Lessons from the vote

Clive Bibby

Opinion

My guess is that most people reading this column headline will anticipate an article on last Saturday’s general election — a result from which we can draw some obvious conclusions.

Well, they’d be half right, but regarding the lessons to be learned I actually refer mainly to Saturday’s referendum on the “Voice” in Australia, which enables me to draw some revealing comparisons with our closest neighbour.

In my view both elections were about race — or ethnic heritage, if you want to be less precise.

Both Governments were attempting to or had temporarily succeeded in dividing their respective populations based on skin colour.

And both were prepared to ignore the need for proof of ancestry or in New Zealand’s case, the fact that the current population are all descendants of immigrants — the only difference being that one group of people arrived here about 600-700 years before the rest of us.

In Australia, the Aboriginals documented  heritage provides undisputed proof that they can claim to be tangata whenua.

So, why has there been this sudden urge to divide both countries on the basis of ethnic heritage? And why have our respective populations both rejected these attempts to enshrine in legislation privileges that would only ensure the division continues until some kind of revolt returns us to the way we here in New Zealand have been for the past 183 years — dual heritage but one people.

The main reason Kiwis overwhelmingly voted to reverse the emphatic 2020 election result is that they felt betrayed into believing their Government was intent on ensuring minorities were treated with respect, but not in the disproportionate and privileged fashion exposed in the clandestine He Pua Pua report.

I contend that our election and the reaction of the majority of voters was one of anger at being betrayed, rather than a response to the financial pressures associated with modern daily living.

Of course, inflationary pressures added to the mix of discontent but you can’t expect to see such a monumental change in voting preference is such a short time based solely on a single issue — which just happens to be, for some, one that is always there.

l believe the response in both countries was to emphatically reject the notion that the majority are inherently racist, and there is a need to promote that image to the world as if we need to be cleansed of this cancer that prevents the folk who have been here the longest from reaching their full potential.

As Jacinta Price, one of the aboriginal leaders of the “No” campaign which was successful in all Australian states and across the nation, said: “that notion is simply a false interpretation of modern Australian society. That is not who we are!”

Back here the message to our government was the same — we are not a racist people and it is an affront to every decent New Zealander to suggest that we are.

Our record of peaceful coexistence between people of different ethnic origin is second to none in a world aflame with tribal warfare.

We should be proud of our history, including our attempts at reconciliation and compensation for misdeeds perpetrated by our colonial ancestors — although it is somewhat ironic that not all groups have been forced to atone for their historicAL acts of barbarism.

We need to learn from these two timely votes that treachery and mistaken attempts to divide are not part of who we are.

Don’t even think about it ever again.