National could signal its support for democracy
It could join ACT and NZ First to abolish the Maori electoral seats
This is a companion piece to my just-published Ghettoizing the mind. Both were stimulated by Dr Muriel Newman’s feature article, The Future of the Maori Seats in which she carefully marshalled nearly all the reasons why they should be gone. She also introduced as a guest commentary an address given by Hon Bill English in 2003: Address to the National Press Club Breakfast 24 July 2003.
English said the National Party “stands for one standard of citizenship for all.” “We are all New Zealanders. All as good as each other sharing common rights and obligations.” “Parliament must make it clear that there is no constitutional partnership between the Crown and Maori.” English was then Leader of the National Party Opposition.
More to the point of Muriel Newman’s article, English said, “That’s why National-led Government will abolish the Maori seats.” Of course, it did nothing of the sort when National came back into government in 2008 under John Key. Instead, the Key government abetted the infiltration of all parts of New Zealand society by elements who would substitute authoritarian tribal rule for a free and democratic society, a process which was accelerated by the Ardern/Hipkins governments.
Under pressure from ACT and New Zealand First, the coalition government has walked this back a bit but not to the extent needed to offer meaningful restraint of the authoritarian tendencies which unthinking acquiescence by most of us has unwittingly allowed.
At present, whilst there has been good legislation to roll back some of the more egregious excesses of the last government and isolated examples of ministers insisting on their ministries adopting policies the government was thought to stand for, clear and concerted direction is absent.
Leadership is needed. We need a Prime Minister who will say loudly and clearly what English said in 2003, expressing with strength of character and personality that it is the expectation of all members of the coalition government that all elements of the bureaucracy and other parts of government both central and local will cease undermining our democracy.
Today, when NZ First has advanced a Bill for a referendum and ACT says get rid of the Maori seats now, the opportunity is ripe for that sort of leadership. Getting rid of the seats, especially by or endorsed by referendum to show it is peoples’ will, would not only remove an anti-democratic excrescence, but also be a signal that enough is enough and that henceforth we shall be a “multiracial society [where] people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law.”
Yet the National Party is silent. Neither for nor against, bereft of the courage to say we agree or we do not agree and this is why.
Or does the leadership think silence is of political advantage? If so, all indications are they are mistaken.
Chris Luxon's speech at Waitangi this year about the three articles of the Treaty echoed David Seymour's Treaty Principles Bill closely. Seymour noted the similarities in his press stand-up later and said he had listened to the Prime Minister’s speech and “his idea of the three principles is the same as the Treaty Principles Bill”.
Oddly, the mainstream media ignored Luxon's speech — perhaps because they didn't want to draw attention to it or perhaps because they didn't understand the significance of what he was saying.
It seems that Luxon doesn't object to the TPB per se, but doesn't want to buy a fight with the media and Maori activists by making it law or having it go to a referendum.
It looks like political cowardice rather than a philosophical objection.
Gary, you make some interesting points so I've referred your piece to the member of my team who has had much to say on this subject... so here is his comment on the matter:
Watching this from Australia and the pattern you're describing is depressingly familiar over here too.
We've had our own version of the Luxon manoeuvre — leaders who privately agree with a position, publicly signal sympathy when the numbers demand it, and then go missing the moment the media temperature rises. It's not ideological. It's actuarial. They've calculated that the cost of leading exceeds the cost of waiting, and they'll keep calculating that right up until the waiting costs more than the leading. Which it eventually does, usually at election time and usually messily.
The Bill English quote is the key thing here. "One standard of citizenship for all" is not a complicated proposition. It doesn't require a QC to defend it. It requires a Prime Minister with enough self-respect to say it out loud and mean it on a Tuesday in March, not just at campaign rallies in 2023. The fact that English said it clearly in 2003, won government in 2008, and then spent nine years finding reasons not to act on it tells you everything about how the managed silence works. The words aren't the commitment. The silence after the words is where you find out what the commitment actually is.
Graham Adams' observation in the comments about Luxon's Waitangi speech is worth sitting with. If Luxon is privately aligned with the Treaty Principles Bill but publicly declining to say so because he doesn't want the fight — that's not pragmatism. That's the managed class doing what the managed class does: reaching the right conclusion through the analytical function and then suppressing the output because the institutional cost of saying it out loud is assessed as too high.
The Irish had a word for that kind of leadership. We don't need to print it here.
For anyone interested in the structural reasons why this pattern repeats across Westminster democracies — not just in NZ, not just on Treaty issues — we are a small analytical channel called The Captain J Channel on Substack working through exactly this territory. The framework we are using — UIS-21 — gives a name to the mechanism Gary is describing. Worth a look if this kind of thing keeps you up at night. It keeps me up, and I'm just a builder from Sydney who watches rugby and pays taxes.
Ocker Joe
(The Captain J Channel — Substack)