Tapu Misa: If this was a 'race row', then we're not doing so badly

It was almost comforting in a way. Reading the Sunday Star-Times front-page account of how our music industry was embroiled in a "race row", I couldn't help thinking that maybe things were not as dire as surveys lately would have us believe.

True, the Human Rights Commission had deemed us in need of an advertising campaign to help us on the road to cultural tolerance but, really, if this was a "race row", we weren't doing at all badly.

The Sunday newspaper reported that veteran guitarist Gray Bartlett was deeply unhappy about the music establishment rewarding "politically correct" Maori and Pacific musicians and ignoring top-selling, middle-of-the-road performers. Like young singer Hayley Westenra, for example, whom Bartlett manages.

Government funders, Bartlett grumped on, should "stop pushing all this BS cultural stuff". He called the Maori and Pacific categories in the New Zealand Music Awards "laughable" and asked why there wasn't a category for best European album.

His old friend, Howard Morrison, whom no one has ever accused of being politically correct, suggested charitably that dear old Gray's source of disgruntlement was Hayley not being awarded an award at the Tuis. Perhaps he was just having a "senior moment".

Whatever the reason for the sudden rush of blood to the head, poor old Bartlett is kidding himself if he seriously believes the music industry is driven by anything other than commercial reality. Record companies have always been more interested in selling records and making money than promoting brown talent just to make themselves look socially responsible.

I doubt the people who bought last year's top-selling single, Giddy Up, by Maori reggae band Katchafire, were doing it out of political correctness. And I imagine that Coca-Cola's choice of Auckland hip-hop band Nesian Mystic for its television commercial had less to do with affirmative action than the band's ability to appeal to the soft-drink company's target audience.

There's another important distinction. Unlike Bartlett, Westenra et al, who perform other people's music, the new breed of Maori and Pacific artists are producing New Zealand music - as are Pakeha bands like the Datsuns. It's music born of this country, music that sets New Zealand apart from the rest of the world.

So much for the race row. Still, as discordant notes go, it was nothing compared to the Court of Appeal's unanimous decision on Maori claims to the foreshore and seabed.

That drew predictable howls of outrage, and at least one editorial suggested the decision was bad for our already fragile race relations. The Opposition can be forgiven for doing what it can to make a dent on the Clark Government's so-far-unassailable lead. But I'm not sure the Government's announced intention to overturn the judicial process can be so easily excused.

I am as keen as the next New Zealander to see my rights to the beaches and sea protected. But, as a former professor of law at Auckland University, Jock Brookfield, pointed out yesterday, those rights could be clarified and protected without taking away the property rights of Maori.

One standard of citizenship implies that Maori have the same recourse to the laws of this land as other New Zealanders. That a Government should be so ready to extinguish those rights, in contravention of the courts and international law, should give us all pause.

It's all very well, too, launching public education programmes - including one on the Treaty of Waitangi and the just-launched "We're All New Zealanders" campaign, but this Government needs to practise what it preaches.

Despite its pronouncements on treaty partnership, Clark's Government has often seemed to lack the courage of its convictions - retreating to safe political ground when it comes to contentious issues such as "closing the gaps" or the more recent claims on petroleum.

I find myself agreeing with something Bill English said before the burdens of being an embattled Opposition leader sank in.

"What the Pakeha population want to see is a Government that is dealing with issues honestly and competently. Helen Clark ditched Closing the Gaps just because polling told her that Pakeha New Zealand didn't like it, and she backed off from the crucial role of any New Zealand leader, which is to move public opinion towards a shared future, not be scared of the issues."

Perhaps Helen Clark ought to remember, too, what she told Carol Archie, in an interview for Mana magazine.

She'd been at the funeral in Ruatoki of respected leader John Turei, where she found that Tuhoe had resurrected an old custom which involved firing musket shots to mark the passing of a rangatira.

"So we move up to the opening of the marae and who has got the musket but [activist] Tame Iti. Obviously the police had some concerns but they didn't say anything to me. So I said to my colleague Janet Mackey: 'I don't think Tuhoe would want the Prime Minister assassinated on the occasion of Sir John's tangi, do you?'

"And she said: 'No, no, no, it would detract from the dignity of the occasion.'

"And so we proceeded in good faith and, of course, everything was fine. But where else in the world could that happen. That's New Zealand, isn't it?"

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