Philip Temple: New book on treaty takes political line

COMMENT

David Slack tells us that for a debate to be worthwhile, we need to know what it is we're arguing about. He hopes that his book Bullshit, Backlash and Bleeding Hearts, while not exhaustive on the Treaty of Waitangi, will arm you with "enough information to make your case the next time this comes up over a bottle or two".

Slack's own case is clear from the outset. His sub-title, "A confused person's guide to The Great Race Row", lies beside a picture of Don Brash. Ergo, Dr Brash and his supporters are confused but when they have read this guide they will be better equipped to take part in the treaty debate.

There is condescension in this and, as the book goes along, a sense that it is partly a public affairs tract for the Government. Of today's politicians, Michael Cullen, Margaret Wilson and John Tamihere are quoted extensively from interview but no one from opposition parties.

The underlying presumption is that the Government has it more or less right and the rest don't have much to offer. Slack seems unaware that he is part of a long political tradition in New Zealand of missionaries who have always been certain how the settlers should behave towards Maori.

Bullshit, Backlash and Bleeding Hearts is well-organised, well-written and puts its points clearly, as expected of someone who is a professional speechwriter with experience of the political and bureaucratic world.

Slack performs a valuable service in taking us through myths and realities surrounding the treaty, based on his now-famous quiz. No fair-minded person can take issue with the conclusion that the treaty was a deal in which Maori interests were protected, that they mostly were not until recent times and that recompense is due. That regardless of the treaty, the recognition of aboriginal rights internationally would have brought us to the same point.

He has usefully clarified that the amount of money spent on treaty settlements and special programmes is hardly excessive - especially when the Government can find more than $33 million simply to back a private America's Cup yachting syndicate.

It makes good sense to support Maori cultural, economic and social aspirations because this can only benefit us all. And one can only agree that we should deal with our problems amicably and co-operatively.

Unfortunately, in putting a case to banish confusion, Slack sometimes shows an unsure grip of history. He writes, for example, that Maori population in 1890 was down to 43,000 after the deleterious impacts of colonisation. It is now thought more likely that the low figure was mainly the result of many Maori refusing to co-operate with the census.

Similarly, he is unaware that strictures on speaking Maori at school 50 to 100 years ago were supported by Maori who at the time saw the only way forward for their mokopuna was to learn English.

In a much more modern context, Slack produces figures that show Maori households receive $2.3 billion in benefits and welfare payments, but the Maori economy pays out more than that in tax: $2.4 billion. A confused Don Brash supporter might ask: "So who pays for all the other services Maori enjoy?"

Slack traverses well the thorny issues of partnership and principles. He shows how the term "partnership" was picked up by Wellington bureaucrats from a 1987 Court of Appeal judgment and became a simplistic (or self-interested) concept they could grasp and run with in treaty matters, although it had no constitutional validity.

The habit of inserting the principles of the treaty into every piece of legislation, without defining what they mean in each context, is shown to be sloppy, derelict behaviour that will take some rectifying.

The useful explication and discussion in Slack's book will go a long way towards banishing the shibboleths besetting the treaty debate. But even if the author's confused person is now set straight on many of the facts, Slack has not taken us much closer to defining and addressing the root cause of the extraordinary support for Dr Brash's Orewa speech.

He fails to observe that the treaty has come to be seen by many as a one-way street, a document that enables Maori to claim and receive apologies and compensation from a largely Pakeha Government without reciprocation, let alone thanks.

Since the expansion of the Waitangi Tribunal's brief 20 years ago, there has been a claim and settlement process which inevitably casts the ancestors of today's Pakeha as villains and of Maori as victims.

It does not matter whether the claims are justified - as most of them are. Pakeha are required to carry a moral burden. The moral climate for Pakeha is worsened by some Maori leaders saying they do not belong here, their culture is elsewhere and describing up to eighth-generation non-Maori as settlers or strangers.

Slack quotes a treaty expert, lawyer Alex Frame, as saying that "co-operation" should be the buzzword to replace "partnership". Good idea: but co-operation involves two parties. If Maori want continuing support and sympathy for their needs and aspirations, they need to bring Pakeha into the waka by acknowledging they are not settlers or strangers anymore but, vide Michael King, indigenous people, too.

Dame Anne Salmond is quoted as saying: "This idea of pure culture is mythological, and possibly quite dangerous. Like pure race, pure culture - this idea that you have a pure essence which remains intact over time and has to be protected at all costs. Well, we know what happened in the history of Europe with that kind of idea."

While stating that the Crown must honour the promises in the treaty, she also says that "it allows for whakapapa to join. People get married and end up with a foot in both camps - that should be a basis on which we go forward together, rather than seeing the treaty as an instrument which cuts us in half as a nation".

Slack spends no time at all on Article 3 of the treaty. He examines Articles 1 and 2 at length but he sees Article 3 as simply giving Maori the rights and privileges of British (New Zealand) citizenship. End of story.

In fact, as Anne Salmond's words suggest, it is the beginning of the story. If you sign up to being a citizen, you sign up to defending the rights and privileges of being a citizen. These are not created and handed down from on high. They are created and improved by all citizens working together, making a better future by the people for the people in the name of the people, not just for the benefit and improvement of one group.

In the treaty debate, Pakeha must acknowledge and right past wrongs. And also acknowledge how enormously vital Maori culture and vision are to New Zealand's future. On their part, Maori must acknowledge the Pakeha's place and the value of Pakeha culture and institutions. Then the co-operation that Alex Frame hopes for will be wholehearted.

In the context of the treaty, perhaps it is time to stop the endless wrangling over Articles 1 and 2 and employ Article 3 as the footprint to a future in which all our whakapapa will be joined.

* Philip Temple is a Dunedin writer and historian.