Uncomfortable soul-searching takes a heavy toll
It’s been a year like no other and, I don’t know about you, but it’s left me feeling absolutely shagged. Maybe it’s just my age.
Looking back over the multitude of events of 2020, three things stand out for New Zealand: Covid-19, elections, and the reset in race relations.
It’s easy – especially in New Zealand – to forget what a shattering event Covid-19 has been and continues to be. Familiarity creates comfort.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too smug, since our island isolation down south has played amajor role in successfully keeping the pandemic at bay. Other island nations like Taiwan did much better. It has had fewer deaths than New Zealand, and did not lock down.
However, the early lockdown saved New Zealand and gave the country some leeway when mistakes were made in quarantine and border control. The response was a good example of effective communication, buy-in from the population and listening to the right experts.
A persistent theme of comment about the pandemic suggests it has provided an opportunity for a new world order with different priorities to emerge. That’s not going well so far. Low interest rates, vital to keeping national debt down, have created an asset-buying boom and worked in favour of the well-heeled.
Then we get to the election in October, which presented Labour with the numbers to govern alone. The resounding win created more difficulties than at first appeared. For a start, Labour could not afford to shun its former coalition partner because itwill no doubt need the Green Party and some of its radical progressives in the future.
The election showed it had also captured the swinging centrist voter, particularly in the over-60 bracket. This support is nice, but it can’t be counted on next election without some moves that will irritate Labour’s core market.
The diehard progressives in the party will also be looking for Labour to use its majority to make fundamental changes.
At the top of their list will be the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, which reported back last year. Essentially these recommendations call for a major increase in benefits, and support for things such as housing.
The other big development of the year is a recalibration of race relations to address, to put it simply, what is seen as systemic racism, which, apparently, is the cause of every problem afflicting non-European people in New Zealand and elsewhere.
The spark was the justified outrage at the death of 46-year-old African-American man George Floyd under the knee of police on May 25 in Minneapolis.
The death seemed to crystallise long-held grievances about socalled white domination throughout theworld. The shift in thinking was almost palpable and made for some uncomfortable soulsearching.
(It has also, by the way, made life more difficult for your columnist, who has been called the thinking man’s redneck but who thinks of himself as an independent-thinking public intellectual.)
The shift set marchers on their way but, interestingly, a quiet revolution, which was already gathering momentum when Labour took power in 2017, was well underway.
It’s happened without the knowledge of most New Zealanders, but is reflected in a shift throughout society, particularly government.
The courts, child protection services, justice, police, tax and welfare are regrouping around selected Maori values. They aren’t very different to favourable Pakeha values, but they sound better.
The expert welfare group, for instance, adopted kaupapa Maori values such as: manaakitanga – caring with dignity and respect; whanaungatanga – treasuring kinship ties and relationships; kotahitanga – unity; takatutanga – preparedness; kaitiakitanga – guardianship. These changes will be felt in manyways, but I had a taste earlier this year when I was briefly in court to hear a Maori district court judge start the proceedings with a prayer to the one above.
Anyway, it might work (so might Christianity), but it means we have entered an age of rampant virtue signalling. You also see it in commerce and business, where values are all the rage.
This from a recent cosmetics start-up in New Zealand: ‘‘People buy from people. They want an idea of who is behind the brand, and they want to resonate with those values. It’s really important to ensure your values are core to every decision you make.’’ What happened to good value? The shift has created a climate in which free speech going against the trend is condemned as racism and continued oppression. It must be difficult working in the public service, where opposition to the current orthodoxy will be career suicide. Certainly it’s not conducive to debate.
Whether these new values and their manifestation in policies and protocols improve the lives of the people they are meant to serve is the big question. This is recognised by the expert welfare group in its nicely written report.
‘‘We recognise that our approach – Kia Piki Ake TeMana Tangata – is valuable only to the extent that it materially improves outcomes for Maori in a practical and tangible way. If this framework is used during the implementation of this report’s recommendations, tangible changes will occur.’’
Clearly therewill be a lot of fun to be had next year as the Government seeks to ameliorate all the unfairness in life. Happy days to you all.