Poisoning the well. Race politics is killing the Kiwi dream.

Karl du Fresne I 14 September 2024 I Spectator Australia

I recently had an exchange of emails with a friend who lives on the Gold Coast. An expatriate Kiwi, he keeps a close eye on affairs in his home country and it would be fair to say he’s deeply concerned by what’s happening in New Zealand. He signed off his latest email with the line, ‘Glad to be in Queensland’, and as a New Zealand resident I admit I felt a twinge of envy.

This is a man I’ve known for 40 years and always regarded as a classic, thoughtful liberal. He’s naturally disposed to think the best of people and to eschew any idea that’s remotely racist. Yet even my friend thinks racial politics are leading New Zealand down a disturbing path.

I would go further and say a toxin has entered the country’s bloodstream. A country with an admirable history of racial harmony (not a perfect one, but what country can boast of that?) is in danger of tearing itself apart over demands from part-Maori activists that white New Zealand atone for what they claim is a shameful history of racial oppression.

I use the term ‘part-Maori’ deliberately, because the activists are both oppressed and oppressors. Generations of marriage and interbreeding between Maori and European New Zealanders – in itself, an indication of goodwill between the races – mean the radicals who rage against racism are descended from the same white colonists they despise. Strangely, they are interested in identifying with only one side of their genetic inheritance: the one that confers a bitter sense of grievance.

Two issues in particular have brought race to the fore in New Zealand’s culture wars. One is the centre-right coalition government’s requirement that city and district councils which introduced exclusively Maori wards when Labour was in power must now put them to the test in referendums. In almost all cases, councils want to retain them. Past experience indicates, however, that when the issue is put to the public, Maori wards will be rejected. Voters seem to recognise, even if their elected representatives don’t, that people of Maori descent don’t need special, race-based wards to win seats on councils. Maori candidates can put themselves forward for election like anyone else, and have frequently done so successfully in the past.

The second incendiary issue also relates to a referendum – one that the ACT party, a minority partner in the government, called for as part of its coalition agreement with the National and New Zealand First parties. ACT wants the public to have a say on the vaguely defined ‘principles’ of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding constitutional document. These ‘principles’ have built up in an ad hoc fashion over the past 50 years, greatly assisted by activist judges, and ACT argues they have led to the de facto adoption of revisionist meanings never intended by the treaty’s original signatories (and never mandated by voters, since they weren’t given a say).

Interpretation of the treaty is front and centre of the increasingly febrile race debate in New Zealand. Under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government, and without any substantive public input, Maori radicals made great strides in redefining the treaty – for example, using it to promote notions of ‘partnership’ and Maori co-governance that directly cut across colour-blind democratic principles. Opponents say the ultimate goal is tribal rule.

ACT wants to roll that trend back, but its two coalition partners are less than enthusiastic. National and New Zealand First seem to regard it as poking a wasps’ nest that would be better left undisturbed.

In recent weeks this division has played out against an unusual backdrop: the death and?tangihanga?(funeral) of the Maori king, Tuheitia.

Although the king had no constitutional status and many powerful Maori?iwi?(tribes) have never submitted to his authority, his death and the associated mourning rituals were seized as an opportunity to assert Maori sovereignty and put on a forceful display of Maori solidarity.

The news media obliged by giving the event saturation coverage over several days, despite Tuheitia not having played a significant role in the life of the nation.

Tuheitia’s title now passes to his 27-year-old daughter, who has a master’s degree in?tikanga Maori?(Maori law and custom). No one should expect the new Maori monarch to take the generally conciliatory approach of her predecessors. Interviewed two years ago in London, and speaking in Maori, she noted that land in England was ‘vast and abundant’ and asked, ‘Why did they have to come to Aotearoa [a name commonly used by Maori for New Zealand]?’ She then supplied her own reply: ‘To steal our land, to murder our ancestors and [their] grandchildren, to confiscate our resources.’ Her inflammatory remarks went unreported other than in Maori media.

It’s hard to see this ending well. Part-Maori radicals in three parties (Labour, the Maori party and the Greens) are primed for a fight to lock in and extend the gains made by stealth under Labour. Their explicitly anti-white rhetoric is uncompromisingly confrontational. Even my friend on the Gold Coast, despite having grown up with the ritualised ferocity of the?haka, was startled by the aggression on display at the Maori king’s funeral. Meanwhile, external migration from New Zealand is running at an unprecedented level. Coincidence?

A regrettable side-effect of all this acrimony is that it has given oxygen to the small minority of New Zealanders who could be described as genuinely racist. There is a little bit of Maori, culturally if not genetically, in many white New Zealanders. A strong Maori influence pervades our language, our music, our sporting passions, our sense of humour and our social manners. It’s one of the qualities that sets us apart from Australians, and for many New Zealanders, it’s a source of pride. But New Zealand has always had an ugly underbelly that regards Maori as inferior. Those Neanderthals are now coming out of the shadows, emboldened and energised by the growing public unease at the divisive tactics of Maori radicals.

This is a predictable consequence of the antagonism whipped up by the agitators. New Zealand has a deep well of goodwill between the two races, but it’s at grave risk of being poisoned – to the ultimate detriment of both.

Author: Karl du Fresne