Editorial: What's bugging non-Maori people

The Herald today undertakes a task more important perhaps than any we have done. It is an attempt to move the public discussion of Maori privileges beyond the palpable Pakeha resentment the National Party has tapped and to begin to distil fact from fiction, experience from impressions, and find the substance of the discontent.

It is a task a newspaper is best placed to perform. Sentiment and rhetoric are less convincing in print than they can be on radio or television. Humbug, whether racist or politically correct, becomes ridiculous in type, though it is not our intention to ridicule either side on this subject.

The nerve National has touched is too widespread to be dismissed lightly. When as many as 75 per cent of people agree with just about everything Don Brash has said on the subject - which they did in the polls we publish today - it is time to take stock.

The polls invited people to specify a precise area of concern and found plenty. Special assistance in education, health, housing, job seeking, fishing, all seeded the grudge of some.

Land rights were often mentioned as, of course, was the foreshore and seabed claim. In face-to-face surveys this week in typical urban and rural communities - Glenfield and Putaruru - our reporters found the same particular causes of annoyance.

The most galling issue of all appears to be preferential access to tertiary education courses. It rankles with Pakeha that they or their children might miss out because places have been reserved for ethnic minorities, and it adds insult to injury if the reserved places are given to people who could not meet the general standard of entry.

Many other countries grapple with the dilemma of boosting ethnic representation in tertiary education without discriminating against the majority race.

Fortunately there are alternatives to racial quotas and the like. Special financial assistance for those who would not otherwise be enticed to higher education may be just as effective. The Maori Education Trust administers $6.6 million in grants annually to Maori students and 19 per cent of Maori aged over 15 are now in tertiary education, a higher rate than the rest of the population.

Few would oppose the ultimate purpose of selective help - to get more Maori into the higher-earning occupations - but the means must not crudely discriminate.

Likewise in compulsory education, there is little resentment of specialist schools, or wings of mainstream schools, where lessons are predominantly in Maori language. Pakeha are welcome to attend these state-funded schools if they wish, just as they can use Maori health clinics, though many seem not to realise it.

Diversity and choice in public services are close to the heart of Dr Brash; services designed for Maori need not be exclusive to achieve their purpose.

Beyond public services the most vexing Maori privilege is probably the right of local iwi to be specially consulted under the Resource Management Act. Developers should not be at the mercy of rival claimants to tangata whenua status and consultation charges should be monitored more closely.

Treaty settlements also seem to be a matter of resentment, though more from disappointment at the use of the funds, in some cases, than the principle of restitution. With a total of 1050 claims registered with the Waitangi Tribunal and only a quarter resolved, the exercise is going to go on for many years yet.

While Pakeha would like to see the end in sight, Maori have a different end in mind. The treaty settlements, and indeed all initiatives for and by Maori, are just a means to lift their pride and prosperity to a position of national equality.

That's the goal. But the antagonism now evident suggests Governments must find less grating ways of getting there.