Club Politique by Che Tibby

As befitting my self-appointed role of 'public intellectual' in the style of John Ralston Saul, or even Simon Upton, let's get to talking about the role of biculturalism in New Zealand politics.

One of the things that I harped on about during my studies was the interesting way in which New Zealand and Australia each adopted an entirely different to the problem of population diversity. As the last few posts have noted, Australia was a world pioneer in the use of a particular kind of liberal approach to diversity that actively sought to include any migrant under a broad program of nation-building. Thing is, New Zealand was having to adjust the old styles of nation-building at exactly the same time, the much-vaulted social liberalisation of the mid-Twentieth Century, but chose a different tack that has had a hugely different social outcome.

In turn, during the study I made oblique references to Canada, which also adopted multiculturalism, but of yet another approach centred on federalism and the rights of the Quebecois. I'll admit that my understanding of Canadian politics borders on woeful, but my understanding will grow if I ever get that elusive post-Doctoral Fellowship. We shall see.

Anyhow, New Zealand and Australia. What characterises Australian multiculturalism is that it enforces a tolerance of social difference between migrants and dinkum Aussies, and uses a live and let live approach with assimilatory undertones. It's the old, 'Con is a Greek but his kids will be Aussies' approach. And the statistics support the method, the third generation children of migrants are essentially monolingual Anglophonic Ockers.

In regard to migrants, New Zealand uses exactly the same method the Aussies pioneered back in the 1970s. But, during this same period a new approach was being road-tested here that IMHO really reached its zenith in the debate over iwi service delivery in the late 1980s, and was the main drive behind the deliberation that gave us the still operating Treaty Settlement policies.

Ignoring the personal judgements about whether or not you like the idea of Treaty settlements, or the use of iwi to delivery services, when you look at the justifications for this type of bicultural policy it appears both similar to, and different from, migrant multiculturalism. First of all, it doesn't require the minority to change. Migrant multiculturalism is all about transforming resident aliens into culturally authentic nationals, biculturalism does not. Second, it does require the majority to adopt or at very least 'reflect' an absolute minimum of minority culture and language. This suggests that the transformation occurs within the majority, something beyond the pale in Australia. Really, all the two approaches have in common the requirement that the majority tolerate a culturally diverse population.

The most succinct description of the bicultural system I've read was outlined by Andrew Sharp in a chapter of a book called Antipodean Practices. In a nutshell, be argues that there's three ways for the average cracker to handle biculturalism. You can either take it on wholesale, learn Te Reo, wear a big pounamu, act all 'right on' and talk about 'how you have friends who are polynesian, so you really relate to Bro'Town'. Or, you can swing to the other end of the spectrum, wear your black singlet and Stubbies, demand that any reference to the Treaty be struck from the record, and hark back in your mind to the days when 'the bloody Maoris' didn't get all 'uppity' (and neither did those bloody sheilas...). Alternatively, you walk the middle ground and not make a song and dance about things you're not a part of.

OK, so Sharp was a little more conservative in his description, but the meaning was there. The way I see it, if you're not part of Maori society, and are in fact a big old white (wo)man, you can either choose to get involved up to the level of your own comfort zone, or don't.

What you don't get to do is make value judgements about the worth of Maori society and whether it gets to stay a feature of the New Zealand landscape. And this isn't a question of being PC or precious about Maori society. It is a statement that if you aren't part of something you do not get to call any shots. I can make all the demands I want about the way Christians should behave in public, and the things they say, but they don't have to listen to me, if not only because I am an outsider.

What this establishes is a clear delineation between majority and minority that doesn't exist in Australian multiculturalism. Essentially, migrants are considered part of the majority who haven't grown into citizenship yet, a bit like kids who have to be guided into 'proper' social behaviour. New Zealand biculturalism differs from this approach because the majority-minority dynamic is entirely different, and far, far less paternalistic. Hopefully.

But the details of this interaction are another post altogether.

I had a breath-taking post all written up for you all, but I reread it today and realised it was crap. That's what you get for writing on a plane after days and days of trying to get your act together and emigrate. The post was essentially 10 things I loved about Oz and will probably miss, but in retrospect I thought, what the hey, if things here turn to custard I can always go back.

Instead I'm going to bleat about how damn great the weather is here in Auckland. What the hell is with that?! Three days of sun and warmth in April? No complaining, but WTF? I had expected to depart from the 30 degrees of Melbourne and land in grey misery, but no such misfortune.

Anyhow, as I may have whined in the past, no luck finding good work in Melbourne. It's the old catch-22 of no experience, no job, no job no experience, so today finds me looking for work over here in godzone, feeling hesitant about my sudden decision to fly back and be an expat no longer, mostly intending to exploit my new-found status as an overeducated New Zealander.

To make a long story short, the decision to find a place by myself back-fired and I had to beat a hasty retreat out of my flat in Carlton. In turn, I was also forced out of my accommodation in Clayton, and was looking at either having to get into a new flat or find three or four months of temporary accommodation somewhere, till the final edit of the thesis was on the table in front of the supervisors.

In the end I just thought to get out of there and fly back to Wellington. But, as fate would have it, airfares were cheaper to Auckland, and here I am.

Since being here I already managed to have a great argument about why Auckland needs a decent, and probably fabulously expensive ratepayer-funded, light rail system, been to Richmond Rd for a really, really good short-film festival and some culture, and had some mighty tasty yum cha. It's like I never left!

And that's a good thing.

OK, housekeeping... Later this week I'll try and outline why I think NZL biculturalism is better than Aussie multiculturalism, but for now I'd like to again thank the contributors who sent in emails. Interesting stuff.

More importantly though, I'd like to make a thank you to all those people who carried me for my six years in Melbourne. To all those people who put up with the mooching, the free beds, the constant stream of complaints about how much of a fucker the thesis was (it's now faded to a mild irritation awaiting the final scratch), the whisky-fuelled nights after break-ups, the being sidelined when I was in relationships, and to the constant demands for better hours and more money (that means you La Luna), to the housemates who had to endure endless ranting at the TV news, to the flatmates who had to endure grumpiness and the tyrannical demands for regular and predictable sleep hours, to the girlfriends I lambasted with starry-eyed lectures on boring points of political philosophy, to the friends who made me simple dinners when I couldn't make rent, to the family I neglected by staying overseas, to the people like Chris Tremewan at Auckland University and Russell Brown here at publicaddress who gave me those little opportunities to show what a freaky brat out of a state house can do with a little leeway (even if my column STILL doesn't rate as high as Cracker...), to the endlessly patient supervisors who read my thought again, and again, and again, to the people I constantly pestered for information and interviews, to the banks who have no idea how much shuffling of cash I did to maintain a nearly-zero interest-rate regime over the years.

To all of you, thank you. It goes to show, no man is an island.

Though sometimes he can fight to be a bridge for others to a higher place.

Thanks to those who responded to the last post with questions and challenges to my interpretation of Australian multiculturalism. And, for those of you who were concerned, I also worry about getting too far into cross-Tasman slanging when talking about this kind of thing.

What should be stated from the outset then is that as far as migrants go, Australian multicultural policy has been eminently successful. At one point the Australian population had something like 40% of its total population born overseas. That is a huge number by anyone’s standards, and the lack of noticeable ethnic conflict is a testament to the strength of the policy and implementation.

But as I say, there were some good points raised in relation to last week, and they made me realise that the old diversity issue does remain a very real problem in some people’s eyes. So while I’d like to harp on about diving Nineteenth Century shipwrecks and having my fins nibbled by seals over the Easter break, I’ll spare you all this and recover a few points.

The first of these is that while I criticise the ‘We’re all Aussies’ point of view, it’s worlds better than what it replaced, ‘White Australia’. In a nutshell, the former is a inclusive policy, while the latter is exclusive. Effectively, anyone is welcome to assimilate and become Australian. But White Australia obviously excluded people for no reason other than their ethnicity (even Southern Europeans were regarded as ‘unassimilable’).

The real problem I have with multiculturalism isn’t that it is a policy of assimilation, more that it’s all too often considered a policy for diversity. And this is by proponents and opponents alike!

What this issue boils down to is the difference between public and private politics. When put into practice, the ideology of multiculturalism clearly indicates that people’s private lives can be as diverse as the range of human culture and society itself. As long as the individual doesn’t do anything the host community considers intolerable or ‘repugnant’, everything is on the table. Wear what you like, eat what you like, speak how you like etc.

But, and there’s always a but, to make this type of society work, the political sphere has to maintain a ‘core’ that is standardised and culturally neutral. Normally, this is called, ‘civic nationalism’. The main idea being that the national identity is formed around things you can generate catch-phrases for, like ‘shared values’, and ‘productive diversity’.

Here in Australia, these "neutral" values are actually represented by Anglo heritage and institutions, to which all current and future migrants are expected to conform and contribute. And that’s the kicker, it's only neutral in regard to not being enforced. The policy says, in layman’s terms, ‘we have an Anglo country, blend in, make a contribution, and maybe things will change a little’.

As a policy it’s actually very open, liberal and tolerant. It also closely subscribes to what one reader points to as Will Kymlicka’s ideas on minorities and minority rights. Also, my own study has indicated that while it is in reality conforming to assimilation, the migrant presence in Australia fundamentally has effected Australian nationality, the demise of ‘White Australia’ being a direct outcome of the migration of diverse cultural minorities to the country. In other words, while blending in, migrants simultaneously changed the ay Australians view their own nationality.

OK, so here’s the problem I was facetiously trying to get at in last weeks post. For migrants, multiculturalism is both good and necessary, it allows them to participate in political life, if they adopt majority ways and values, and tolerates their differences, as long as these remain private and not political. ‘The majority’ is of course the old Anglo culture, which undeniably dominates the political sphere. While people with Greek or Italian names may enter politics, they inevitable act like mainstream Anglos in public.

Many authors indicate that this type of behaviour proves that ‘civic’ or culturally neutral nation-building is in fact a myth, a point I agree on. But, in regard to migrants I don’t really have a problem with it. You can’t have dozens of cultures and their value-systems all making equal demands over a political system, it just wouldn’t work. But, it is fair to allow people to practice their own cultures in private, the parameters of which include things like festivals and holidays.

The core issue is using this type of system to integrate indigenes. And sorry to the reader who thought ‘indigenes’ to be jargon, IMHO if MS Word accepts it unequivocally, it’s officially common parlance. Anyhow, multiculturalism is a system specifically intended to assimilate. If you’re very precious about your culture not being given political voice, then why are you living in a foreign country? The issue with indigenes is that, especially in the Australian case, they didn’t ask for a foreign system to be introduced, and they don’t have anywhere else to practice it.

Australia is currently dominated by a Government that is directly contributing to the assimilation of indigenous people, while paying lip service to diversity. Aboriginality (the identity of Aboriginal people) is under direct threat from current policies regarding indigenous communities. Personally, I see the demise of ATSIC as the most recent step in a historical progress towards the eventual disappearance of Aboriginal culture and identity from Australia, and I lay the blame directly at the feet of a Government ideologically opposed to fostering and supporting difference.

I’d like to harp on about how the New Zealand policy of biculturalism is better, but that’s a job for another post, probably centring on this foreshore issue. FYI, I’m packing in this Australian gig and moving back to godzone. So, some time next week I’ll run a few interviews with some people I know and try find some good oil for you.

If you boil down ‘race relations’ in Australia it pretty much starts to look like a simple divide between two types of policy approach, the “We’re all Aussies” and the “Inter-Ethnic Ghetto Chaos Hell of Terrorist Apartheid”. What took me the longest to twig to was that multiculturalism, the Great Nemesis of racists everywhere, is actually a form of “We’re all Aussies”.

No… really. As an ideology multiculturalism is at its most basic a moral justification for tolerance of difference and nothing more. Philosophically the argument goes:
i. People are different.
ii. Difference is only a big deal if you make it one.
iii. Don’t make difference a big deal and,
iv. it will eventually ‘go away’.

Australian multiculturalism operates exactly along this line. Essentially it’s a ‘live and let live’ system that kind of ignores difference unless it makes things difficult for people (such as racial vilification), in the expectation that the melting pot will eventually smooth out the mix inter-generationally. And in many respects this is true, the melting pot does work. Although legend has it that immigration officials during the 70s and 80s preferred the term ‘de-wogging’.

The key to making this work is to not officially endorse any minority group. If you do that, then they have claim to means to permanently entrench themselves (hence the ghetto fears). So in practice, you can permit Chinese festivals and the like, but you don’t form a ‘Ministry of Asian Affairs’, because this would acknowledge and potentially perpetuate their difference. In short, while the private lives of citizens may be culturally diverse, their public (i.e. political) lives are not.

I write this because the only indigenous bureaucracy of any note in Australia’s history, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), was officially terminated this past week. And exactly why this has occurred is not too difficult to fathom.

As I may have mentioned before, ATSIC was hardly without its problems. Set up as a vehicle to bunch federal funding on Indigenous Affairs after the proliferation of programs and grants initiated during the 1970s, the Commission inherited all the prejudices and problems of its disparate bureaucratic forebears. Burdened with a learning curve like a figure eight, corruption, under-funding, mainstream bigotry and general ignorance, and of course a few mighty dodgy Commissioners, ATSIC was effectively ensured of never surviving.

I saw it as important though because ATISC was without doubt an effort to have indigeneity entrenched in the bureaucracy, and diversity used as a guiding principle of Indigenous Affairs. As a step towards real self-determination by Aboriginal people it was an actual step, and not a cacophony of vocal largesse.

Since taking office in 1996 Howard’s Government has consistently worked to have ATSIC removed from the bureaucratic landscape, via the systematic removal of key programs like health care, and squirmed uncomfortably when placed under political pressure by Commissioners. And naturally, the biggest issue taken up by ATSIC was the demand for Howard to say ‘sorry’ for the treatment of the Stolen Generations.

For those who came in late, from the 1880s to the 1970s, Aboriginal children were systematically taken from their parents. This was for various reasons, sometimes legitimate, but by far the most common justification was to destroy traditional Aboriginal lifestyles. Anyhow, it’s a woeful period of Australia’s history that I like to harp on about, so if you’re curious go to the archives, or read The Way We Civilise by Rosalind Kidd.

With ATSIC bringing deliberate and specific pressure to bear on Howard for an apology, something he saw as likely to result in compensation payments, the magic word has never appeared. The details of this issue aside, the interesting fact is that despite Howard declining the issue, it refused to go away while ATSIC kept referring to it.

In other words, ATSIC was pushing a political agenda not of Howard’s liking, and more particularly not of his own making. Now, I’d think, ‘oh, this is an indigenous issue’ and treat it with due importance, but Howard seemed to treat the demands as ‘unAustralian’, and there’s the catch. As a body of policy Indigenous Affairs is, like multiculturalism, largely about turning an ethnic minority into dinky-di ockers. Aboriginal people seem in the current policy environment to have little recourse but to culturally assimilate into the majority and leave their indigeneity as a private identity.

So for those at the back, Aboriginal people are welcome to become Aussies, but Aboriginality, the thing that makes them Aboriginal, is to be left off the political agenda. And well off the political agenda. Well off like five day old prawns off.

And I worry about that. With Senators like Vanstone, the Minister for ‘Outsiders’, making statements welcoming the end of the “sorry saga”, it seems that any independent voice for Aboriginal people has been finally dealt the coup de grâs in favour of an appointed council of Howard-friendly ‘advisors’. And I see Aboriginality dying a little more every day.

I found an interesting article at The Age website on Monday that made be think 'bloody good on ya luv'. If you haven't got the time or interest to read it, basically it's by Edwina Cameron, a young woman who having recently finished a degree decided to pack in her good job and take off for a big jaunt up the East coast of Australia.

Of course, personally I was a little jealous she'd landed a plum post somewhere, but I compared her reasoning to my own at the same age and thought, 'what the hell, I wish I’d done much the same back then'. Essentially, at 22 I was also convinced that the world required me to get a good job and a mortgage, and to turn myself into a model citizen. This was of course filtered through the haze of a rock and roll lifestyle, but hey, no ones perfect. Least of all moi.

By 27 I'd pretty much completely deflated this myth and woken up to the fact that my choice to settle down, abortive as it was, really seemed something I absorbed through some kind of insipid socially-forced osmosis. In the immortal if not slightly dodgy words of George Thoroughgood, 'Get a haircut and get a real job' had been the order of the day. Consequently and conscientiously, I had endeavoured to go on to a Masters degree and socially climb from there to a good job in the cushy elite of the public service.

This small dream was however quashed by my irrational need to ask the interviewers from Treasury whether the job would actually allow me to think for myself, at work. They politely replied that I would. The fact that I didn't hear from them again politely implied I would not.

I'd like to think that the older, if not wiser, me would have sacrificed a cheap shot like that for an opportunity to do exciting things like having a job and getting paid. Of course, I would be lying to myself.

What shits me about the 'get a house, get a job, get a family' mentality, isn't that it's banal, that viewpoint was well canvassed in Trainspotting. But excluding success in sport, more than it's all too often seen as the only measure of success in both Australia and New Zealand. Writing poetry makes you a flake for example. Painting or sculpture means you're probably a bit potty.

Ignoring that some poets are flakes and some artists mad as march hares, it's still annoying that buying a house seems to be the only game in town. Look what it does to poor people trying to find a place to live, Australia is a current testament to that.

No, I think I admire Edwina because she also didn't sell out to the need to conform to the nesting mentality we're all told we have to subscribe to. I know that our generation is all too often not doing the nesting thing till later in life, but it's still telling that it remains an important part of social status, and more importantly, respectability. Sure, Edwina will no doubt return from her trip more worldly and apply this knowledge to her vocation and half-paid-off mortgage, but the fact that we're living countries that allow us to do this is, to me, fascinating.

A lot of people go to uni with the intention of it leading somewhere. Lets face it though, unless you're a boring conservative, uni is all about fun. If you're stupid enough to be doing a BA for example, you'd better not consider it a means to get ahead in life. Engineering? Medicine? Law? Yes, maybe. But Arts? No.

I advise most young adults these days to do what I did. Use the Arts degree to get access to the library, and read as much as you can without compromising your studies. Breeze through with low Bs or high Cs, and spend the rest of the time building knowledge. You can always slog your guts out on a Masters.

The fact of the matter is, Western countries have become so affluent these days, and commodities so cheap, you can always knuckle down and become boring later in life, such as your thirties. Moreover, if I was an employer, and was presented with two people in the mid to late twenties and only one of who had dropped out and travelled, the homebody would get the heave-ho.

So good on ya Edwina, go muck around on the coast, go fire a rocket launcher at a mountain in Cambodia ($US200! A bargain), smoke grass with hippies on the Annapurna Trail, or live in a dingy apartment in London making a pittance. We all know Australia will be doing exactly the same thing when you get back.