Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion
THREE KEY POINTS:
The warning signs were there from the start when the two minor coalition parties were given unprecedented power.
The next red flag came with the unravelling of the steps that had been taken in the acknowledgement of Te Tiriti as NZ’s founding document.
In education, the emphasis on maths and writing over arts is misguided. The arts are crucial to New Zealand’s future in the age of AI.
Sir Ian Taylor is a leading businessman and entrepreneur - among his many achievements, he has been awarded Outstanding Māori Business Leader of the Year and North & South’s New Zealander of the Year. He is an inductee of the NZ Technology Hall of Fame and thefounder and managing director of Animation Research, renowned for its work revolutionising the way people watch sport.
You may recall that on the evening you won the election I sent you a text congratulating you on your success but also noting that, whilst I had given National my vote for only the third time in more than 50 years of voting, I looked forward to measuring the personal KPIs I had set for earning that vote in another three years time.
I totally accept that the KPIs I set might not align with the majority of voters, but that’s what democracy is all about, and that’s how I put a value on the importance of having the right to vote.
I would have to say that things have not gone all that well when measuring your performance against the KPIs I had set for where I placed my vote next time.
First, there was a coalition agreement that gave two minority parties an unprecedented amount of power and leverage. The warning signs were there from the start when the leaders of those two parties put their focus on who was going to be Deputy Prime Minister.
Really! Political baubles were keeping them up at night. Not a great start.
Then came the unravelling of the slow but positive steps that had been taken in the acknowledgement of Te Tiriti as our founding document and the use of te reo Māori as one of the two official languages of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The irony (and you will see that word a few times in this letter) is that you had once been CEO of Air New Zealand, the Kiwi company that proudly and unequivocally leads the corporate world in its embrace of te reo Māori and te ao Māori.
I am no longer sure where you stand on this important issue because this week you dismissed Cabinet minister Paul Goldsmith’s decision to remove Māori text, including the word Aotearoa, from a letter of invitation to our Aussie neighbours to the celebration of Matariki as a move to make things simpler for our cuzzies across the ditch!!!
Really!
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith. Photo / Mark Mitchell
A celebration of the most significant Māori event of the year and Goldsmith chooses this as his vehicle for putting a stake in the ground on the use of te reo.
It is wrong on so many levels, but here’s what offends me most.
On my Māori side, I am angered by the arrogance of Goldsmith’s total disregard for the language and heritage of my mother, whilst on my Pākehā side I am embarrassed by - well, how do I put this - ah yes, the arrogance of Goldsmith’s total disregard for the language and heritage of my mother.
And, if removing te reo from a letter of invitation to a celebration of the Māori New Year is not irony enough for you, how about this for irony?
Last week you made announcements around education, at the core of which was the importance of structured numeracy and literacy.
Well, Prime Minister, a letter is about as structured as literacy can get. There is a form that everyone knows and understands. Even politicians.
That structure has an opening greeting or salutation, followed by the content of the letter, and finishes with a closing. Literacy doesn’t come any more structured than that.
What did Goldsmith remove from his letter to make things simpler for his colleagues in Australia?
Tenā Koe - the opening salutation - which I am sure even an Australian politician would be able to discern from where it sat in the structure, was the equivalent of “Gidday mate.”
Then he took to the closing, Naku noa nā, (yours sincerely) which his Aussie invitees could easily translate to “fair suck of the sav mate - see you at the barbie”.
But, here’s another irony.
They would be unlikely to do those translations because, as you might recall, your Australian colleagues in the current government tried valiantly to give voice to their indigenous people with the Voice Referendum last year. They lost that referendum but there was no doubt that Aotearoa New Zealand was their role model, their inspiration, in their attempt to give their indigenous people a voice.
Goldsmith appears to have sided with the Australians who voted down that voice.
I am not sure if this next example ranks as an irony, but in the recent extravaganza that was the opening of the Paris Olympics the only indigenous greeting that I heard used by the BBC commentators covering the teams as they sailed down the Seine was “Kia Ora New Zealand” in acknowledgement of the New Zealand team as they sailed by.
I am sure Dame Naida Glavish would have viewed this global acknowledgement of the work she began 40 years ago, by refusing to back down from using kia ora when answering the phone at the Auckland Post Office, with an enormous sense of pride. The world was acknowledging her work and her culture.
How must she have felt to see a minister of the Crown, 40 years later, order the removal of the most basic use of te reo in a letter of invitation to the celebration of Matariki, the Māori New Year?
Would he have threatened to fire his staff if they refused, as Dame Naida did?
And, remaining on the topic of education is your statement this week that “music and arts was not a priority and should be deferred in favour of maths and writing”.
Well, this is from someone whose first job was as a singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band in the ‘60s. (For what it’s worth we even opened for the Beach Boys when they toured New Zealand.)
Ian Taylor as lead singer in Kal-Q-Lated Risk. Other members of the band were Barry Rushton (drums), Bernard Carey (keyboards) and Phil Hope (lead guitar). Out of shot was Dave Cameron on bass. Photo / Supplied
For years I have argued that we need to introduce “A” into the concept of STEM because I have seen first-hand how important the arts and creative thinking is to the global technology business we have created here in Aotearoa. One of the most valuable lessons I ever received was from the head of the Computer Graphics Department at the University of Otago, Professor Geoff Wyvill who, back in 1990, told me that anyone wanting to excel in that field should first learn another language and do music.
Geoff trained the university programming team who, in 1989, went to the USA and beat Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, just to name a few, in the World Computer Programming Championship, becoming the first non-American team ever to to do that. I think I know where I would put my money when it comes to taking advice on the importance of art and creative thinking in education.
With the advent of AI, that has become even more important, and I am seeing evidence of that every day as we take on the world from down here in Aotearoa.
Sir Ian Taylor. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Our tamariki are going to have instant access to the biggest source of knowledge on the planet.
Our education system has to prepare them for this expanding source of knowledge which will be at their fingertips. It’s not simply maths and literacy that will help them take up the opportunities this will create.
It’s enhancing the ability that humans have to think creatively that makes us who we are. We need to put the arts, A, in STEAM while we still have time.
