Tapu Misa: No easy answer to eliminating barriers

Not long ago, a letter arrived in my inbox asking if I'd be interested in being nominated for a position on a government board. Sure, I said, why not.

It was not the Families Commission, alas. It seems they already had their quota of bleeding heart liberals who think children deserve the same protection under the law as adults and dogs. Clearly, they needed Christine Rankin to help even up the odds.

A week or so later, I got a letter from the person handling the nominations. She wanted me to fill out a form declaring any possible conflicts of interest or criminal convictions.

That seemed fair enough. But the last question gave me pause: did I know of any reason why I wouldn't be acceptable to the appointing minister or any other member of Parliament? Hmmm - tricky. Where to begin?

It was a lot easier a few years ago when another board happened to be looking for someone with media and governance experience, preferably female, preferably from Auckland or Northland, and preferably Maori or Pacific. I ticked all the right boxes. Did this discriminate against white males living in Invercargill? Probably.

Were there better people for the job? Possibly. But I got the nod, and a chance to represent. (Some years later, the balance shifted, and Aucklanders and women became the over-represented groups.)

I mention this because of some of the emails I got about last week's column on the University of Auckland's efforts to increase its number of Maori and Pacific graduates.

Most of those who wrote to me acknowledged the need to level the playing field for Maori and Pacific people from low-decile schools.

But what about other disadvantaged people, they asked? And why should Maori and Pacific students who aren't poor and disadvantaged get the benefits of preferential treatment?

One reader said it was poor white resentment of these kinds of measures that had fuelled the growth in white supremacist groups in the UK.

It's a complex issue, as even a body as august as the US Supreme Court found when it was asked to rule on whether the admissions schemes of the University of Michigan discriminated against white students. The court's majority decision affirmed the university's right to use ethnicity as one of many criteria it uses to ensure a more diverse student body.

Deconstructing disadvantage isn't a simple exercise. US research shows that students from within disadvantaged groups can still face barriers in higher education, even if they're from the middle class.

And health research here shows that more than economic disadvantage is at play in the differing outcomes for Maori and Pakeha; for example, Maori in a higher socio-economic group have been found to have lower life expectancy than their Pakeha counterparts.

Would targeting by need rather than ethnicity be more effective? Maybe not, according to theoretical scenarios put together by Treasury in 2004. They showed that targeting on the basis of need alone maintained the income gap between Maori and Pakeha, while targeting Maori regardless of need lowered the proportion of Maori in need and closed the gap.

But need isn't the sole criteria for action. Representation - a seat at the table, a chance to be seen and heard - is arguably as important.

Take the Maori claim for local body representation. As Hone Harawira points out, Maori aren't just another minority.

The Treaty of Waitangi gives tangata whenua a strong moral and legal claim to a seat at the table - or three seats on the Auckland Super City council, as the royal commission recommended - and, says Harawira, "there can be no argument whatsoever for ... the refusal to honour the world's greatest Polynesian city by giving three seats to the people who have been giving land to the settlement of Auckland for more than 200 years".

Those who rail against these and the parliamentary Maori seats should remember that Maori were denied political representation in their own country until 1867, when the colonial government conceded four seats to keep them in their place - a move that allowed successive governments to pass legislation which either limited or extinguished Maori rights.

It's been argued that quotas and other preferential measures are divisive as well as discriminatory, that they reinforce negative stereotypes and are insulting to those who receive them. Maybe so.

But they can't be any more divisive or humiliating than the persistent gaps in educational achievement, in social status, and in the negative statistics that drown out the many successes and make it harder for the truly disadvantaged to aspire to better things.

As long as the gaps remain, and Maori and Pacific people remain under-represented in the upper echelons of New Zealand society, the negative stereotypes will remain - as Melissa Lee might attest. As long as we tolerate a society in which disadvantage has an identifiable ethnic face, we risk greater divisions.

It would be better, wrote one reader, if we didn't wait until university to try to close the gaps with crude quotas, if we had state-funded preschools and homework centres and well-resourced schools available to all children from the start. "In the end, building a fair society depends on motivating economically advantaged white Anglo Saxon men (and women) like me to vote for higher taxes for better education, and fairer social policy."

He's right, but I don't think we can afford to wait that long.

Tapu.Misa@gmail.com