Finlayson’s case for co-governance
OPINION: In the past, the centre-right has had mixed feelings about intellectuals. Put it down to the National Party having its roots in rural and provincial New Zealand and to it being the natural home of business, small and large.
Yet every now and then, the centre-right throws up individuals who don’t fit the antiintellectual stereotype.
In the 1960s, it was Ralph Hanan, the National Party’s justice minister, who successfully championed the abolition of capital punishment in this country. Hanan was also an early advocate of homosexual law reform.
In the 1990s, Doug Graham became a key figure in the Treaty settlement process, and, a decade later, Katherine Rich rejected welfare bashing as a policy option.
More recently, Chris Finlayson has taken up the mantle of the conservative movement’s most articulate thinker.
That role isn’t entirely new to him. While he was attorneygeneral, Finlayson delivered a high-quality report to Parliament on National’s policy of denying prisoners the vote, and found the policy contravened human rights law. The Key government ignored the report’s findings, but history – and court rulings here and elsewhere – vindicated Finlayson’s stance on this issue.
Within the past fortnight, Finlayson has written an article in E-Tangata magazine that could hardly be more relevant to the politically hot topic of cogovernance.
‘‘People who are frightened by co-governance,’’ Finlayson wrote, ‘‘think they’ll be locked out of access . . . When what it really means is that involving iwi in a myriad of decisions can actually result in a better country.’’
Interestingly, Finlayson’s embrace of co-governance flows directly from his conservative values. He sees co-governance as offering a worthwhile alternative to the ‘‘central government knows best’’ approach to how power should be exercised in a social democracy.
‘‘The idea that power can be shared scares some people. Whereas, my attitude is, if central government has failed in so many areas, which it has, and if there are different ways of looking at issues that involve bringing iwi into decisionmaking, or handing over decision-making, then let’s give it a go.’’
In stark contrast, the centreright’s current misgivings about co-governance have shared more in common with the populist positions it has promoted in the past.
Don Brash’s now infamous Orewa speech on race relations in the mid-2000s was a classic example. The Brash speech itself had been an echo of the ‘‘one waka’’ advertising billboards that had been a controversial feature of the disastrous election campaign run by Bill English in 2002.
Only last week, National leader Christopher Luxon used his speech at Ratana to paint the current co-governance proposals between the Government and Maori as being separatist and divisive. To portray the notion of joint stewardship inherent in cogovernance in those terms puts
National at risk of harking back to the fearful ‘‘one waka’’ sentiments of a bygone era.
It needn’t do so. As Finlayson indicates, co-governance has the potential to strengthen the country, not divide it.
Co-governance can lead to fuller, and more equal participation by all.
That makes sense. Surely, if both Treaty partners are able to participate equally in setting the course, the waka stands a better chance of reaching the right destination.