Editorial, Tuesday September 15, 2015

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

The first priority for any protester is to find a means of inciting a public reaction, without which no one is going to pay them any attention.

That generally means outraging as many people as possible, deliberately, as in the case of Ngati Kahu's occupation of Kaitaia airport last week, or by happenstance, as in the case of a single photograph of one small body prompting worldwide calls for the opening of Western doors to Syrian refugees.

Ngati Kahu's Popata brothers certainly know how to ignite a public reaction, but what they were trying to achieve at the airport last week might well elude most people.

Their cause, however genuine and significant to them, is not one that will ever attract mainstream sympathy or support, and choosing to imperil their community's tenuous air service suggests that they accept and understand that.

What they don't seem to understand is that, in these times perhaps more than in the past, no politician is going to bow to protest action.

Whether or not Ngati Kahu successfully negotiates settlement of its Treaty claims, and whether it has a genuine claim to the airport land that has been ignored, is of no importance whatsoever to most people outside the iwi, and not a few of those from the other Te Hiku iwi whose settlements were ratified in Parliament on Wednesday.

As far as most people are concerned Ngati Kahu can whinge and whine until the cows come home, as long as their complaining does not prevent the rest of us from getting on with our lives.

Closing Kaitaia's airport for a little over 24 hours does not pass that test.

Forcing the cancellation of Barrier Air's scheduled services was bad enough, but GBA's not unreasonable refusal to fly medical specialists to Kaitaia, according to daily practice, took the protest as far beyond the pale as could be imagined.

(The protesters had given an assurance that the flight would not be impeded, but the airline, quite properly, refused to put a plane down at an airport that was in the hands of illegal occupiers).

Given that the protesters were declaring Ngati Kahu to be a sovereign nation, it might be that they don't see the iwi as having a future that involves being part of a larger Far North whole.

If that is not the case they would be well advised to review their tactics. Generating anger on the scale achieved last week benefits no one, Ngati Kahu included, but seriously calls into question the intelligence, or perhaps the authority, of the iwi's leadership.

The specific issue that prompted the airport occupation is not a complex one, by Ngati Kahu's own admission, but it is part of a much broader sweep of injustice that the iwi has been railing against publicly for some time.

And fair enough.

The iwi has done a good job, not least via this newspaper, of explaining its grievances, and, allowing for the fact that we hear only one side of the story, those grievances would seem to have solid foundations.

The redress sought is an issue for Ngati Kahu, but redress of any sort will only be achieved by negotiation.

The only good to have come from the events of last week was that there was no repeat of the police and local authority paralysis that allowed the same iwi's occupation at Taipa Point in 2010 to drag on for much too long.

Maintaining an air service is obviously of greater moment than ensuring that kids can go sailing at Taipa on a Saturday morning, but it should not have escaped anyone's attention that the authorities can act quickly when they want to.

Even the most ardent protester must also have reached the point of realising that the current Minister in Charge of Treaty Negotiations, Christopher Finlayson, will not be bullied.

He made it clear on Wednesday that he had no intention of meeting with the protesters. Any such meeting would be a waste of time, he said, and while he was always prepared to meet with the iwi, the reality as he saw it was that that would be a waste of time until there was a change of iwi leadership.

At the other end of the spectrum was last week's worldwide reaction to the sight of a small body being picked up on a Turkish beach as the flood of Syrian refugees continued to surge west.

That response provided perhaps the best ever example of what public opinion can do, politicians in many countries, including Britain, Australia and even New Zealand, softening their stance against accepting refugees.

Truth be told Germany, which is doing far more than anyone else, didn't need much persuading.

Apparently the hundreds of thousands of people who are fleeing their war-torn country, many of them young and well educated, are regarded as something of a boon in a society where an ageing population has created a dire need for people of working age.

Not all was as the now famous photo initially indicated, but that is unlikely to deter the millions of people all around the world who are clamouring for their governments to display greater compassion than had been forthcoming over the previous weeks and months.

The father of the dead toddler is now accused of being a 'people smuggler', which, not surprisingly, he has denied, and making a lot of money in the process.

It is also alleged that when their boat got into difficulty as it made the crossing to Turkey he, the skipper, was the first to abandon ship, leaving his clients, his own children and his wife, who also drowned, to fend for themselves.

There will always be people who are prepared to profit from the misfortune of others, but it would be hoped that this man, unless he is credibly exonerated, is at the back of any resettlement queue.

Ironically, however, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people might well have the fact that his youngest son died to thank for the possibility that they will be offered sanctuary.

Nothing is simple in a calamity on this scale, but what counts now is public opinion.

All other considerations have been swept aside as people across the globe protest at what they see as mean-spirited government.

Of course the ideal solution would be to put an end to the war and persecution that are driving these people from their homes, but that's becoming a taller order by the day.

And apparently it's not the done thing to ponder why other Arab states aren't opening their borders, although to be fair to them the average refugee seems to have a clear preference for some destination further west.

The latest estimates are that 7.6 million Syrians, more than 30 per cent of the total population, have been displaced, and some four million have fled the country altogether.

The good news is that Germany's reported readiness to accept 800,000 refugees this year and 500,000 a year after that should see the bulk of them settled in new homes.

Australia will take 12,000, Britain 20,000, and don't forget our 600.

Meanwhile the refugees who are reportedly enduring brutal conditions in hastily-erected camps in Hungary probably aren't aware of what happened at Kaitaia airport last week, and wouldn't be interested if they were.

Once again the rest of the world has thrown our problems into stark relief, giving new credence to Fred Dagg's assertion that we don't know how lucky we are.