Tag Archives: Maori Party

Hōiho trading

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So much of Labour and the economic left’s criticism of the māori party and its conduct in government with National is little more than the howling of self-interested Pākehā angry that the natives aren’t comporting themselves in the approved fashion. But in this case, criticism of the māori party’s support for National’s amended ETS is entirely justified — not because it goes against the principles of the labour and environmentalist movements, but because it goes against the māori party’s own stated principles and demonstrated political strategy. Idiot/Savant has a thorough fisking of the differences.

Whereas previous criticisms have mostly been leveled at the māori party for trading away tactical gains against strategic gains (going into government with National; refusing to quit any time National capitalised on its majority; etc), this decision sacrifices the strategic for the tactical, swapping a few relatively token benefits to some industry sectors in which Māori have strong interests and to low-income people among whom Māori are strongly represented, against a huge intergenerational moral hazard by which the general populace will subsidise emitters, robbing the general tax fund of revenue which could otherwise have been channeled into targeted poverty relief and social services, of which Māori are among the most significant consumers. The upshot must surely be the Foreshore and Seabed; but this seems to me a very heavy price to pay for a concession which seemed likely to go ahead in any case.

While the māori party is not — and Māori are not — ‘environmentalists’ in the western conservation-for-conservation’s-own-sake sense, a core plank of their political and cultural identity is rooted in their own kind of environmentalism, and by acceding to an ETS which does not enforce carbon limitations on industry and society, they have put this role in jeopardy and severely weakened their brand and alliances.

There is a silver lining in this for Labour and the Greens, however. The māori party’s deal has prevented Labour from succumbing to a similarly tempting compromise on the ETS, and it can retain its relatively high moral ground. Labour and the Greens now have a clear path on which they can campaign for the 2011 and future elections, a definite identity around which to orient their policies, and the real possibility of significant strengthening of the ETS in the future. Where this leaves the māori party I’m not sure; no doubt those who shout ‘kupapa!’ will be keen to consign them to the annals of history, but I don’t think redemption is impossible — especially if the māori party shepherds the FSA review through to its desired conclusion, it will remain a political force too significant to be ignored.

L

Getting what you voted for

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It’s nearly 10 months since the election and the parties have just about found their feet. Bloggers on the left are delighting in saying to National, Act and Māori Party voters “look at what they’re doing, you didn’t vote for that!” which makes me curious, how many of us got what we voted for?

ACT

If you voted for hard-on-crime you’re probably feeling ok right now, it might not be as hard or as fast as you like, but the art of vengeance is definitely on its way back. If you voted for Rodney Hide, hurrah you have Rodney Hide. If you’re a small business owner frustrated with regulation, again you’re probably feeling pretty good at the signs of what’s coming. The neoliberals might not think things are happening fast enough, but they’re sure happening. It’s only the old ACT libertarian core who must be feeling cheated by the concessions to the crime-and-punishment lobby, and who else could you have voted for anyway?

Greens

I voted Green looking for a genuinely left wing party, and I’m feeling a bit let down: the MOU and the lack of visibility over the pain National’s policies are causing the poor and the vulnerable. That said, I also know that the Greens don’t have any parliamentary power so I expect some compromise. If you voted for the environment it’s probably feeling pretty good, while we lost the election the Greens are being effective at raising the issues and progressing a handful of them – about as good as you could hope for in the current political climate.

Labour

You lost, that’s all bad, but how’re you feeling about this incarnation of Labour-in-opposition? Labour’s actually doing ok I reckon for the centrist middle class left voters, and for the co-opted unions – they’re making the right noises about National policy, they’re sounding union and struggling middle-class friendly. People on the left of the party, however, are perhaps less happy: the current strategy appears to be a fight for the centre rather than a return to Labour’s working class roots.

Māori Party

Possibly it’s enough to be part of government, but at some point doesn’t the lack of policy wins start to hurt?

National

Well… if you voted for that nice John Key you’re probably happy with the smiley vacuous man who gets to go on Letterman. If you voted against Labour you were once happy with the lack of Helen Clark, but National’s starting to look a bit nanny state-ish. If you voted for the agriculture sector you’re probably adequately pleased by the reversals on the ETS and RMA, big business should be similarly happy. So the ideological backers are probably happy, but the soft centre?

Progressives & United Future

You got Jim Anderton and Peter Dunne, you must be rapt! :)

Optimism isn’t enough

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I have, of late, been rather critical of Labour, and the reason for my critical tone is at least partially because the sort of Pollyanna bullshit exhibited by certain partisans on this thread (and elsewhere) is eerily similar to the rah-rah-it’s-all-good campaign of 2008, in which the True Believers grossly underestimated John Key and National, attacked him on his weaknesses and derided him as less than credible and not a proper threat, and got soundly and deservedly whipped at the polls for doing so. I don’t want to see that happen again, so I say: stop just assuming the electorate will come to their senses and vote Labour because they know it’s right, or because Labour’s policies will objectively benefit them. They won’t; that’s not enough. You have to convince them to do so; you have to make them want to support you; you have to lead them. So IrishBill’s advice is a good generic communication strategy; it’s also critical that it also be backed by a credible policy strategy (which, I hope, is brewing at present).

To all the True Believers: you don’t help your chosen party by being uncritical cheerleaders; you feed the echo-chamber. Stop it. Loyalists should be a party’s harshest critics and strongest agitators for change when things aren’t working – which, absent deep changes within Labour since the 2008 election, they aren’t. Good supporters ask hard questions, expect good answers, reward rigour, punish prevarication and do not live in awe of or aim to preserve the precious disposition of their representatives. They do not deride those who do so as traitors or try to hush them up for fear of giving the impression of disunity, killing any hope of dynamism in the process.

So far I see precious little of this on the left in NZ, and that does not fill me with hope for the future. The glimmers of hope I see are from the Green Party and the māori party, who have had the good sense to cut themselves loose from the drifting hulk of Labour, at least until its people start to set things to rights again.

L

Brogressives and fauxgressives

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Chris Trotter doesn’t want to debate, which is good, because there’s really no point to it – his arguments and mine are at cross purposes because we differ on a key point: whether support for independent self-determination for power minorities is necessary to call oneself a ‘progressive’. Chris doesn’t think so. As far as he’s concerned, Māori self-determination is a nice idea, so long as it doesn’t try to take a different line to the honkey Marxist agenda which he misdefines as ‘progressivism’. If that were the case, then this “well-meaning but misguided political naïf” would need to turn in his cloth cap. But progressivism hasn’t ever just been about the white working classes dictating the political agenda to other power minorities; it’s never held that the needs of all power minorities be crushed by the worker solidarity agenda. That’s why my previous post was directed at the “Marxist left”, not at the progressive movement. I’m ok with not being part of that clique – comfortable, as Danyl Mclauchlan said, having no ideological flaws that a few decades digging canals in Fiordland wouldn’t set straight.

The progressive movement has been about power minorities supporting each others’ political agendas against those who would keep political power in the hands of patrician elites. Diversity is a political strategy. You should support peoples’ right to make their own political decisions, even if you disagree with those decisions, because if you don’t you could find support for the right to make your own political decisions to be somewhat lacking. So while Chris is playing the No True Scotsman game, I can play, too: if you don’t support the rights of indigenous people to determine their own political destiny, you’re not a progressive. More in the nature of a slogan: if you’re not a brogressive, you’re a fauxgressive.*

Until we can come to some sort of sense on this matter there’s no point in continuing the discussion. Chris, by his repeated denial and denigration of indigenous rights to political self-determination, criticising the independence of the Greens from Labour, and in denying that women ought to be free from sexual predation as of right, seems well on his way to becoming one of those conservative baby-boomers which are the subject of his latest column. For shame.

Edit: I withdraw and apologise for the redacted paragraph above, as a response to Chris’ justified complaints about my conduct here. This wasn’t up to the KP standard, and I’m sorry for that. I’ve replied to Chris in the comments of his thread on the hope of more meaningful engagement.

Meanwhile, Relic and Imperial Zeppelin have posted good responses to my last post on this matter, which are worth responding to and which I think neatly illustrate the problems I have with this sell-out / kupapa / brown tories / haters & wreckers line of argument.

Imperial Zeppelin, first:

Where do the Maori and Labour Parties come into the equation? Both these political entities may well claim to advocate on class and/or race issues, but do they?
[…]
It would appear reasonable to expand on Marty Mars’ statement and contend simply that race and class issues (along with all the others) will not be resolved as long as you leave the resolution to others; never mind others who are beholden to interests inimical to class, race, gender and environmental interests.

I both agree and disagree, but this gets to the nub of the matter: power minorities need to drive their own political agendas. My view is that while neither the Labour party nor the māori party perfectly represent their nominal constituencies, they are nevertheless best-placed to advocate for those constituencies. Nobody else can do it for them; the degree of their success or failure will or ought to be be reflected in their electoral support.

Relic:

how about a quote from V.I. Lenin to back up the bus a little-“politics are the concentrated expression of economics”

This is precisely what’s wrong with the Marxist approach. Going back to a higher authority than Lenin, I consider politics to be the ‘master science’ – the discipline which governs which other disciplines are considered worthwhile. Far from being just economics, it encompasses religion, morality, ethics, war, epistemology, identity, history, actual science and more to boot. Politics is how people organise themselves in society. There are many referents of political identity, and it is for each individual to choose their own primary identity. Marxists who say it’s only economics tend to be those who, ironically, care mostly about money and the power which it brings.

The Maori Party is led by the likes of Prof. Winiata and embodies the hierarchical inclinations of certain tribal elites.

And the Labour party doesn’t embody the hierarchical inclinations of academic and public servant elites? Let’s not pretend that any party in parliament is actually a workers’ party – in the democratic systems we have, credible political vehicles are by necessity elite-dominated. So all you’re saying is that you prefer elites of one flavour to those of another.

The capitalists via their primary parliamentary representatives National/ACT recognise the need to embrace the large and growing Maori economic sector, unlikely to be sold off overseas at this stage, and needing to be diverted from potential co-operative (socialistic) forms asap. Yes, there is the parliamentary numbers game but it is not the main prize as I see it. Getting Maori to embrace the colonisers kaupapa-private property relations, is.

This is a much better point, but (like other criticisms of the māori party, it rests on two false premises: first, that Māori don’t know what’s best for Māori; and second, that Labour are substantially better.

Second issue first. With the Foreshore and Seabed Act, Labour did more damage to Māori access to resources, mana whenua status, equality before the law and collective resource control than any government of any colour had done for the better part of a century. The passage of that act was the most recent shot fired in the war of colonialism, which told Māori that they were not entitled to due process and redress in law, as other citizens were; that they had no right to even try to assert mana whenua rights to historic resources no matter how strong their claim; and that hapū-level ownership was not an option. And all this from their historic allies, whom Māori had supported without fail for generations.

It’s not that Labour had no choice, as they and their apologists claim – they had the choice of losing and retaining their principles and the loyalty of Māori, or winning without either. They chose the former, before the gauntlet was properly thrown down at Orewa, and subjugated tino rangatiratanga to political expedience, forcing Māori to once again lie back and think of Ingarangi in service of the ‘greater good’ which served the Pākehā majority. That was Labour’s decision to make, but the expectation that there would be no consequences was simply absurd, and speaks to the level of entitlement Labour felt it had to Māori loyalty. The māori party, more than anything else, was founded to demonstrate that government needs to earn the support of Māori, rather than enjoy it as of right, use it, and abuse it as convenience dicatates. So far it is doing that, though whether it will do so in the long term remains to be seen.

Many objections to the māori party decision to side with National focus solely on the losses, ignoring the possibility of gains or arguing that National have no intention of fulfilling any of their undertakings. It is true that National’s policies will probably inflict more acute economic harm on Māori in the short term, but there’s more to intergenerational indigenous politics than small-scale tactical gains and losses in economics, and the calculus is that short-term losses may be worth it for long-term gains.

The integrity of the tino rangatiratanga movement is just such a strategic gain. The first big test of the māori party’s strategy comes this Tuesday, when the Foreshore and Seabed Act review panel reports its recommendations to Chris Finlayson. Further tests will come in the next year as National and Labour begin to bid in earnest for the brown vote, supposing Labour begins to campaign at all. Even if the māori party is turfed out off parliament in 2011, if they have raised the importance and profile of kaupapa Māori politics such that no party in the future believes they can act as Labour did in 2004, they will have succeeded.

As for the argument that Labour policies help Māori because most Māori are working class and Labour policies help working class people, therefore all Māori should. This is simply a reverse ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ argument. The point is that Māori have different needs and, under the Treaty framework, different entitlements to the rest of the working class. A political movement which treats Māori simply as brown proles ignores this historical reality, and is an insult to all those who have fought for recognition and redress.

On to the first issue. After generations of relying on Pākehā elites to redress the abuses of the land wars and following, a group of Māori leaders have taken it upon themselves to develop a principled strategy to find redress by their own means. Some Māori have supported them, and if they fail to make progress toward that redress, or do so by sacrificing other, more important things (such as the kaupapa of collective ownership) then the party will (or should) lose that support. This is fundamentally the point: the decision as to whether the calculus described above is worthwhile for Māori is for Māori to make, not for “well-meaning but misguided” honkeys who want to co-opt the politics of tino rangatiratanga as part of their worker solidarity movement.

Self-determination is a fundamental component of liberty. If you approve of political self-determination only for those movements which serve your own political ends, you’re little better than the Iranian clerics, for whom any political candidate is acceptable, as long as they’re a Shi’a fundamentalist. Let a thousand political agendas bloom; that is the liberal way.

L

* With thanks to Melissa McEwan, whose blog is well and truly open for business again.

Identity is more than class

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Marty mars, commenting at The Standard, nails down the problem with Eddie’s and IrishBill’s latest bit of anti-māori party propaganda in one brief sentence:

You cannot fix any class issue until the race issue is sorted and that won’t be sorted while you are still working everything from the class angle.

Until the Marxist left realises that Māori have their own political identity and generally don’t (won’t and shouldn’t) identify en bloc with non-Māori political movements which require their Māori identity to be subsumed by a transnational class identity, it can’t reliably count on Māori support, and can’t really consider itself an inclusive movement.

Substitute ‘Māori’ for other political minorities if you like – the internationalist movement will only be successful when it learns to accommodate diversity and turn it to political advantage, rather than trying to squash it.

The Clark Labour government’s fundamental inability to realise this (by passing the Foreshore and Seabed Act, most notably) is why the māori party is trying other options. They and their people have had seventeen decades worth of out-of-touch honkeys telling them how to achieve the sort of political and economic progress they want, and at the same time largely denying them the resources with which to achieve such progress. Time for a new strategy, and creating a bidding war between the two main ideological blocs doesn’t look like a bad one, to me.

Hone is right, though – the party is going to have to get a lot more than they have if they want to retain their people’s loyalty and not be seen, come 2011, as the Brown Tories.

L

Memo to the left: the māori party is not your enemy

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Eddie at The Standard has posted the latest in a long line of post-election attacks on the māori party, this time for Tariana Turia criticising Labour’s filibuster against the supercity bill. Leaving aside the fact that I disagree with Tariana’s remarks on the filibuster, this attack is typical in that it picks up some specific decision and applies a convenient ideological misinterpretation of its purpose and likely consequences to prove the existence of a traitorous conspiracy against Māori, the working class, the broader left, freedom, truth, justice, motherhood and apple pie. The Standard is far from being alone in this – others on the left resort to this tactic, and the the original and most egregious example of the form is Chris Trotter’s rabid “Kupapa” attack on Tariana Turia (which doesn’t seem to be online but was helpfully reproduced in full by DPF).

There are good grounds upon which to criticise the māori party, but engaging with the government in good faith and using their independence to progress their agenda, however incompletely, isn’t one. Or to put it another way, it’s reasonable to criticise them on the success or failure of their programme, but not for having a programme at all. Having been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea the māori party decided that the devil needed to be taken at his word for once, and at this point their good relationship with National is all that stands between us and a National/ACT government with a clear mandate to enact precisely the sort of jack-booted majoritarian agenda against which Labour and the Greens are now filibustering. The decision to work with National was a risky one, and if that risk doesn’t pay off they will be sorely punished by their electorate. Labour supporters seem intent on undermining the relationship in order to regain the political allegiance of Māori, and that’s a very big risk. They are also intent on undermining the Greens’ more recent relationship with National, thereby undermining what few progressive options exist for this term. Just because Labour has to sit out the coming three years doesn’t mean others on the left must do so – or even that they should, because every progressive voice involved in the governmental process has a moderating effect on what would otherwise be a very ideologically homogeneous group. The māori party isn’t strictly a left party but it remains a potential ally which Labour alienates at its peril.

If it is to be a credible force, progressive politics in this country should be about more than the kind of `my party, right or wrong’ partisan blindness that these sorts of attacks suggest, and which Trotter’s columns make explicit. The greatest weakness historically faced by progressive movements is their fractiousness in the face of a united opposition movement who are just as strongly factionalised but are prepared to put their individual differences on hold in service of common goals. The greatest strength of progressive movements is their independence and tactical diversity, but this is only of value when that diversity is allowed to stand, rather than being cut down if it does not conform. The left must be as politically inclusive as the society it wishes to create. Howling denunciations and ostracising those who disagree plays directly into the hands of the massed forces opposite.

The impression given by attacks like this is that Labour want three disastrous years, so they’ll have an easier time regaining the treasury benches in 2011. I hope, for all of our sakes, that they have a Plan B.

L

Symbolic bidding war?

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I have long defended the māori party’s decision to enter government with National on two grounds;

  • The decision is theirs to make on behalf of those Māori who form their constituency, not the decision of well-meaning Pākehā, or Māori who vote for other parties. They made clear before the election that it might happen; there is no credible argument for bait-and-switch.
  • By emphasising that the relationship of Māori with Labour is at arm’s length, they send the signal that no party can afford to disregard Māori as Labour did with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Furthermore, if they can make the relationship with National work (and admittedly that’s a pretty big if) then it puts the māori party in a strong strategic position to promote a bidding war for the Māori policy agenda come the 2011 election and beyond.

The Key government’s record on Māori policy so far has been patchy at best, with the decision to exclude mana whenua seats from Auckland governance, and a distinct lack of targeted recession relief for māori who are especially hard-hit by the recession, showing that there’s still a lot of work to do on that relationship.

So it was with some surprise and pleasure that I heard National Radio’s report this morning that Justice Minister Simon Power has announced that the refusal to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will be reviewed, thereby possibly withdrawing us from the other axis of evil of four countries who refused to do so. That can of worms wouldn’t have been re-opened unless there was a very good chance indeed of movement on the issue, since National would severely endanger its relationship with the māori party by ratifying Labour’s decision. So, this looks to me like the first symbolic shot in the bidding war for Māori favour. Or perhaps the second – with the first being Mita Ririnui’s private member’s bill to entrench the Māori seats.

The common objection from ideologues who opposed the māori party’s decision to work with National is that symbolic things are meaningless – a view taken directly from the subaltern Māori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia, who oversaw the Foreshore and Seabed debacle. In defence of the then-government’s decision to join that other axis of evil, he said:

I’m actually more than a little surprised the Mâori Party is prepared to back something which effectively offers indigenous peoples no more than aspirational statements.

The trouble is, unless preceded by banners bearing symbolic aspirational statements declaring a society’s position in principle, progress marches slowly. The Labour government recognised this in its grounds for refusing to sign the UNDRIP, viz, that it was possibly incompatible with our current laws. That’s the point best illustrated by another non-binding UN declaration, on Human Rights, whose most significant principle was that rights were not dependent upon local legislation but were declared to be universal, with the consequence that local legislation must change to meet the declaration where a conflict exists. By and large, local legislation in many signatory states has duly changed to meet the declaration, in spite of its non-binding nature. That is because its symbolic value is more than its practical value. (Amartya Sen is among those who makes this point, for example here). So it is with the UNDRIP – it presents an aspirational position toward which NZ may strive, along with practically everyone else.

Now, Power’s statement is carefully hedged with the words “as long as New Zealand’s current framework for indigenous rights cannot be compromised” – so actual policy change is still a long way off. But symbolic matters like this are a necessary condition for real progress, and the decision to review indicates that the government intends to take Māori issues seriously.

L

Whither Labour?

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That’s a question, not an imperative.

It’s impossible to ignore the impact of the Clark-Cullen legacy on NZ’s political orthodoxy. Their government – like Thatcher’s and like Lange’s – moved the political mainstream, requiring incoming governments to appeal to it in order to win support. John Key’s ability to learn from some of the mistakes of his predecessors in both major parties, but not others, has been considered in plenty of different ways, and some of those give more than a moment’s thought to his future. At least now people agree that he has one which doesn’t involve being rolled by Bill English.

But what of Labour? I see two broad possibilities, which I’ll characterise as the Crusaders Game and the Hurricanes Game. Despite being a Hurricanes supporter, by that I don’t mean to privilege one over the other.

The Crusaders Game

Labour recognises that the political agenda is no longer theirs, and concentrates on their core stuff: defence, set-piece, taking advantage of their opposition’s mistakes and infringing at the ruck (but not so much as to seem a cheat).

This means a retrenchment of sorts. Goff is the ideal leader for this game: steady, capable, etc. but they will probably have to alienate the Greens, and if the māori party and its constituency gets what it needs from being part of the National-led government Labour may find themselves friendless. Whatever the case, this strategy will mean ceding the political field to National and starting again in three or six or nine years from within someone else’s political agenda – as National are doing now. This relies on fairly orthodox two-party-plus-hangers-on political thinking – the idea that occupying the centre is the route to success.

The Hurricanes Game

Labour sees in Key’s concessions to the Clark-Cullen agenda an opportunity, and maximises it by relying on gut instinct, team spirit, inspirational leadership, raw opportunism, personal brilliance and complaining about Key’s infringing at the ruck (but not so much as to appear a whinger).

This strategy will require three things: first, new leadership; second, a much closer relationship with the Greens; third, intense and sustained energy. Labour will have to learn to live lean, to rehabilitate itself with the wider left, and ultimately to normalise the idea of the Green New Deal among skeptical NZ voters. This relies upon a quite unorthodox political strategy – the idea that a party or bloc of parties can and should cooperate to move the centre in order to more easily occupy it in their common interest. The danger is that they run out of puff in getting there, and find themselves in three or six or nine years having to adopt the Crusaders Game anyway.

There are other possibilities, of course, but these seem most plausible and simple dichotomies are nice.

So, four questions: what should Labour do (in your humble opinion) and what will Labour do? How, and why?

L

Framing fires

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Parliament is sitting today, and the 2009 session rightly opened with a unanimous motion of support for those affected by the Victoria bushfires. The events themselves have been very thoroughly covered on NZ media and internationally, but what I’m interested in is the way in which our politicians have been speaking about them. So, a quick look at each party’s contribution to the debate of the motion this afternoon.

John Key, National: Emphasised close cultural, economic and military relationship – “like no other”, and history of mutual support in times of need. Strong sporting rivalry means strong cultural ties. Firefighters as heroes who care not for borders and are an example to us all. Top-level links between himself and Rudd. Closed with “kia kaha”. Focused on the magnitude of the events on Australia, though a questionable choice of words with “the enormity of what is happening has burned into our consciousness”. Strongly-worded, statesmanlike, decisive.

Phil Goff, Labour: Spoke for “all New Zealanders”, focusing on impact on families of victims and the “human tragedy” and loss of property. Used family and sport metaphors for the strength of the relationship, like Key. The offer of 100 firefighters “was a good first step”. Generally somewhat procedural, lacked the bite of Key’s speech.

Russel Norman, Green: Very brief. Ticks off main points re support for the motion and assistance, and “respectfully note” the debate on climate change in Australia – but perhaps wisely doesn’t make too much of this.

Rodney Hide, ACT: “All New Zealanders” and “brothers and sisters”, again. Moved quickly to Rudd’s “hell on earth”, then to the possible criminal element behind the fires, hoping that those who committed the “evil” of the arson receive their “just desserts”. He’s angry, first and foremost.

Tariana Turia, māori party: Expressed sympathies in the first place to “the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd” and then to those “families and communities” who have suffered – formally, she’s speaking as ariki ki te ariki, I think. Rather than using family as a metaphor, highlighted the fact that many New Zealanders actually have relatives in Victoria. Fire is “merciless”, families are “scarred’. Said her party would “support the role that this government and this country will play” as if she’s not involved or hasn’t been consulted about it.

Jim Anderton, Progressive: “Brothers and sisters” again, emphasising global and historical magnitude of the fires. NZ being “compelled to share [victims’] grief”. Focused on rebuilding and the resilience and “Aussie dauntlessness”. Firefighters as heroes. Amazingly, he compared the fires to September 11 2001, rationalising it on the basis that the same proportion of population have supposedly been killed. Irony of flooding in Queensland at the same time. Generally a strong speech, but – September 11, WTF! At least he didn’t refer to the supposed arsonists as “terrorists”.

Peter Dunne, United Future: “Kith and kin”. Enormity of the events – “Australia’s worst peacetime tragedy”, which is rhetoric reminiscent of post-9/11. Warns that life will take a long time to return to normal. Talks about media imagery a lot. Encourages people to be “as generous with their resources as they are with their sentiments”.

I see a few true colours there, I think.

L

“The community”: a contrast between Māori and Pakeha elites

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Since last year’s election there has been a lot of talk about the tenability of the relationship between the Māori Party and National.

On the one hand National’s hard right policies will hurt many Māori voters; how much damage can the Māori Party let their electorate sustain from their parliamentary partners? What concessions can the MP gain that will outweigh the effects of National’s privatisation and their transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest?

On the other hand the Māori Party is dominated by, to quote John Tamihere, the “relatively wealthy, educated elite” just as the National Party is the party of the Pakeha wealthy educated elite. Like peas in a pod, perhaps these two parties of the elites are made for each other. Interesting analysis on this possibility is available all over the media (e.g. The Herald) and blogs (e.g. Against the current). The analysis, good though it is, has tended to overlook the fact that while the Māori and Pakeha elites have many things in common, their cultural differences are significant too.

One of the areas often discussed as common ground between the parties is provision of social services: both want to transfer service provision (and the funding for it) from the state to “the community”. It looks like an agreement, but what do they mean by “the community”?

National’s view of community social service provision is to pay a small number of large corporates or NGOs to provide bulk social services, just like the big companies they’ve worked for in the private sector. The Māori Party, quite differently, imagine many small iwi, runanga and hapu based providers, with perhaps some provision by Urban Māori Authorities. To the Māori Party the key to community provision is local targeted care by traditional Māori structures.

This cultural gulf recurs throughout the apparent policy agreements between National and the Māori Party. Another example, National wants to privatise health care provision by offering it to large privately owned hospital providers like those Michael Woodhouse lobbied for in his years in the NZ Private Surgical Hospitals Association and the NZ Private Hospitals Association. The Māori Party wants to strengthen and develop the many Hauora built by iwi and hapu throughout the country, just like the one Hone Harawira helped set up in the Far North.

That may be the final ideological divide: the difference between a “community” consisting of corporates and their shareholders, and a “community” of iwi and hapu.