Indigenising Aotearoa-New Zealand (part 3)
Continued from part 2
Labour (52 MPs) has been the major government party since 1999. It started the Treaty process by passing the Waitangi Tribunal Act in 1975 and amending it in 1985 to give the Waitangi Tribunal jurisdiction back to 1840. As a social democratic party, it has historically been blind to race, seeing "Maori" either as members of the working class or a socioeconomic underclass. But the Maori renaissance of the past 30 years, the development of Treaty jurisprudence and activism, coupled with its tenure of the Maori constituency seats in Parliament (up to 1996, with a single exception in 1993-96, and again since 1999) have forced Labour to acknowledge ethnicity as a factor in social policy alongside class. In government, as noted above, Labour has significantly expanded the range of legislation under which consultation of Maori is required (most notably the Local Government Act and the Land Transport Management Act) and under which the Treaty "principles" are required to be observed. It has in many other ways, legislatively and in practice, greatly enhanced the role of Maori in public and official life. But it has also begun to set some limits, notably on Maori claims to ownership of oil and gas and aboriginal title over the foreshore and seabed and will continue to set limits to the Treaty on a case-by-case basis. It rejects self-government and "sovereignty". Its junior coalition partner in government, the Progressive Coalition (two seats), is closely in tune with Labour, which is unsurprising since both its MPs came from the Labour party originally and its leader, Jim Anderton, was president and an MP. Labour has 11 Maori MPs and Progressive none.
The Greens (nine MPs) take their cue from Maori activists and on the foreshore and seabed argue that aboriginal title should stand, in keeping with a generally radical position on Maori policy. The Greens see links between their own spiritual respect for the land and nature and the Maori animist spirituality. The Greens have one Maori MP.
On current evidence, particularly if the economy remains buoyant, Labour appears headed for a third term at the next election, due by September 2005. However, the lead the four parties in or supporting the government have over the three opposition parties halved between June and December, from 25 per cent to 12 per cent. The start of this fall coincides with the Court of Appeal decision on the foreshore and seabed and, though it is unlikely the whole of the fall has been due to that decision and its aftermath, at least some of it is likely to have been. Labour's support has fallen in that time from an average of 53 per cent to an average of 45 per cent, accounting for all of the fall in the combined support for parties in or supporting the government.
Thus "the Treaty" (in its extended sense to encompass also indigenous rights) is critical to the electoral health of the government and may play a determining role in the next election if tensions are not eased and especially if the government foreshore and seabed proposals fail. The government is extremely sensitive on that issue. It has set traditional Maori leadership and Labour at odds. But Labour cannot accommodate Maori demands without risking a serious backlash from its non-Maori support base. The Treaty is by far its biggest test.
In the final analysis politics is about numbers. Maori have 20 MPs out of 120, which is a little better than proportionality. The MMP electoral system has definitely worked for Maori in that respect. If Maori were to form a party or grouping which won all seven Maori constituency seats in Parliament (likely to be eight from 2008 as the Maori population grows), that grouping could hold the balance of power in most and perhaps all future Parliaments. This looked conceivable in 1998 when New Zealand First held all the Maori seats and most of those MPs split from New Zealand and formed a new party. But that new party won no credibility with Maori.
In the absence of such a party, the potential for Maori leverage rests on the Maori MPs in the Labour party who make up one-fifth of Labour's contingent of MPs. The foreshore and seabed issue looks set to show just how effective (if the legislation fails) or ineffective (if the legislation passes) that leverage is when the chips are really down. All but two of the Maori MPs have backed or acquiesced in the government's proposal. The two holdouts are likely to be reminded bluntly that they are "Labour first, Maori second". Ministers are quietly confident they will come round.
In other words, in the final analysis recognition of the Treaty and indigenous rights is a moral, not a legal or political, imperative. The majority decides where the boundaries shall be drawn. And it is becoming clear that the limits either have been reached or are very close. If there is a change of government in 2005 to one bent on curtailing consultation, rights recognition and power-sharing, that may signal that the limits have been exceeded, at least for this time and this generation.
Associate Maori Affairs Minister John Tamihere reckons that this generation is doing "the hard yards of nation-building" and that in another generation this process will be well advanced and tensions will have eased.
This is an optimistic but not outlandish assessment. There remains a great deal of two-way goodwill, underpinned by extensive interbreeding and social intermingling, great respect for Maori sports prowess -- some national teams would struggle for international respectability without their Maori contingents (and that of the Maoris' polynesian Pacific island cousins) -- and the meshing of the two cultures, the dual indigenisation of this country.
The politics are hard. But they are not impossible. And if this generation successfully negotiates the "hard yards", the focus will shift to where it already is for non-Maori and many Maori and where it would have been for all Maori if there had been no colonisation: on how to make the population, regardless of ethnic mix or origin, fully competitive internationally and fully part of this internationalised but unique society.
Notes
1. As revised to take into account some comments after presentation.
2. Henceforth in this paper the Treaty of Waitangi will be referred to simply as the Treaty (with a capital T).
Ngati Apa, Ngati Koata, Ngati Kuia, Ngati Rarua, Ngati Tama, Ngati Toa and Rangitane and Anor v Attorney-General and Ors, CA197/01 [19 June 2003], unreported.
3. Paul Gerard McHugh, Brief of evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal in re Applications for an urgent inquiry into Foreshore and Seabed Issues, WAI No 1071, 13 January 2004, delivered 22 January 2004.
4. I have argued this in Colin James, New Territory, the Transformation of New Zealand 1984-92 (Bridget Williams Books; Wellington, 1992), quoting in particular Bill Brugger and Kate Hannan, "Modernisation and Revolution" in David Close and Carl Bridge (eds), Revolution: a History of the Idea (Croom Helm, Beckenham, 1985), pp120,131.
5. Aotearoa is the usual Maori name for New Zealand, though strictly speaking, it refers only to the North Island and in any case is a post-Treaty construct (see Michael King, The P:enguin History of New Zealand (Penguin, Auckland, 2003), pp41-2). The formula Aotearoa-New Zealand is increasingly used by an increasing number of people, to acknowledge the bicultural nature of New Zealand Society. The Greens, for example, have called their party the Green Party of Aotearoa-New Zealand.
6. New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney-General [1987] 1 NZLR, 664
See Colin James (ed), Building the Constitution (Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington), 2000, pp10-12,15-19, 144-52, 163-5, 193-218. More than 100 widely varying invited participants debated 47 papers on the social, cultural, historical and political backgrounds to and all aspects of the constitution on 7-8 April 2000
7. For example, "Seabed plan 'will cause tension for decades", Dominion-Post 21 January, pA4: "Wairata Te One One, of the Sovereign Council of Te Tangata Whenua told [Waitangi Tribunal] Judge Wainwright [at a hearing by the tribunal into whether the government's plans for the foreshore/seabed]: 'We are the law here, we are the sovereign council.' "
8. The highest profile accusations, now before the court, have been against ACT MP Donna Awatere-Huata, in respect of an educational trust. Awatere-Huata has strenuously denied all charges. She is no longer a member of the ACT party and ACT is trying to have her removed from Parliament.
9. Jeremy Waldron, Quentin-Baxter Memorial Lecture, Victoria University Law School, 5 December 2002.
10. As described in Paul Harris and Stephen Levine, The New Zealand Politics Source Book (Dunmore Press, 1992), p18, note 2, on Professor Hugh Kawharu's literal translation of the Maori text of the Treaty.
11. Since this speech was given Tariana Turia has said she will abstain, which gives the government a majority if United Future votes for it.
12. Supra, note 7.
13. Some of the implications of treating Maori as a "group" for public policy purposes are explored by Paul Callister in "Ethnicity measures, intermarriage and social policy", a paper prepared for the Connecting Policy, Research and Practice conference, Wellington, 29-30 April, 2003
14. See supra, note 10
15. John Tamihere, "Hard yards of nation-building", New Zealand Herald, 6 February 2003, pA19.
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