John Armstrong: Clark's naked ploy doomed to fail

COMMENT

Helen Clark's intended inquiry into the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand law is doomed to irrelevance even before the ink is dry on its terms of reference.

Such an inquiry - whether conducted by a parliamentary select committee or an independent commission - is now hopelessly compromised by the bitter politics in which it has been conceived.

Had the idea been floated in the immediate aftermath of Don Brash's Orewa speech, it might have had a small chance of surviving on its own merit as a useful safety-valve for venting the steam generated by the National leader's critique of race-based policies.

However, in the following six weeks, Labour has adopted a new political strategy every week in a frantic and increasingly desperate campaign to neutralise Brash.

A commission of inquiry is but the latest in the series.

Labour initially tried to ridicule Brash by accusing someone who is supposedly so high-minded of resorting to the low trick of playing the race card. That did not work.

The Government then tried to use logic to defeat him, arguing it was a more effective use of taxpayers' money to deliver some government programmes on the basis of race. No one listened.

Then it tried to demonise him by trying to shift the debate away from race and onto the economy and welfare by painting Brash as a slash-and-burn free marketeer.

That did not work.

Then it tried to copy him by U-turning on its own policies, handing Trevor Mallard the task of weeding out redundant race-based programmes and wiping pointless references to the treaty from legislation.

The jury is out on that one.

Now it is trying to sideline him by shunting the treaty debate off to an inquiry, perhaps even to a royal commission.

The ploy looks even more naked given the Prime Minister's admission an inquiry will not report until well after the next election. That will not work.

Voters will assume - Brash hardly needs to remind them - that an inquiry will almost certainly come down in favour of according some constitutional significance to the treaty. It would be astounding if it did not.

An inquiry thus offers short-term respite for Labour, but may well create a far bigger headache down the track.

However, it also has short-term value as a sop to Labour's Maori wing and the party's middle-class liberal supporters, who are perturbed at just where the Government's treaty policy is heading.

The politics do not stop there. The Prime Minister craftily offered to consult Brash on the inquiry's membership and terms of reference.

This was a ruse designed to stitch him up. When he declined the offer, he was painted as a self-interested politician lacking leadership qualities to bring the country together, whereas Clark was "solution-focused" and therefore prime ministerial.

Had he accepted the offer, however, Brash would have bought into a process which would have effectively silenced him.

Every time he repeated his "no special treatment for Maori" message he would have been seen to be cutting across an inquiry he was involved in establishing.

Brash wisely did not fall into the trap.

While the Prime Minister is punting the debate has moved on and New Zealanders are becoming deeply worried by its tone, Brash retains the advantage. He caught the public mood because he promised action - not more talk. The Pakeha majority is saying enough is enough.

Brash has nothing to gain from signing up to a talking shop which may well make recommendations running counter to his promises. Above all, he has no interest in getting the Prime Minister off the hook.

Consequently, there is no consensus for an inquiry. (Act, NZ First and the Greens also oppose it.)

It will thus convey no authority regardless of who chairs it and who else sits upon it. At the very least, the chair will have to be someone who is seen as scrupulously independent or coming from the centre-right of the political divide. Even someone with the stature of Doug Graham would be seen by many as too "pro-treaty".

It is a safe bet the inquiry will suffer the same fate as the 1987 royal commission into social policy, whose seven-volume report was famously dismissed by Trevor de Cleene as a useful door-stop, and the 1992 inquiry into the safety of nuclear-propelled ships. It will likewise produce well-argued and, no doubt, well-meaning analysis - none of which will be acted upon because the parties in Parliament already have fixed and pre-determined views.

That will not worry the Prime Minister. The upside of an inquiry at this stage is that she is seen to be doing something.

Even so, an inquiry will not stifle the race debate. That will still rage over the vexed question of Maori claims to the foreshore and seabed - and become even more heated in coming months when the legislation enacting the yet-to-be-finalised policy finally makes it into Parliament.

The select committee hearings on that enabling bill will likely turn into a surrogate treaty inquiry. Those hearings and the subsequent debate in the House on the foreshore and seabed will go straight to the heart of the rights conflict between Maori and Pakeha

If all that is not enough, there is an additional risk that the subsequent, more theoretical inquiry into the treaty could take on a life of its own over which the Government loses control.

The Prime Minister has framed the treaty inquiry as a necessary precursor to any broader constitutional review, one which may even canvas the question of whether New Zealand becomes a republic.

Why Clark would want to let even a hint of the republic bogey get out of the bag when her Government is already under enough pressure is especially puzzling.

Having devoted considerable thought this week to what shape the treaty inquiry might take, her intentions may become clearer after Monday's Cabinet meeting.

But whatever form her inquiry does take, the Prime Minister now has the monumental, nigh-impossible task of selling it as a genuine attempt to tackle a highly divisive issue in a non-partisan fashion.