15 YEARS AGO: Here's how Key helped fuel the gravy-train

One advantage of having blogged so long is having written about so many things.

One disadvantage of having blogged so long is watching things you've warned about being ignored.  Here's from 2010, with Eric Crampton's warning in particular now looking especially prescient....

AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED, the Government you voted for has signed you up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—something Helen Clark herself was opposed to, citing fears it would create “two classes of citizenship and … give indigenous people veto rights over laws made by Parliament.” 

But we already have two legal classes of  citizen, don’t we—something confirmed by Doug Graham when, as Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations, he told taxpayers, “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better." 

So one law for all is officially dead. Pita Sharples grand-standing announcement merely throws another shovelful of dirt on that particular colour-blind aspiration. 

Instead, we now have another aspiration. One endorsed by your government without any conditions whatsoever, despite John Key’s insistence that the Declaration itself is “aspirational and non-binding.” 

Now naturally, Hone Harawira and co have a different view.  Hone has already been on radio insisting the Declaration will be used to support a gravy train of claims for other people’s property, and for truckloads of taxpayers’ money—and one suspects he speaks for many others when he says that, including those who will sit in judgement on such claims. 

And Mai Chen, eager to get in on the gravy, insists the declaration will “have an impact.”

   "‘Declarations … are international obligations and they do form part of the backdrop, the context within which courts do interpret, but it's not just courts its the Waitangi Tribunal and its also direct negotiations… [T]he entire country would appear to fall within the scope of the article, and [the text of the Declaration] generally takes no account of the fact that the land might be occupied or owned legitimately by others.’ 
    “Ms Chen said the Declaration would 'shape Maori expectations in negotiations.”

And the Declaration itself begins by affirming its “good faith in the fulfilment of the obligations assumed by States in accordance with the Charter.” 

So one suspects that this government signing up to the Declaration is going to involve more than just a little “aspirational” window-dressing. 

SO WHAT DOES IT CONTAIN,THIS DECLARATION? It should be no surprise to find that a UN Declaration with “rights” in the title contains a welter of manufactured “rights” that trample over genuine rights.  And if it were simply an enumeration of genuine rights—rights to life, liberty, free speech, the pursuit of property and happiness—it would hardly need the modifier “rights of indigenous people” added to it, as if by virtue of their indigeneity some individuals are more endowed with rights than others. 

As if to confirm that, The Declaration’s preamble talks about being “the basis for a strengthened partnership between indigenous peoples and States”—affirming as clearly as one could that “there are laws for one & laws for another.” 

It speaks of affirming to “peoples their right to self-determination”—ignoring that such a right pertains only to individuals, not to a collective. 

And the Declaration itself outlines specific “rights” which it says shall be upheld by “the States” which have affirmed it: 

• “the right [of indigenous people] to freely determine their political status”

Which “right” is a recipe for separatism.

• “the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs”

Which “right” is a guarantee that separatism will be upheld by “the State.”

• “the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture… States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for [this]”

Which “right” requires the State to subsidise for ever whatever parts of indigenous culture claimants will assert are being destroyed.

• “the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation, in accordance with the traditions and customs of the community or nation concerned”

The “right” to subsidised separatism, in whatever form of tribalism that will manifest itself.

• “the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.”

A “right” to the subsidised education of tribalism and mysticism, and to the re-naming of New Zealand.

• “States shall … take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children… to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.”

The “right” to kohanga reo for ever.

• “the right to establish their own media in their own languages”

The “right” to Maori TV for ever.

• “the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions.”
  
• “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

The explicit creation of two classes of citizenship, and the “right” to veto that Helen Clark was so concerned about.

• “the right … to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including, inter alia, in the areas of education, employment, vocational training and retraining, housing, sanitation, health and social security. 
  States shall take effective measures and, where appropriate, special measures to ensure continuing improvement of their economic and social conditions…”

The “right” to special racist welfare. 

• “the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources”

The “right” to dream up a new basis of land claim for any part of New Zealand whatsoever.

• the right "to own use, develop or control lands and territories they have traditionally owned, occupied or used"

As New Zealand's former permanent representative to the UN, diplomat Rosemary Banks, says “the entire country was potentially caught within the scope of that article. ‘The article appears to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous ... Furthermore, this article implies indigenous peoples have rights that others do not.’"

• “the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensation, for the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.”

Providing the basis for a whole new cycle of claimants to ride a new gravy train. 

I COULD GO ON, BUT I suspect you already get the point. 

This is simply a whole litany of bogus “rights” with which the Hone Harawiras and Tame Itis of this country will have a field day.  For them and their lawyers, this is like Christmas in April. 

The affirmation of these bogus rights is John Key writing a blank cheque on taxpayers to buy the Maori Party for a generation. And just in case you think this isn’t the sound of someone putting their hand in your pocket, take a look at Article 39…

    “Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to financial and technical assistance from States and through international cooperation, for the enjoyment of the rights contained in this Declaration.”

The Declaration is nothing less than a manifesto for subsidised separatism. 

As Ayn Rand said of a similar list of entitlements “rights”: 

    “A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense?     “[These so-called rights] do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?     “If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.     “Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.”

Take note here that “The State” itself has no money of its own—every dollar must first be taken from others. The bogus “rights” affirmed here, to which New Zealand is now a signatory, require of taxpayers that they provide a cradle-to-grave ATM machine for whatever tribalists want, including the property of taxpayers, creating “two classes of citizenship and … giving indigenous people veto rights over laws made by Parliament,” just as Helen Clark feared it would. 

One law for all is officially dead. 

And parliament’s One-Law-For-All party?  The party propping up a government giving tribalists more even than Helen Clark was prepared to? What about them? Fear not, punters, for fearless leader Rodney Hide says the Declaration and the secrecy with which it was announced “is not a deal-breaker." 

Given what ACT supporters have already swallowed, one wonders if anything ever would be.

NB: Eric Crampton sees informative parallels “between New Zealand signing on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and Canada's constitutional wranglings over Quebec as a'"Distinct Society'." 

    “In the Canadian case, folks inside Quebec had the impression that being granted ‘distinct society’ would give them everything they ever hoped for (at least during the Meech negotiations) while folks outside Quebec were told it ‘means dick.’ Here, Key says signing the Declaration is meaningless; Hone says it's powerful.     “If this starts working its way into judicial and regulatory decisions, Parliament would have to come in and explicitly state that it was the intention of Parliament that the Declaration is a legal nullity; Parliament would be unlikely to do that as it would be a pretty big slap to Maori…”

Fisking the Treaty Principles debate

Cartoon by Nick Kim

Remember "fisking"?

It's what you feel you have to do sometimes -- not so much to refute idiocies, as to reveal the bad thinking that causes them. Especially if that bad thinking is shared so widely.

Here below is some bad thinking that's shared widely, so I thought I'd do some fisking. Here's the context:

Last week Rawiri Waititi leaked a Ministry of Justice report said to prefigure the Coalition Government's proposed Treaty Principles Bill, which he, the report's author, and TV1 News all say "are at odds with what the Treaty of Waitangi" actually says."

Here's what the relevant bit of the leaked Treaty Principles Bill says:

And here then is a "lecturer in Te Tiriti o Waitangi" who agrees the principles in the leaked Bill have got it all wrong:

So let's follow his arguments and see if he's right.

But first, some history: why does so much law reference "Treaty Principles" rather than the Treaty/Te Tiriti? Simple answer: because from the time of the Fourth Labour Government, governments have been adding at the head of most important legislation words like "must have regard to the principles the Treaty of Waitangi." And because no government then or since have been buying a fight, and also because then Attorney-General Geoffrey Palmer thought that law needed to be vague so that it could be flexible, no bastard ever bothered to define in law what those principles are. So the courts tried to do the job instead, making a complete fustercluck of it, adding nonsense like "partnership," and "participation." (Long story here, if you're interested.) And so, ever since then, embedded at the head of most of the country's important legislation, are weasel words that remain essentially undefined. (Here it is for instance embedded as part of the Purposes and Principles of the RMA.)

Now, as any good lawyer should understand, embedding undefined weasel words into the head of legislation goes against the principle of good objective law. To remind you, good objective law is clear, precise, predictable, contextual, and rights-based. This is none of the above.

So the Coalition Government's proposed Treaty Bill -- alright, let's be honest, David Seymour's bill -- seeks to change all that, change it at least by adding precision to principles that, at the moment, have none. NOTE: the Bill does not seek to change The Treaty/Te Tiriti; it aims instead to change these undefined principles written into so much of New Zealand's law.

That's what Section 8, above, is referring to. It says that the aim of this Treaty Principles Bill is to give to existing legislation both certainty and clarity, so that the written law means what it is intended to mean, not what it could be taken to mean.

Got that? Alright then.

So let's see what our Tiriti lecturer has to say about this, and answer his claims one by one. (His claims in purple; my responses in italics.)

He says that the leaked document "confirms that the government's intention here is not to define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi but to erase them."

If you've followed what I said above, you'll already see that's not the case. As long as those "principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi" remain embedded in so much law, they need to be properly and objectively defined. Which is Seymour's aim.

He says "the intention is to replace the existing principles with three new ones, which are supposedly based on the three articles of the Treaty."

See. Even he doesn't think they're going to be "erased." That was just him jacking up his argument for effect.

"The problem," he says, "is that the 'new' principles don't remotely resemble what Te Tiriti (or even the Treaty) actually says."

Two claims there: that neither English Treaty nor Māori Tiriti "remotely resemble" what the principles in the proposed Bill say. Do you get the sense already he's jacking up the argument again ... ?

See, the Treaty/Te Tiriti has three Articles. They've very short -- which doesn't make them clear -- and they're in two different languages -- but there is at least general agreement on the subject of each clause.

Subject of the First Article is governance, or sovereignty. Subject of the Second is land and resources. Subject of the Third is rights. (As with all good law, the earlier Articles take precedence.)

So let's see what his argument is for the Bill's principles not "remotely" resembling the Treaty's/Tiriti's ...

First off, he says, "the paper uses the term kāwanatanga to say that the govt have the right to govern all New Zealanders. This is a complete fabrication - as scholars like Margaret Mutu have repeatedly said the term kāwanatanga in Te Tiriti gave the Crown a limited power to govern its own people."

He agrees at least that kāwanatanga means governance. And so does Margaret Mutu. Mutu says however, "That kāwanatanga was for Pākehā," She says, "It was never intended for us." And she does say it repeatedly. But saying it does not argue for it.

The Treaty (English text) say that chiefs "give absolutely ... the complete government over their land." Tiriti says "tuku rawa atu" (literally: relinquish; very; away) "ake tonu atu" (from below upwards; permanent; away) "kāwanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua" (governorship; completely, without exception; they/them; land).

That's fairly clear. The only thing undefined there really is that word "kāwanatanga," a missionary neologism (governorship) which Māori would have understood from the power of Roman governors displayed in 'Te Kawenata Hou' ('The New Testament') and from having visited New South Wales and seeing the power there that governor exercised. That this was well understood is evidenced from the discussions at the Treaty signing, where rangatira showed they understood that agreement would mean the Kāwana having police power over them, for example -- "If thou stayest as Governor, then," said Te Kemara, then, "perhaps, [I] will be judged and condemned. Yes, indeed, and more than that--even hung by the neck." This would be puzzling if signatories understood things the way Mutu says they did. 

Because kāwanatanga exercised only over Pākeha would not give the kāwana this power. So Margaret Mutu and others will need to explain how governorship that clearly gives coercive power over everyone, including rangatira if necessary -- which is what signatories understood kāwanatanga to mean -- means instead that it gives limited power and only over Pākeha. She doesn't, and can't.

 Next, our Tiriti lecturer says, "The paper then uses 'tino rangatiratanga' to say that all NZers can exercise chieftainship of their land and property. This is just incoherent. That's not what the term means in tikanga or in state law. Tino rangatiratanga is a power of collective self-determination for Māori."

Two claims there: First, that "tino rangatiratanga" is only for Māori. And on that, in 1840, he's exactly right. (Should it stay that way? Read on.)

Second, that both "tikanga" and "state law" say that "tino rangatiratanga" means "collective self-determination." Well, not quite. "State law" and practice does sometimes suggest it as "a framework from which Māori have continued to challenge governments for recognition of our individual and collective self-determination," so it's certainly an aspirational meaning. And that's sometimes how the courts have decided to interpret this. But that doesn't mean that it did say that at the time, or that it has to say it now. (State law is nothing if not mutable.)

Translating it however even back in 1989, Hugh Kawharu rendered it simply as "unqualified chieftainship." Far from being incoherent, the Bill retains that idea.

But in what way should that chieftainship be directed? For a start, Article Two is about land and resources. (It comes in a natural order from Article One, explaining what sovereignty is for; in this case, to protect land and resources). This is most clear in Article Two (Part Two), which is about how land and resources will be sold, if owners want to. (This part was most important to the colonising government.) And Article Two (Part One) says that government will protect that land and those resources if they don't desire to sell.

Importantly, it also promises this not just to chiefs, but also to "families and individuals [original English text]/"the subtribes and all the people of New Zealand" [Kawharu translation]. This was pretty neat, at the time. (And, yes, at the time "all the people of New Zealand" only referenced tangata māori. And that's because that's who was being asked to sign.)

So that sets the context for what "chieftainship" means in Article Two. Because it can mean many things, based on the agency and power chiefs then had: power, ownership, independence, autonomy, liberty even. But in this Article, Article Two, the context is clearly land and resources. So in this context "unqualified chieftainship" means, as per the English text, that possession of lands and resources would continue "full exclusive and undisturbed," with all the independence and autonomy therefrom, just as long as owners (chiefs, families, individual NZers) didn't want to sell them to the government.

And that's what the Bill attempts to specify as the principle behind this Article Two: that it is about government promising to protect the property rights of all signatories. (And now, by extension, all New Zealanders.) And since no-one now would to enforce a law allowing land to only be sold to the government, it wisely ignores Article Two (Part Two). (As does our lecturer.) And it takes the liberty of extending this protection to all NZers (since, as a principle, it's a good one.)

Mind you, it doesn't specify it as an individual right, which is a pity. But neither does it specify it to be a collective right, since it can't be. Why? Well we're all aware by now (or should be) that both Treaty/Tiriti and contemporary activists confuse and fudge the difference between individual rights (which governments are properly set up to protect) and so-called "collective rights," which only make sense as individual rights voluntarily delegated. (Q: Why do they fudge? A: Because it grants tribal leaders semi-feudal privileges.)

But we do know that the Treaty's framers were unfortunately equally confused. Translator Henry Williams told signatories at Waitangi that Article Two (Part One) "confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and the tribes, and to each individual native, their full rights as chiefs, their rights of possession of their lands, and all their other property of very kind or degree." You can see the confusion right away. The actual drafting is just as confused. But that doesn't make it right.

Williams's explanation however is helpful, because it makes clear that despite the confusion, an individual property right is still being offered. And that's essentially what the leaked Bill is offering to make clear now.

Our Tiriti lecturer continues: "The 'new' article 3 then says all NZers are equal under the law with the same rights and duties. A nice idea (it'd be cool if my Māori whānau had the same life expectancy as my non-Māori whānau but heoi ano), but that's not what Te Tiriti says. Article 3 is a right of equity."

Several confusions here.  

First, this is not at all a "new" Article Three. As above, it's intended to clarify law in places in which "the principles of the Treaty/Tiriti" has been inserted.

Second, ensuring to all individuals "the same rights and duties" is not at all the same as ensuring to them all the same outcomes. Much could and has been written on the difference between equality before the law, and equality of outcome, and this isn't the place to replicate it.

But it is the place to make clear that what Article Three offers in the English text is equality before the law ("all the rights and privileges of British subjects"), in the Williams explanation it is also equality before the law ("all the rights and privileges of British subjects") and in the Kawharu translation it is still and remains equality before the law ("the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England").

It's true that Kawharu argues that the discussion at the Treaty signing about Hobson being a "father" to signatories suggests a focus on outcomes, or on "equity." But I argue that the repeated use of the “father” figure there is used less in the sense of someone to care over their every need, but more in the sense of either stern judge and a peacemaker, echoing the words of Tamati Waka Nene (harking back perhaps to the need for a mediator after recent wars) and also in the sense of being a teacher or wise adult from the outer world to allow them to learn and grow. Pumuka, for example, chief of the Roroa Tribe, has this sense when he says: "I wish to have two fathers - thou and Busby, and the missionaries." From the latter two he and his colleagues have already learned “Christianity and the Law,” he says (a major theme later at the Kohimarama conference) and they've seen and embraced the cultural change therefrom.

The astute reader will also notice there is a difference between "duties" (per Kawharu) and "privileges" (per Williams and the English text), and it's the former that the Bill plumps for. Which is a shame, since "duties" suggests that government can make us behave in ways of its own choosing. It's a particular shame the word used wasn't "responsibilities," which would make clear who's responsible for outcomes over one's own life. In the formulation of one Ian Fraser several years ago,

"individuals are the rightful owners of their own lives and therefore have inherent rights and responsibilities; and ... the proper purpose of government is to protect such rights and not to assume such responsibilities."

That would make things plainer, perhaps. But that's not what Te Tiriti says. More's the pity.

Our Tiriti lecturer continues: "As this [TV One] article says, the govt's own officials have said the Bill is in breach of both the spirit and the text of the Treaty. That's a fairly direct statement but it's completely warranted. In my opinion this is the most direct attack on Māori by the govt in a generation." 

Government officials say all sorts of things. And these government officials are leaking, so clearly they don't agree with it. But, frankly, we're all entitled to form our own personal view of whether or not the Bill is in breach of either or both the spirit and text or, if indeed, it affirms them. After all, we all have agency, right?

Is it an attack on Māori? I can see that some individuals in Māoridom would see it that way -- especially those who have been granted legal privileges under the court's present principles. (To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, those granted extra-legal privileges are apt to howl when they're taken away.)

But if it is an attack, I would characterise it instead as an attack on bad law-making, and an attempt to correct it before extra-legal privileges become cemented in -- if they haven't already.

Continuing... "The great shame is that rangatiratanga can be good for everyone. The exercise of rangatiranga in the lockdowns kept people safe. Kaupapa Māori orgs led the vaccination effort. Our rivers and lakes are always healthier when Māori share decisions. There are so many examples."

I agree, rangatiratanga can be good for everyone, if and only if the meaning of  rangatiratanga can be agreed upon. Rangatiranga as liberty is very agreeable, and good for all. Rangatiranga as rights of ownership is also good for all. Folk exercising agency individually and voluntarily did help reduce the spread of COVID. Organisations everywhere, from iwi agencies to pharmacies, vaccinated thousands -- and were paid to do so -- and good on them. Our rivers and lakes are healthier when property rights are protected -- as this proposed clarification of the principles of Article Two might help to do. And more affordable homes can be built when rights to one's own land are recognised in law ... As he says, there are so many examples.

He concludes by saying "Te Tiriti" can be good for us all. 

That is possible. But it might first take some clarification.

Here's the Swell Maps:

NB: I've taken both the English text of The Treaty and Williams's explanation of Te Tiriti from Ned Fletcher's book The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi (reviewed here). Hugh Kawharu's semi-official translation of Te Tiriti appears at the Waitangi Tribunal site.

10 Good Things about Winston Peters [updated]

Since everyone anywhere near political power this month is falling over themselves to say nice things about Winston, the fellow they each hope will become their closest friend for the next three years (hope is so often in vain), I thought I’d pull an old post out of the archives to remind you that the old fellow isn’t all bad. There are at least Ten Good Things about him to cheer.

Sure, his immigration grandstanding gives him headlines, hatred and polling increases, showing you can never underestimate the market for bare-faced, scaremongering xenophobia. And it’s somwhat ludicrous seeing policy wonks scouring through their respective parties’ policy manifestoes to demonstrate just how close their particular party is to those of Winston First — laughable because the leader of the black and white party couldn’t give a fig for policies. He simply wants a job that gives him a limousine and a high-powered office near Bellamy’s.

So with that in mind then, here are the the top ten Good Things about The Great Dissembler:

10. Winston likes a drink. Rare enough in these days of wall-to-wall wowserism, so a good thing in and of itself in my book. Just as long as he’s buying.

9. Winston helps with unemployment. Winston has over the years offered benevolent assistance with unemployment for a vast number of the otherwise unemployable. Who else for example would offer employment to the dozens of tailors dummies that have occupied all the other mercifully non-speaking seats around the NZ First caucus table?

8. Winston is a perfect litmus test.
Winston is the perfect litmus test because you know immediately that when you meet a Winston First supporter, unless you want an evening spent hearing about the assorted iniquities of India dairy owners and Chinese home-owners, then you won't want them as a dinner companion. So this immediately rules out around 7% of the voting population, making the organisation of dinner engagements so much easier.

7. Winston raises standards.
Two words: Sartorial elegance. As David Lange famously observed when Winston was late for a meeting, “I expect he’s been detained by a full-length mirror.” And his time there is not wasted. His focus on sartorial elegance over political substance at once raises the dress-sense of parliament, and ensures little of substance is discussed there. (And given the direction that substance would otherwise take, this is A Good Thing.)

6. Winston is the Perfect Politician.

As Winston showed when he was Treasurer, he doesn't want to work like a cabinet minister; he just wants to look like one. A cabinet minister with a big office with his And when the state of politics is all bad, trending as it does today mostly towards statism, the last thing you would want is a hard-working politician — it would come with the serious danger that they might get something done.
With Winston however, this is never a problem. Being incurably lazy, possibly the laziest man in Parliament, makes him the Perfect Politician for these statist times. A Good Thing – a very, very Good Thing — the lazier the politician, the less trouble they pose to us.
Winston should be a model to many others within the parliamentary precinct. As Mark Twain observed, "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” With more politicians in the legislature with Winston's work ethic, parliamentary activity would soon slow to a satisfactorily safe stupor.

5. Winston is shameless.

Winston offers willing students a master-class in grandstanding, something Gareth Morgan still needs help with. Winston doesn't care whether the mud he's throwing is based on fact (as it sometimes is with the so-called Treaty principles) or on fiction (who remembers the non-grounding of the Cook Strait ferry?), all he cares about is that the mud-throwing is reported — preferably accompanied by a full-length archive photograph of himself. And just by pure chance some of the mud that needs to be thrown and wouldn't otherwise be chucked gets an airing that it wouldn't otherwise get. When he can be bothered.

4. Winston is not a professional Maori.

Unlike countless others of rich beige hue who make a career out of that one solitary attribute (a fellow high up the Labour ranks for no other reason springs immediately to mind) Winston has eschewed that easy road to sucking off the state tit … and found another.

3. Entertainment value.

In a sea of grey, bland parliamentary conformity Winston stands out – and that’s just in the NZ First caucus room. When Winston wakes up every three years, whatever else you might think he does at least makes the news worth watching again. Just like you’re glued to it now.

2. Winston keeps the country safer.

This is perhaps the most important job that Winston does for the country. He is like a fusebox for dangerous idiocy.
There are other places in which the moonbat xenophobe constituency on which Winston has a stranglehold has produced the likes of the alt-right, the “race realists,” the “new nationalists,’ the various National Fronts and other varieties of destructive poison led by bigots who believe in the hatred themselves; captured in other countries by thugs that are serious about the hatred they’re whipping up. They take the xenophobic bigotry seriously and do serious damage with it.
Not Winston. Winston can spout it so the bigots believe it, but cares about it only enough to deliver him a nice office and a sea of new Italian suits.
So where other places have right-wing nationalism delivering dangerous political probems, in New Zealand instead it delivers the levers and baubles of office to one Winston Peters. Who enjoys the baubles and does as little as he possibly can with the levers. This, you must agree, is a Very Very Good Thing indeed.

And now, the topmost Good Thing about Winston Peters is ...

1. No government!

Having man as lazy as Winston as a cabinet minister is certainly like having no government, given how little he gets done, but there’s even more about Winston to excite a libertarian!

Any idea how many weeks this post-election period before we have a government? Remember the extended negotiations of 1996 when for several exciting weeks the country didn’t have a government (and as people noticed the sky wasn’t falling the leadung business daily politfelt compelled to write the headline: "The Libertarianz were right all along”).
We have Winston to thank for those few brief periods of respite. And as long as Winston First and his bunch of tailor’s dummies are in with a shout, we have the exciting prospect every three years of an extended period in which we actually no government at all. If only that happy state of affairs could be replicated more often.

UPDATE: Don Brash this morning suggests an eleventh Good Thing:

It looks as if whether to have a referendum on the Maori electorates will becoming a defining issue in the post-election negotiations.
"Mr Peters has said having such a referendum is one of his 'bottom-lines.' Jacinda Ardern said this morning that under no circumstances will she agree to such a referendum, and Duncan Garner (on Three’s AM Show) said that agreeing to such a referendum would be 'cutting [Labour’s] own throat.'
"So if Mr Peters remains adamant that a referendum is one of his bottom-lines, and if Jacinda Ardern remains firm, then we will have a National-NZ First Government.

"Of course, Mr Peters can’t afford to admit that a referendum is an absolutely firm bottom-line: if he does admit that, then his bargaining power with National is gone.

"But what are the merits of the case? … "

Read on for the answer ...

Willy Jackson throws mud

 

I was contacted on Friday by TV3 about a beat-up they’d organised to raise the profile of new Labour Party candidate and Professional Maori, Willy Jackson.

He was whinging about a pamphlet (below) dropped in thousands of letterboxes over the last two years advertising a book called One Treaty, One Nation. About the flyer TV3 says “Labour's Willie Jackson is not happy with its message.”

I guess he wouldn’t be. Because, you see, it is people like him who it targets.

Specifically, the book, and the flyer, calls for an end to race-based privilege. So as a man who’s made a substantial career out of his race, I can see why Jackson would be unhappy. He is virtually a posterboy for race-based privilege, so why would he agree with good folk who want it gone?

The flyer, says the unhappy Jackson, is

“a load of nonsense - racist rhetoric again and so similar to the Pauline Hansen One Nation rubbish that's coming out of Australia," he says.

Upping the rhetoric, TV3 gives the story the headline “1Law4All Party makes push to abolish Waitangi Tribunal,” and says the flyer drop is a sign

A political movement labelled by some as driven by extreme right-wing racism is upping the ante ahead of this year's election.

Actually, neither Jackson nor TV3 News are correct, not that either would care about that.

The flyer in a nutshell advertises a book and a campaign (no, TV3 “journalists,” not a party) that call for the law to be colour-blind, arguing that the modern wilful misinterpretation of Te Tiriti has perverted law, justice and government, and given a pretext for beneficiaries of government largesse like Willy Jackson to suck off the taxpayer’s tit to the detriment of everyone – including those he so sorely exploits by claiming to represent.

That is a million miles from the anti-Asian, anti-migrant, economic nationalism of Pauline Hanson, which is more like Trump than it is about truth.

And rather than coming from a political party disestablished two years ago, the flyers emanate from a publisher promoting a book published two years ago which have been slowly delivered to letterboxes around the country ever since (so hardly anything at all to do with this year’s election then, which is what I would have said if I had returned the journalist’s call, and if they were actually concerned with truth instead of promoting Jackson’s new party head of this year’s election).

And why were they telephoning me about all this? Because I have a chapter in that book.

And FWIW, while I don’t agree with everything in the book, if I had smelt a whiff of racism or Hansonism from the other authors I would have withdrawn, and had negotiated that right with the publisher.

Because unlike the actually racist Jackson, who has made a substantial career out of his barnyard form of collectivism, I do find both repellent.

[Cartoon by Nick Kim]

NB: This is the flyer complained about:

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#TopTen | No. 9: Hobson’s Pledge: Racism?

 

This year so far I’ve written and posted 797 posts. (This is the 798th)

Of those, this from September  30th was the ninth most popular, wondering how it can be racist to demand the law be colour-blind – and how those making those charges make them stick. Or not …

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Hobson’s Pledge: Racism?

The commentariat is all aflame this week attacking the new “Hobson’s Pledge” movement, launched this week by Don Brash. Their vision for New Zealand, they say, “is a society in which all citizens are equal before the law, irrespective of when they or their ancestors arrived in this land.” Brash warns in particular of “iwi participation agreements” in proposed RMA amendments that “would virtually entrench co-governance and partnership obligations with some Maori into local government, creating an under-the-radar constitutional change”; and cites the ongoing farce of Maori seats in parliament and, increasingly, in local government that tribalises governance and decreases democracy and individual rights.

But “they’re racist!” says the commentariat in response. Which is odd, because the very foundation statement of the “Hobson’s Pledge” movement is that we should all be colour-blind before the law. (Hence, Hobson's Pledge, i.e., “He Iwi Tahi Tatou | We Are Now One People.”) And in calling the group things like "pale, male and stale," their opponents themselves reveal just a touch of the racism (and sexism) they claim so vehemently to oppose.

So how do we resolve this apparent contradiction? Let’s start by looking at how several alleged luminaries justify their claim that it’s racist to call for law and lawmakers to be colour-blind. How exactly do they square that circle?

Writing for Stuff, Laura McQuillan doesn’t even try to. “Is Don Brash's new Hobson's Pledge the support group that white people need?” she asks rhetorically in a piece that bizarrely references “Black Lives Matter,” the National Front and some skinhead group called Right Wing Resistance before pulling out and quoting entirely unrelated comments on a piece of clickbait she’d written the week before asking “Which is New Zealand’s whitest region?” all garnished with a quote she’d simply made up herself from a fellow she claims to be “leader” of 1Law4All. (He’s not.) But I bet she thinks she’s not the racist – and that making up quotes is probably “justified corruption.”

Talking out of his arse, Hone Harawira also simply asserts the moot. "Come on, absolutely this is racism and it's time somebody called it out," he says, offering no argument for his claim Brash is “a redneck or a racist.” Neither does professional Maori Willie Jackson, who litters his “debate” with Brash will claims that he’s old, that he’s talking rubbish, that everyone is against Maori, and that so-called “urban Maori” need more privileges from the government. Jackson, of course, represents (or claims to) so-called “urban Maori.”

Jackson, Harawira, Susan Devoy and others talk about the bad “outcomes” that confront Maori, young and old, but none bother to address the claim that the law is not colour-blind and should be, nor show that these bad outcomes can in any way be attributed to racism. (Indeed, a strong argument exists that it is Maori over-reliance on welfare and legal privilege that has all but guaranteed the bad outcomes they cite.)

But there’s more. Media darling Toby Manhire takes on the important topic of logos and where the Hobson’s Pledge website got that picture above. Answer: like most media pics these days (including those the luminaries themselves use, it’s from an American photo library.)

Tim Watkin too conflates the issue of privilege and legal privilege, as if they were one and the same. (No, Tim, they’re not.) But he at least acknowledges the existence of so-called “affirmative action,”  while asserting its effects have been positive – “what Brash calls 'Maori privilege.'” he says, “others call redressing the wrongs of history… an effort to tackle 150 years of race-based privilege [that] is helping avoid more unrest in this country.” (How Maori seats, Maori scholarships, Maori welfare, Maori educational tokenism, and iwi co-governance in local government “avoids unrest” we are not told however.) And he is big enough too to acknowledge “there are valid issues lurking among [what he calls] nonsense -

for example, the fact that settlements are based on where tribes happened to sit in a moment of history (1840), how far respect for Maori spirituality goes and how we manage Maori representation in local government. But it's all based on an intellectual foundation made of rubble and rubbish. The profound wisdom that we should all be equal before the law is twisted and imprisoned in what becomes an argument for privilege to be entrenched with a certain people (Pakeha) at a certain time in history (today).

If you can make sense of that last sentence, by the way, then you’re a better parser of them than I.

He argues constitutional law, and gets it wrong, saying:

They [the Hobson’s Pledge movement] show their failure to understand the most basic ideas of a constitution, by on one hand saying "The Treaty of Waitangi is not in any meaningful sense New Zealand’s constitution" and yet in the very next line saying that the Treaty did cede sovereignty, protect property rights and establish Maori as British subjects.
    Even given that slanted interpretation, it clearly acknowledges that the treaty deals with rights and power, which is, er, what a constitution is all about.

It’s certainly true that ceding sovereignty, protecting property rights, and establishing Maori as British subjects with all the rights and privileges thereof are the foundations for something that might become a constitution – something, importantly, that would elucidate what those rights and privileges are, and how a government would be constituted to protect them. That something would be a constitution. But it would need something much more comprehensive than the Treaty’s three spare clauses to become one.

And it would need much else excised from modern law …

I’ve been saving the best for last, since it’s both the most absurd and the most-passed around. In recent years Mihinirangi Forbes has become almost the patron saint of media types. Posted at the taxpayer-funded ivory tower of Radio NZ under the title of “Analysis,” RNZ’s “Māori Issues Correspondent” asks of Brash and co right off the bat ‘How Pākehā are you?’

So we’re already downhill skiiing from the outset, and the trajectory is just further down. It’s worth some fisking because it captures so many of the criticisms.

The group's website is emblazoned with the saying "He iwi tahi tātou - One People" - a phrase famously used by Governor William Hobson as he greeted Māori chiefs as they arrived to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, the country's founding document.
    It's a document guaranteeing iwi full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands, forests and fisheries. That's not promoted on the lobby group's website.

Well, yes it is. Unfortunately, however, it’s promoted under the aegis of the conspiratorial “Littlewood Treaty” nonsense that talks about pieces of paper being discovered years later in drawers that, say the claimants, just happen to be the real Treaty.

The group nonetheless do acknowledge, and on the group’s very front page, that the Treaty did in fact guarantee to protect the property rights of all New Zealanders – those being the rights of both non-Maori and Maori over property they wish and desire to retain in their possession, to recognise all the relevant words of the document in question. And it’’s worth noting that Forbes and others fail themselves to promote the document’s guarantee that sovereignty was in fact ceded by the signatories.

Important point that.

Forbes continues:

It's also a document which grants Māori the same rights and privileges as Pākehā, but it's the word privilege which appears to have Hobson's Pledge members concerned. [Emphasis in the original.]

Forbes equivocation over the word “privilege” is of a piece with Watkins’s. The Treaty guaranteed all the rights and privileges of British citizens. Not more rights, or greater privileges. Not affirmative action or co-governance.

She continues, citing (as dishonest hacks will) the weaker arguments she can find from protagonists, before summing up in he r words the aim of the group:

Hobson's Pledgers are calling for a colourblind New Zealand, but one group featured prominently in spokesperson Dr Brash's interviews: Māori.
    Other members thought it important to question how Māori some Māori actually were.

A lot there buried in two sentences.

Yes, Hobson's Pledgers are calling for a colourblind New Zealand. That this means they are arguing against the committed programme of affirmative action in favour or Maori means that the ongoing programme of affirmative action in favour or Maori be mentioned. No mystery there.

Yet she’s right to note that an organisation talking about being colourblind needs to be rigorous in its own ocular hygiene, and how Maori some Maori actually are is and always should be wholly irrelevant to anyone truly colourblind. So she has a point.

Mr McVicker, Mike Butler and Mr Oakley seemed offended when asked how Pākehā they were. They all said the question was irrelevant, with Mr Butler calling it a "race-based question."
    But they had no difficulty talking about the percentage of Māori blood people might have, including myself [says Forbes].

She has a point. A point I’ve made to many of these people before, and one that Forbes to her credit has recognised that Brash avoids.

But she concludes with the same equivocation as many others, between legal and economic privilege.

What did the human beings think of Māori inequalities in health, education, life expectancy or incarceration?
    Mr Shirtcliffe offered a quick reply:
     "We are a very simple, single focused movement relating to the issue of equality in governance and
        property rights; other issues are not for us."

Almost the right response. But that issue must be “for them,” because if that equivocation remains unchallenged, this ship called Hobson’s Pledge will take on water as every other similar project has.

And it will only fuel the cries of “racism,” even where it doesn’t exist.

So how do the critics of the group defend their claim that the group is racist? Simple: they don’t try to. They don’t even define what they mean by it, since of course that would make their job harder: Racism being:

Assessing the worth of a person by his skin colour and ancestry. The lowest form of collectivism -- what author Ayn Rand calls a "barnyard" form of collectivism.

The Pledgers don’t help themselves with ridiculous talk of bloodlines in a discussion that’s supposed to be about being colourblind, but the commentators don’t even try to properly justify what should be a serious claim, because they’re never, ever called on their dysphasia  by their media colleagues, and nor do they expect to. They publish in the full expaction of being able to write nonsense because they’ve all been taught the doctrine of “multiculturalism”: that all races are equal except for the one they think is “in power.” (Racism, to the Marxist/multiculturalist not at all being about colourblind individualism but about “power structures” and who inhabits them. Racism in this sense then being very much about not being colourblind, but about being able to skewer the “pale,male and stale” wherever you may find them.) 

This is how the likes of McQuillan can write lightweight fluff and Jackson can rely on nothing more than barroom bluster – and Forbes as can ask “how pakeha are you?” without being racist -- because they can all be confident that (to paraphrase Saul Alinsky) any means are justified in carrying out a social-justice warrior’s ends.

It’s how they can acknowledge all the affirmative action in favour of a race, can watch a race-based party form and exploit race-based seats, can sit back and say nothing as a race-based elite lord it over the peons they claim to represent,  all because in their minds these people are not “part of the power structure” – yet will write up a hyperbolic fervour should anyone have the temerity to call for one law for all.

They’re out of their minds.

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RELATED POSTS:

• “You will have noticed that what used to be defined as racism has changed. It has changed because the old way of defining it was not proving politically useful. Racism, observes Robert Bidinotto, used to be defined objectively … now however it is defined politically.”
  How social-justice warriors are re-defining racism–& Hobson Pledgers can’t keep up – NOT PC
• “’Maori are legally privileged in New Zealand today,’ Whyte told Act’s annual conference in Hamilton, ‘just as the Aristocracy were legally privileged in pre-revolutionary France.’  Presumably, in making this bold comparison, our Cambridge graduate had some notion of what those aristocratic privileges included ….  Let’s list just a few of them…’”
  Chris Trotter’s questions to Jamie Whyte answered – NOT PC, 2014

 

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How social-justice warriors are re-defining racism–& Hobson Pledgers can’t keep up

 

You will have noticed that what used to be defined as racism has changed. It has changed because the old way of defining it was not proving politically useful. Racism, observes Robert Bidinotto, used to be defined objectively … now however it is defined politically.

"RACISM" USED TO BE DEFINED OBJECTIVELY: the belief that the character, intellect, and worth of any given individual is determined, not by his individual choices and actions, but by his genetic and racial ancestry. Racism is thus a variant of collectivism: judging people not as individuals, but by their accidental "membership" in some racial/ethnic collective. The belief that some racial collectives are "superior" or "inferior" to others -- intellectually, morally, aesthetically, etc. -- is a disgusting corollary of this notion of biochemical and genetic determinism.

This is the standard espoused by Martin Luther King in his deservedly famous speech in which in dared to dream big:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Racism by this objective standard is a denial of free will, and an embrace of tribalism, determinism and collectivism. So that will never do; a new definition was needed by the social-justice warrior who embraces all three:

Their new definition changes "racism" from a belief system to a political system. Now, "racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits off the oppression of others — whether they want to or not." (See the linked article.) In other words, according to this hijacked definition, in America only white people (the "dominant race") are or can be "racists," even if they harbour no attitude of racial prejudice. By contrast, no black (or "minority") can possibly be a "racist," even if they do harbour racial prejudice.
    By this redefinition, "racism" is now a genetic-based moral crime attributable to whites only, as a collective. And because whites are *inherently* racists -- even if, individually, they choose NOT to be racially prejudiced -- "racism" has become akin to the doctrine of "original sin": All whites are born guilty of the sin of racism, because they are inherently "privileged" and thus are "oppressors" of minorities...not by what they choose to do, but simply by being white.

Note how neatly the re-definition effectively overturns the whole notion of racism:

• So if you’re literally colourblind and want one law for all then you are a racist.
• And if you base your whole world-view on arguing that some races need legal preference, then you are simply a good social-justice warrior who will view Don Brash’s views as “quaint,” and will be “virtue signalling” by calling Hobson Pledgers racist.
• And when “the subverted definition of ‘racism" is even infecting the Google search engine,” this is why you know you can get away with it – even when your re-definition is the very essence of racism.

It’s astounding.

It’s such a through-going attack on the objective definition, observes Bidinotto, that even Martin Luther King’s statement itself is under attack by this new generation of ignorati.

What’s the antidote? Individualism, say Bidinotto:

[Individualism] holds that people must be judged, not as members of arbitrary classes and accidental collectives, but as INDIVIDUALS, solely on the basis of their freely chosen statements and actions. It does not attribute moral status to one's ancestry or genetics or physical traits, or to anything that is not voluntarily chosen by or under the control of the individual…
    Those who truly oppose racism must reject the racial/genetic determinism at its foundation. They must affirm the dream of Dr. King, and judge individuals by their personal character and deeds, and not by their biological ancestry or collective class "memberships." They must reject the notions of racial superiority or inferiority.
    They must embrace individualism, and reject collectivism in any form, including its lowest: racism.

They might begin by embracing the idea behind Hobson’s Pledge – embracing the individualism of One Law For All -- instead of rejecting it on the basis of collective outcomes, deterministic predictions of disaster, a phony fascination with “power structures: – and a barnyard view of human beings that is objectively racist.

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