Diana Wichtel: 'Star Trek' images in race debate

COMMENT

As the post-Waitangi Day dust settled - a fair amount of it on Dr Brash - there was a lot to take in. Trouble, like a flying clod of dirt, was in the air. Nothing, including Don Brash's suit, would ever be the same.

We've seen the evolution of a new Waitangi greeting, part challenge, part coconut shy. Next year, adding to the spectacle on the day, will be the stirring sound of the National Party contingent yelling "Duck!".

The mud was regrettable, but the challenge part is what Waitangi is about. Visceral and unable to be ignored, it's become our distinctive thing. We take it with us when we leave home, in the form of the haka. It's one of the few ways we have, as a nation, of saying: "This is who we are."

Helen Clark, too, has changed her traditional Waitangi behaviour. She usually gets very thin-lipped, starts referring to herself grumpily as "the Prime Minister" and/or bursting into tears.

This year, determined not to be outdone by Brash when it came to taking the bash, she fronted up without the usual soliloquies of public procrastination - to go or not to go? - talking airily about "going with the flow". On the day, she took the challenge well.

She also took John Tamihere and Parekura Horomia, who turned out to be handy in a tight spot. As Don Brash dumps his respected Maori Affairs spokesperson for, of all people, Gerry Brownlee, Clark is clearly bonding with at least some of her Maori ministers. After the fracas at Te Tii Marae, a beaming Tamihere told TV3 news: "I'm just pleased that the boss had the balls to go on with it and she did and I think that was a very good show!"

Not as good as Don Brash's show, during which he braved the cries of "racist" and the "w" word that rhymes with "banker".

A cunning publicity stunt or maybe he just got lucky. Though reports that it wasn't just white media who were turned away rather undercut his point about discrimination on purely racial grounds.

In fact, many of Brash's examples of a nation going to hell in a treaty handcart don't stand up too well. His claims about unlimited tangi leave in proposed new employment legislation have been shown to be wrong.

And that seductively simple message - All New Zealanders should be treated equally - is already getting a bit more complicated. Brash told Kim Hill he would continue to fund Maori education and language. Why? Because people deserve choice. Will he then fund, say, Chinese education and language?

If not, Maori would still surely be getting "special treatment". But then "Well, maybe some race-based funding" isn't such a vote-catching slogan.

The National Party's new alleged colour-blindness took a hit, too, when Brash's potential Minister of Maori Affairs introduced the phrase "black fella" into Parliament. John Tamihere had called Brownlee "the big fella", but it was a National MP who insisted on bringing colour into the scrap. How embarrassing.

Still, you had to feel sorry for Hill on Face to Face, trying to make a dent in Brash's bland, uncluttered certainties.

She spent a lot of time laughing incredulously, which is understandable but no substitute for tough questions. There was plenty of room to have a go. Brash on Gerry Brownlee's qualifications to be Minister of Maori Affairs: "He's got a bunch of Maori in his extended family." Right.

Hill quoted back to Brash something he said to her during an ad break. "You said 'Are you suggesting that a pre-European culture can possibly be equal, even superior to ours?"'

Dear oh dear. When you are trying to take race and culture out of the equation, it's best not to declare the superiority of your own on national television.

"If they [Maori] want to maintain a particular culture, indeed as the Chinese do or the Pacific Islanders do or whatever, that's fine," allowed Brash.

By now, we at home were laughing incredulously along with Hill at the staggering arrogance of reducing the indigenous culture of this country to a blithe "whatever".

Maybe he doesn't get out much. Watching Hill v Brash was like watching an old episode of Star Trek, with Hill as an over-emotional Captain Kirk and Brash as the coldly logical Vulcan, Spock.

Or perhaps Brash is more like the humanoid, cybernetic Borg. They thought they were saving the world, too, travelling the universe announcing: "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

Brash's easy answers rest on the strange assumption that any "special" treatment Maori have received is some sort of philanthropic one-way street. Odd when the positive results for New Zealand of the Maori - and Pacific Island - renaissance brought about by the more culturally inclusive policies of the past 20-odd years are all over our sports fields, music industry, art galleries, book shelves and film and television screens.

It's always easier, as I'm sure Spock once said, to destroy than to create. Spock at least tried to understand the different peoples with whom he shared a starship. He was smart enough to know his way of thinking had its limitations.

"Logic," he declared, "is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."

The Borg, on the other hand, were almost as single-minded as Don Brash. "Your culture," they informed their victims, "will adapt to service us." They, too, wanted everyone to be equal - equally Borg. God (whichever God you like) preserve us from all becoming equally Brash.