Together at Waitangi
Jacinda Ardern is trying to bring back some of the togetherness of Waitangi Day.
As the head of a new government, she has a unique opportunity to do it.
Unlike National and Labour prime ministers before her, she isn’t stuck in boycott mode as a result of past humiliations or insults thrown in the Far North.
And it’s certainly worth trying to bring the temperature down.
Many New Zealanders, including many Ma¯ ori, would probably prefer a Waitangi Day free of excessive aggravation.
That wouldn’t have to mean a bland or meaningless official day, where Pollyanna rules and the crimes of history are forgotten.
It would mean a brutally frank exchange of views, but minus any physical threats.
Whether she can pull it off, even after an extended visit to the north to meet a variety of interest groups, remains to be seen.
It’s worth pointing out that she also has the strongest partypolitical reasons for succeeding.
The Ma¯ ori seats, after all, have all returned to Labour and the Ma¯ ori Party has died.
Jacinda Ardern must know that Ma¯ ori voters won’t now put up with sops or soothing words.
They will expect from her Government real and lasting benefits for Ma¯ ori.
It is Ma¯ ori, after all, who too often remain at the bottom of the heap despite all the Treaty settlements and all the changes in Ma¯ ori political representation in MMP governments.
Labour knows that they don’t hold a mortgage on Ma¯ ori votes. It has to compete for them.
Waitangi Day is the day when we ask who we are. The answer to that is very complex. We are a collection of ethnic, economic and social minorities with very different views of the world and this country.
So no official celebration or ritual will satisfy everyone. There are divisions within the minorities themselves, as Ma¯ ori politics continually reminds us.
The Treaty settlements won’t necessarily change that. They might even aggravate the differences between the developing Maori middle class and the underclass.
National leader Bill English says scornfully that Ardern is deluded if she thinks she can fix these problems ‘‘with a bit of Labour love’’. And he’s right.
Perhaps there is a new attitude developing in National since its dependence on Ma¯ ori Party votes has disappeared.
English was wrong to say that the Government isn’t responsible for saving ‘‘someone else’s language’’ (by which he meant Ma¯ ori). In fact, the Ma¯ ori language, an official language of New Zealand, belongs to all of us. And that’s a fact worth remembering on our national day.
There’s also some consolation in looking across the Tasman.
Australia is only beginning to confront the problems of its national day.
Australia Day on January 26 marks the first British landing in Sydney Cove; no wonder many Aborigines call it Invasion Day.
Ethnic triumphalism is the last thing wanted on a country’s national day.
-Stuff