Let sunlight into the race debate
Is there any appetite for a hefty, time-consuming and divisive national conversation about race, colonialism and the Treaty of Waitangi? The kind of conversation we haven’t seen since the days of the foreshore and seabed? One with the potential for uninformed attacks, racist insults and backlash?
Some in the Opposition may wish for such a debate, and the raising of that perennial political bogeyman – the separatist agenda. It’s just as easy to see why the Government would want to keep its head down and stay well away.
But it’s too late for that. A week of coverage of the He Puapua report, with insinuations that it is already having a secret impact on Government policy, means it is time to properly open up discussion.
If political commentators are right to say that fearmongering about Ma¯ ori is a desperate act when an Opposition is in trouble, as though racism is the last refuge of the political scoundrel, then the best course is to open the windows and let sunlight in. Transparency is vital.
He Puapua was produced by Te Puni Ko¯ kiri for the Government on New Zealand’s progress towards the aims put forward in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which we signed up to in 2010. The report is not a Cabinet paper and nor is it an unofficial manifesto directing change from behind the scenes.
But it is a road map towards the kind of bicultural New Zealand, with tino rangatiratanga for Ma¯ ori, that the Treaty outlined. And this is clearly a road map we need to know more about.
Even the report’s author, Claire Charters, is in alignment with National leader Judith Collins on a key point, which is what the Government plans to do about the report it has had since 2019.
A timeline was added to the report at the end of 2020 and, again, the Government was urged to release it, discuss it and plot a way forward. Instead, there was silence.
Sometimes the keeping of a secret is more damaging than the secret itself. It is hard to know whether the so-called ‘‘Middle New Zealander’’ that some pundits and broadcasters assume must be Pa¯ keha¯ would really be alarmed about the contents of He Puapua.
In the past few months alone, a Ma¯ ori Health Authority has been announced, Oranga Tamariki has been found to have breached the Treaty, Ma¯ ori wards have been introduced in some places and an emphasis on the Ma¯ ori dimension in New Zealand history is coming to our schools.
A conspiracist might imagine that this is all He Puapua’s doing. Conspiracy theories will thrive without fuller disclosure from the Government.
The need for a Ma¯ ori Health Authority was abundantly clear from the statistics. Oranga Tamariki’s woes were well-known. In other words, it should not be difficult to make a case for He Puapua, were the Government so inclined. Instead, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has quickly ruled out establishing a separate Ma¯ ori Parliament.
It can be useful to go back into history. When the John Key government signed the Declaration, it was in spite of both National’s own rhetoric about the United Nations’ ‘‘sinister overtones’’ and Labour’s unwillingness to sign it because it was ‘‘too scary [and] too all-encompassing’’, as Stuff political columnist Tracy Watkins wrote in 2010.
It was an easy win for Key that required little follow-up. Delivery, as we keep being told, is much harder.
Sometimes the keeping of a secret is more damaging than the secret itself.