary to help choose employees may be a problem.

Conclusion? Information is not a free good. People will economise on costs of getting information. Some words economise efficiently. That doesn't mean the information is valid or its intended use justified. Like all apparently free lunches you have to watch it - hard.

Mark Graham looked at the affirmative-action issue:

Firstly, a lot of people are mixing up social redress programmes like university placement schemes for Maori with Treaty of Waitangi issues and holding one responsible for the other. Well it's not.

These programmes grew out of the US affirmative action policies of the 60's and 70's (that are currently under attack in the US by the right) that were promulgated to try to address social issues of blacks (and Maori in NZ) being over-represented in prisons and poor health statistics, etc.

I think it would be very difficult for anyone to argue against the principle of trying to create a fairer society by helping those who need it - and Maori are an easily identified group that can be targeted. The implementation and detail of those policies should be re-examined and debated regularly but Brash called for abolition of all race-based programmes, which is dumb. If you can identify an health issue based on ethnicity, then surely you target that ethnic group. Why does the same not hold true for poverty and ill health?

The second item is that the positive response to Brash's speech largely seems to be coming from people who have little idea of the detail but resent Maori being compensated for past wrongs, largely from a perspective of "We weren't here 200 years ago, so why should we have to pay them out now?" school of thinking (if you can call it that). The fact is the Crown and Iwi who are the partners in the Treaty ARE the same as 200 years ago - they remain the same legal entities today, though individual people have obviously been replaced. The fact remains that as late as the 1980's Maori land was being illegally taken.

I feel there is a real risk that in moving away from addressing these issues from a positive platform of attempting to resolve them, we force those looking for redress to resort to violence. Mud slung at people can possibly eventually lead to destructive actions that can hurt people and this nation.

Ah, yes. Not for the first time, Mark and I seem to think along very similar lines. And that's probably as good a note to end on as any …

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