Gordon McLauchlan: Let Pakeha be patient and thoughtful

COMMENT

What worries me about the National Party policy towards race relations is that it has tapped a very real irritability among Kiwis and is proposing quick fixes based on what are catchcries: "We are one people" and "All New Zealanders should be helped according to need not ethnic background."

Robert Louis Stevenson, as always perceptive, wrote that having a catchcry in the mouth is not the same as having an opinion in the mind.

The Herald's comprehensive inquiry last weekend into the facts of health and education expenditure in favour of Maori suggested it wasn't very great and a case could be made for it - a case hard to destroy by displacing argument with slogans. Further calm and measured investigation should be made before any drastic changes are made.

The articles also implied that Pakeha are more irritable than angry about perceived preferences for Maori. Why political polling on areas of voter concern before the speech by Opposition Leader Don Brash consistently put race relations below the economy, health, education and sometimes other issues is hard to explain. It points to an unrealised but mounting irritation at Maori insistence that their spiritual and cultural values override all others.

This came to a head with a sudden perception among most Kiwis that Maori were claiming ownership of large areas of our coast. The Government might have done the right thing by wanting to talk about customary rights rather than ignore them but no one has done a good job of explaining what they are and how they will impinge on other New Zealand citizens.

Suddenly, many ordinary New Zealanders became exasperated at what seemed insistent demands intruding into all our lives.

Maori have been especially smart and successful politicians and have used their power very effectively; and they have caught on to the consultancy racket, invented by Pakeha in the 1980s, with alacrity and enthusiasm. But the danger with successful lobbying power is it can become overweening and then counter-effective.

Remember when farmers were the strongest lobbying voice. The rest of us got sick of their whining self-interest. Next the trade unions moved from working in their members' interests to mocking opponents and then to reckless pursuit of economic power. The Business Roundtable went from success to being ignored because its case was consistently in overkill. The Employers and Manufacturers Association is heading in the same direction. Maori have arrived.

But the worst response to this outburst of public irritability would be to make radical policy changes that may destroy something precious.

That's what happened in the early 1980s. The economy was in serious trouble but few people noticed because the policies of Robert Muldoon were designed to protect them from reality by building a high wall between them and the facts of markets.

The radical response of the Labour Administration was an irruption of ideological change that destroyed a number of traditional New Zealand values, forcing some sectors to carry an unfair share of the burden while others made fortunes.

Australia made the transition to a modern economy much better because it did it more gradually, accommodating valued traditional attitudes on the way.

So what sort of race relations have we got? What needs fixing?

Maori have survived and thrived better than any other indigenous people colonised by Europeans during the drive for empire in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They did so because of their own toughness and determination, combined with a great deal of luck. The British presence was ushered in by James Cook, an unusually benign and understanding man for his time.

The act of colonisation came just as the British people were freeing slaves in the West Indies amid a Christian denouncement of oppression of indigenous people. Hence the Treaty of Waitangi.

Colonists, however, did take land from Maori, and the best land at that. Maori stayed in the rural areas, many like the young Maori Party trying to convince themselves that their culture had to give way entirely to that of the Pakeha but conscious all the time that they had been hard done by.

Once they came back to the cities after World War II they decided to use hard-nosed politics to get their grievances redressed and to get respect for the strength their cultural practices gave them.

Their patience out-Jobed Job. Never once have they resorted to terrorist activities. Think of any other country in the world where a minority of about 15 per cent with a serious cultural and material grievance hasn't bred the extremists who kill and maim.

Think of the Native Americans and Wounded Knee. Think of the American Blacks and the occasional rampages of killing and looting at undeniable injustice. Think of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and many more.

Then there has been the murderous reaction of locals simply at the presence of large numbers of others - British youth against Pakistanis in Britain; Germans against Turks.

So we have been blessed by the coming together of two groups of people who have always found each other so attractive that intermarriage is common and welcomed.

In the 1990s National Party leaders Doug Graham, Jim Bolger and others decided to drive hard at redressing past injustices. They did wonderfully well, riding the New Zealand tradition for common sense and moderation.

So that's what we have, the sort of race problems any other country I can think of would just love to swap for their own.

Maori were shrewd, tough and patient for about a century after they were ripped off. Now some of their leaders may be overplaying their hands. But let Pakeha be patient and thoughtful in response in order to preserve the extraordinary, best-in-the-world harmony the races have built up between them.

Let's not be egged on to end all that by slogans and impatient rhetoric.

Herald Feature: Sharing a Country