Muriel Newman | NZCPR | 12 Feb 2015

Waitangi Day was an opportunity to reflect on our past and our future.

There was a time when we were predominantly a nation of just two cultures – Maori and European. Nowadays New Zealand is a nation of peoples from all over the globe – Maori, European, Asian, Pacifica, Australian, American, African… The commonality between us all is that we call New Zealand our home. We like to think we are a nation of equals – but there are many who seek to divide us by race.

Just look at the fiasco last week over a teenage girls’ basketball team that was barred from competing in the National Maori Basketball Tournament because their coach wasn’t ‘Maori’. At least that is how the story was first reported.

After the team, which won the under 15s last year, had already registered for the under 17s division, the coach was told that he had to be Maori to enter. If he wasn’t to be ruled out, he needed to supply his “whakapapa to an iwi” or “state tribal links”.

In the face of a storm of outrage, the organisers denied that they had changed the rules, instead claiming that it was the players who had to state their tribal links. They said the Maori tournament was for iwi and hapu-based teams, and players not linked to an iwi or hapu could apply individually and be placed into teams. The coach’s desire to keep the girls together in their winning combination was “not the whanaungatanga of Maori basketball”.

Defining people by race has always been dangerous. The atrocities of the Nazi extermination programme during World War Two should leave no-one in any doubt about that.

In fact, that experience led the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to invite leading international anthropologists and sociologists to investigate the issue of ‘race’ and in 1950 they issued a declaration, which included the following statement:

“The biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth ‘race’ has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years it has taken a heavy toll in human lives and caused untold suffering. It still prevents the normal development of millions of human beings and deprives civilization of the effective co-operation of productive minds. The biological differences between ethnic groups should be disregarded from the standpoint of social acceptance and social action. The unity of mankind from both the biological and social viewpoints is the main thing. To recognize this and to act accordingly is the first requirement of modern man.”

In the US, the development and deployment of the atomic bomb during World War Two resulted in a Congress authorisation to the Department of Energy to analyse human genes in order to identify, among other things, any genetic mutations that might have been caused by radiation. The early studies led to the realisation that the best way to examine such effects was to map out the entire human genome in order to obtain a reference sequence. This eventually led to the Human Genome Project, a thirteen year international effort, launched in 1990 and costing more than US$30 billion, to discover the complete set of human genes and their DNA sequence.

The project found that “DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity.”

With no scientific foundation for defining people by ‘race’, but a recognition of the destructive societal consequences of racial profiling, many countries are now moving towards the elimination of the concept from their constitutional arrangements. Austria has rejected the idea of separate races, as have Finland and Hungary. Similar moves are being considered in both France and Germany. In Fiji, all laws and conventions based on race – including separate electoral rolls and reserved seats in Parliament – have been abolished.

In Sweden, the government regards race as a “social construct which should not be encouraged in law”. As a result a high level review has been launched to investigate how to remove all mentions of race from legislation. It is expected to be completed by December.

As the Minister for Integration, Erik Ullenhag, explained in an interview last August, “it is always unacceptable to judge people from a collective standpoint. They should always be treated as individual human beings. We need the political leadership to stand up for the equal value of all humans.”

The problem in New Zealand is finding politicians prepared to stand up against the powerful vested interests that have captured the concept of race for their own advantage, since it wields considerable political force and has become an extremely lucrative money-making proposition.

The concept nearly died a natural death in the mid-seventies when, as a result of the rapid rate of intermarriage in this country, the number of legally defined ‘Maori’ with 50 percent or more of Maori blood, was in serious decline. This led to demands for a change in the legal definition and, as a result, the 1974 Maori Affairs Amendment Act replaced the blood quantum classification with one based on self-identification and ethnic affiliation – in other words, having a Maori descendent.

This clever political manoeuvre guaranteed an on-going rise in the number of people categorised as ‘Maori’, thereby fulfilling the tribal leaders’ ambitions for increasing power and resources.

Over the years, the Maori rights movement has also successfully persuaded successive governments to allocate increasing levels of funding to race-based initiatives – all in the name of reducing so-called ‘Maori’ disadvantage. The problem is that such programmes are based on a false premise – it is not being Maori that causes disadvantage, instead, it is such things as a lack of education, long term welfare dependency, sole parenthood, violence and criminality, substance abuse, or living in an area where there are no jobs.

Many New Zealanders are becoming increasingly alarmed about the long-term impact of the government’s continued promotion of ‘race’ within our society. It is being used by corporate iwi as a ruse to progress their increasingly radical demands – as witnessed at Waitangi when iwi leaders expressed anger at the Prime Minister for rejecting Maori claims for the control of New Zealand’s water and the right to charge for it.

During the annual meeting between the Cabinet and the Iwi Chairs’ Forum at Waitangi, the issue of water rights was top of the agenda. Iwi leaders want the Government to agree on concrete proposals for Maori water rights within a year, but Prime Minister John Key has said two years is more realistic. If they get the rights to water, iwi leaders have said they want to make money off it – but the Prime Minister is ruling out iwi being able to charge: “They won’t be able to do anything different to any other New Zealander”.

Mr Key again confirmed that the Government is maintaining its position that no one owns the water. But he did say that Maori have some genuine rights and interests in water, which need to be defined: “In the Supreme Court, we said in our statement … that we think there are legitimate rights and interests. We think there might be quite a gap between what some groups think those rights and interests are, but there are by catchment, in certain places, rights and interests.”

The NZCPR looked into that Supreme Court ruling over water rights last year in Re-writing History, with a Guest Commentary, Maori water rights a recent Supreme Court decision, by Judge Anthony Willy.

In contrast to National’s attempts to contain iwi demands and dampen down expectations, the new leader of the Labour Party, Andrew Little, appeared to have turned his back on former leader Helen Clark’s successful strategy of taking a hard line against iwi greed, by calling for more discussion on the sovereignty activists’ demands for self-governance and self-rule. He said the government should not dismiss the Waitangi Tribunal’s claim that Maori did not cede sovereignty: “There are models around the world where indigenous peoples have a level of authority over some issues and some territories they control, so I think let’s not try to be dismissive of it”.

The Prime Minister has called Labour’s plan “divisive”.

Over the last few weeks, another of the Maori sovereignty movement’s new converts, Gareth Morgan, has also been divisive. He has been ridiculously controversial, presumably in order to sell his new book. Having now ‘found’ the Treaty of Waitangi, he no longer appears to regard Maori as equal citizens to everyone else, but as a racial elite – ‘partners’ with the Crown. He wants the Treaty entrenched in a new constitution, an Upper House of Parliament established with half the members Maori, and the Maori language to be compulsory in primary schools.

While on the one hand he pushes radical Maori rights, on the other, he claims to be against Maori privilege and would like to see the Maori seats and race-based funding abolished.

Mr Morgan’s bizarre crusade saw him turn up at the venue of former National Party leader Don Brash’s infamous “Nationhood” speech. As part of a publicity stunt to get on television, Dr Brash was asked to attend – to face the insults and then respond.

I invited Don Brash, the former Leader of the National Party, to share his thoughts on the occasion as this week’s Guest Commentator. In his article, Why I disagree with Gareth Morgan, Dr Brash makes the point that since he rejects Dr Morgan’s starting point, that Maori are partners with the Crown, he disagrees with most of his conclusions!

“Dr Morgan talked about Maori having a partnership with the Crown, making us, in his words, ‘one nation, two peoples’.  I also think this is nonsense, Lord Cooke notwithstanding.  The idea that Governor Hobson envisaged the British Crown – the representation of the most advanced country in the world at the time – forming a partnership with a disparate group of Maori chiefs who were, at that time, scarcely out of the Stone Age, is ludicrous.

“Moreover, to speak of New Zealand in 2015 being ‘two peoples’ is equally silly: the overwhelming majority of people who identify as Maori also have some non-Maori ancestors, frequently a non-Maori parent, while ‘non-Maori’ are no longer exclusively European but embrace a very wide range of ethnicities.”

On many occasions during his book tour, Gareth Morgan called ‘Pakeha’ “ignorant”. But he was not alone. Sir Tipene O’Regan, whose father was Irish, used Waitangi Day to do the same, describing ‘pakeha’ as ignorant and calling for a future where Maori culture would play a bigger role.

Being mired in racial division is not the way of the future. We need to follow those enlightened nations around the world that are abolishing the concept of race from their statute books. And it needs to be done now, before the likes of Labour and the Greens, who are pandering to those who claim that the Maori did not cede sovereignty, ever get their hands on the levers of power.

Why I disagree with Gareth Morgan

Don Brash | 8 Feb 2015

In recent weeks, Gareth Morgan has written several articles for the “New Zealand Herald” promoting his book on the implications of the Treaty of Waitangi for modern New Zealand.  Then a couple of days before Waitangi Day I had a call from David Fisher of the “Herald” telling me that Dr Morgan would be going to the Orewa Rotary Club to give a speech criticising what he called “ignorant Brash-think” about the Treaty.  I made some comments suggesting that I disagreed quite fundamentally with his views and they appeared in the “Herald” the following day.  Later that day, I got a phone call from one of Dr Morgan’s staff (Gareth must have been too busy to call me himself) inviting me to attend the speech and make some comments in reply.  After giving the matter some thought, I accepted the invitation and have no regrets that I did so.

It was obvious that Dr Morgan had chosen the venue for maximum media impact, with my attendance also designed to increase the media appeal.  And there were certainly plenty of media in attendance – arguably as many media people as other audience members.  It turned out that, while we spoke at the premises used by the Orewa Rotary Club, this was not a meeting of the Orewa Rotary Club, which no doubt explains why the audience was so tiny.

Because the “debate” – really a speech by Dr Morgan and a relatively brief reply by me, followed by a small number of questions from the audience – attracted some media attention, I accepted Muriel’s invitation to write a brief piece on why I disagree with Dr Morgan.

Let me first acknowledge that Dr Morgan and I agree on some issues.  He is opposed to separate Maori electorates, Maori wards in local government (and by implication the Maori Statutory Board in Auckland) and quotas for Maori in educational institutions.  Granting any group special rights is contrary to Article 3 of the Treaty he believes, and I totally agree with that.

Having these special rights is also patronising, and implies that Maori aren’t quite competent enough to have their voices heard in the political arena, or get into some university courses, without a special leg up.  Of course that is nonsense: when I was in Parliament, there were 21 Maori in Parliament – roughly the same percentage of Maori Members of Parliament as Maori are in the wider population – only seven of them elected in the Maori electorates.  The other 14 were elected in general constituencies or were placed in a winnable position on a party’s list.  (Ironically, the person who chaired our debate in Orewa personified that fact – she was Georgina Beyer, herself Maori, who won the rural electorate of Wairarapa for the Labour Party in competition with Paul Henry.)

Similarly in Auckland: the first election of councillors after the super-city was established in 2010 saw three people of Maori descent elected – not in Maori wards but on their own merit – and again three Maori out of a total of 20 councillors meant that Maori on the Council were in roughly the same proportion as Maori in the general population.

But as explained in his recent Ngapuhi speech, Dr Morgan’s basic position seems to be that –

“.. the Treaty is whatever a reasonable person’s view of the following four taken together leads them to – not any one taken in isolation, but all taken together:

1)      Treaty of Waitangi
2)      Te Tiriti O Waitangi
3)      Principles of the Treaty
4)      Post-1975 Consensus on the Treaty.”

And I think that that is nonsense.  The so-called principles of the Treaty have often been referred to, frequently in legislation, but have never to my knowledge been fully explained, let alone agreed.  And to refer to a “post-1975 consensus on the Treaty” is again a meaningless concept – I know of no such consensus, and the whole reason for the ongoing debate is that there is no consensus about what the Treaty means, or should mean.

In one of his “Herald” articles Dr Morgan talked about Maori having a partnership with the Crown, making us, in his words, “one nation, two peoples”.  I also think this is nonsense, Lord Cooke notwithstanding.  The idea that Governor Hobson envisaged the British Crown – the representation of the most advanced country in the world at the time – forming a partnership with a disparate group of Maori chiefs who were, at that time, scarcely out of the Stone Age, is ludicrous.  Moreover, to speak of New Zealand in 2015 being “two peoples” is equally silly: the overwhelming majority of people who identify as Maori also have some non-Maori ancestors, frequently a non-Maori parent, while “non-Maori” are no longer exclusively European but embrace a very wide range of ethnicities.

So I disagree with Dr Morgan’s starting point, and as a result I disagree with many of his conclusions.

I think making the teaching of te reo compulsory in primary school, as he advocates, would be a complete waste of valuable teaching time for most New Zealand children, many of whom can’t even read and write well in English – which is not just the dominant language of New Zealand but is also the dominant language of the whole world.  Being able to read and write in English is of fundamental importance to all New Zealanders, whatever their ancestry.  And yes, there may be merits in terms of brain development in learning a second language at an early age, but if a second language is to be learnt it should be one which would be of benefit in the wider world, such as Mandarin or Spanish.  (Interestingly, I took part in a Maori TV programme a few years ago, on a panel of six people discussing whether te reo should be a compulsory subject in primary school.  Even though I was the only non-Maori on the panel, the panel voted by clear majority against making the teaching of te reo compulsory.)  Of course if resources were infinite – so that we could teach te reo without crowding out anything else in the school curriculum – then why not learn a whole bunch of languages?  But as an economist Dr Morgan should know better than most that resources are not infinite: teaching te reo would have an opportunity cost – something else would have to drop out of the curriculum.

The idea of having an Upper House with 50% of its members being Maori, which Dr Morgan also advocates, strikes me as utterly absurd, and totally at odds with any concept of democracy.

Many of our problems today stem from the way in which Te Tiriti O Waitangi – the real Treaty, which Maori chiefs signed – has been reinterpreted to suit the desires of modern-day revisionists.  But its meaning is totally unambiguous.

The first clause involved Maori chiefs ceding sovereignty to the British Crown, completely and forever.  And there can be not the slightest doubt about that.  That Maori chiefs understood that at the time is abundantly clear from the speeches made by the chiefs themselves, both those in favour of signing and those opposed to it.  This was further confirmed by a large number of chiefs at the Kohimarama Conference in 1860, and confirmed again by Sir Apirana Ngata in 1920.

The third article of the Treaty provided that all Maori – “tangata Maori, katoa o Nu Tirani” – should receive full citizenship rights – and this included the many slaves of other Maori, most being held in abject conditions and often the victims of cannibal feasts.  Today, we tend to see this clause as no big deal but in 1840 it was an extraordinary thing for the Queen’s representatives to offer – nothing similar happened for the Australian aborigines, or the American Indians.   All Maori, no matter their status, were offered the “rights and privileges of British subjects”, putting them on a par with every other British subject – not, it may be noted, ahead of other British subjects but on a par with them.

The second clause is what has caused so much angst.  Actually, the clause is redundant since all it does is guarantee the right of citizens to own private property, and British subjects have this right anyway.   But note that the guarantee was made to all the people of New Zealand – “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani” – in clear distinction to the third article which specifically applied only to Maori – and “all” means “all”.  In other words, rights of ownership were guaranteed to all New Zealanders, not just to those with one or more Maori ancestors.

There is ongoing debate about what “tino rangatiratanga” meant at the time but it is impossible to believe it meant what modern-day revisionists try to take it to mean.  Why on earth would Hobson have asked Maori chiefs to sign a Treaty involving the complete cession of sovereignty in the first clause if the second clause contradicted that first clause?

Let me say that I have always supported the payment of compensation by the Crown to any New Zealander, Maori or non-Maori, who can establish with a reasonable degree of certainty that their property has been illegally confiscated by the Crown.  There are clearly suspicions that some of the claims which have been settled in recent times have in fact been settled on several previous occasions, and that brings the settlement process into disrepute.  But in principle nobody can object to the Crown paying compensation to any New Zealander whose property has been illegally confiscated.

So in summary, I like the Treaty: it is a very simple document recording the cession of sovereignty by the Maori chiefs who signed it; extending to them in return the full rights of British subjects; and guaranteeing to all New Zealanders the right to own property.

But it does not require us all to learn te reo; it does not provide for separate Maori electorates or Maori wards; it does not give Maori a power to veto RMA resource consents; it does not give Maori any preferential rights over natural resources; and it certainly provides no basis for an Upper House with half its members being Maori.