MPs at their best – but tough talks lie ahead
They get pilloried daily for their often self-serving interests, but our politicians are capable of surprising us.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.
Daily in Parliament, the job of politicians and press gallery reporters alike can be a brutish, combative slog. It grinds you down, emotions run high, criticism is often taken personally.
When a minister or the prime minister’s role in any issue comes under scrutiny, well, there has been many an awkward encounter in Copperfields, the Beehive’s cafe.
The way I always try to approach my role is by starting at this most basic point: they are all genuinely here to make New Zealand a better place.
They may disagree on the best way to do that, they may make calculated decisions that run counter to that principle in order to live to fight another day. But there is not a politician in that building who is not as quixotic as they are shrewd.
One thing I’ve learned is that those who are not get weeded out extremely quickly.
At the best of times, they appear at their worst; argumentative, childish, what they like to call ‘‘robust’’, but their discourse falls well short of quality.
And at the worst of times, they have come together.
New Zealand has some difficult conversations ahead and, like so many things, the standard is set from the top. Our politicians all carry blame for, at various points, stoking intolerance and capitalising on pockets of latent xenophobia for votes.
National knows the extent to which it encouraged antiimmigration sentiment by stirring up conspiracy theories surrounding the United Nations Migration Compact.
Labour’s most recent, depressingly sad episode – now known as ‘‘Chinese-sounding names’’ – as well as the entire immigration debate at the 2017 election is theirs to own.
And NZ First – its list of misdemeanours might be longer than the rest, with entries specifically relating to Muslim communities. In 2017, NZ First leader Winston Peters expressly called for Muslim communities to ‘‘clean house’’ and turn in terrorists in the wake of the London attacks.
In a controversial 2005 speech entitled ‘‘The End of Tolerance’’, he suggested moderate Muslims were operating ‘‘hand in glove’’ with extremists.
But something extraordinary happened in Parliament this week. Out of national despair, and a very individual kind of heartache that has hit every New Zealander, we were reminded that our politicians are Kiwis too.
Leaving reporters gobsmacked, Peters (still combative, mind) offered contrition: ‘‘If you want to look at someone who’s had the longest political career of anyone in this Parliament, and claim that I’m blameless over that long career – well you might, but I don’t assume such an answer and I never will.’’
In the House, National leader Simon Bridges called for New Zealand to ‘‘re-evaluate the boundaries of acceptable social and political discourse’’ and said this to the Muslim community: ‘‘It was, for them as it is for us, the best country in the world. We let them down. And for that we are sorry.’’
But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose consistent and compassionate voice has been a genuine reassurance to many, has set the gold standard example of what it means to reject hate.
‘‘He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.’’
All of those sentiments were genuine, and we should take them as such and hold them to it. On the front lawn of Parliament on Friday, more than a thousand came together – with thousands throughout the country – to hear what was likely, for most of them, their first Muslim call to prayer.
And while many probably went back to their day filled with emotions too complex to voice, I mostly like to think we all achieved a higher level of understanding for communities outside our own. That we felt a little less foreign to one another.
There are three big conversations on the horizon, which will shape New Zealand in profound and long-lasting ways.
It’s imperative that politicians and the media guide those responsibly, but every New Zealander should pause and think a little longer about whether what they’re contributing is not only not breeding extremism, but not giving it space to breathe.
THE TRIAL
The Australian-born accused has pleaded not guilty to a representative charge, and will likely stand trial. He could defend himself yet, and in the interests of an open justice system the media will have to report aspects of his defence.
He will likely use the media gaze to espouse his ideology, and on that New Zealand’s media will collectively have to find a responsible way to balance both fair and balanced reporting with a need to refrain from publishing sensationalist hate speech.
At an individual level, the lessons learned from the disgust at those who shared his live-stream need to be applied here too.
GUN LAWS
Ardern, with near full backing from every corner of Parliament, has banned military-style semiautomatic weapons and any assault rifle that can conceivably be converted into one,
While those changes will be enshrined in law within a month, there will be further changes that are likely to go through the full select committee process, and that is a good thing.
But it’s also heavily rumoured the American National Rifle Association (NRA) has sent representatives over to feed into the gun debate, and we should all be wary of that. Up until Friday, many of New Zealand’s gun laws were looser than those they have in the US.
The difference between the culture here and there is down to the mainstream moderate views of the vast majority of responsible gun owners.
The NRA is responsible for fuelling most of the toxic culturewars on gun control there, and should they try to insert themselves into the New Zealand debate we should all approach it with an equal mix of scepticism and indifference.
We should call out extremism at every step. Whether it’s politicians, the media, or great aunty Carol on Facebook.
SPYING
With an inquiry into how all of our agencies missed the chatter on this, New Zealand will need to look at its surveillance laws. The Government, under former prime minister John Key, walked away from a proposal known as Project Speargun, in 2014.
Balancing the right to privacy over mass surveillance, the Government did the right thing by canning Speargun, and still got flayed for even considering it.
This Government will likely search for an alternative to mass surveillance.
Questions over whether anyone actually trusts the social media giants to put the same level of effort into monitoring keywords for the public good as they do for advertising will likely not come up with an answer.
What has historically been considered a politically unpalatable move to merge the internal and external spy agencies has new practicalities in the wake of these terrorist attacks.
But the discussion from every corner of the web will need to be thoughtful and considered, if New Zealand wants to hold on to the freedoms we should try to retain in this country.
It might not come naturally, because we’re an unassuming bunch – it’s part of being Kiwi.
But we should call out extremism at every step. Whether it’s politicians, the media, or great aunty Carol on Facebook.
On that, we can all do better.