“The simple way I look at it is that as a country, we’re trying to recognise and honour commitments made back in 1840, but also more recently in Treaty settlements that recognised things that went wrong over the years, while at the same time never losing sight of the basic expectations of people living in a modern democratic society,” he told Real Life.
“Those basic expectations are that you’ll have equal voting rights, that you’ll be treated equally before the law and that, broadly speaking, people will have an equal say in matters affecting their lives and a standard of citizenship.
“Those are basic expectations that people have and quite rightly so. There’s a bit of a tension between those two things and it sort of oscillates a bit.”
Goldsmith said the view of the current Government is that under the leadership of Ardern, who was Prime Minister for just over five years from 2017 until 2023, decision-making “veered too far away from those universal expectations”.
The “most dramatic” example, Goldsmith reckons, was with the introduction of the Canterbury Regional Council Bill in 2022, which enabled Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu to appoint two members to the council without election.
The bill was the subject of heated debate in Parliament at the time, with Goldsmith himself claiming it did not uphold equal voting rights for all New Zealanders nor provide electoral accountability.
“I worry about that and we’ve got to deal with those broad issues,” he told Cowan.
Elsewhere in the interview, Goldsmith spoke about his Auckland Grammar education and how it emphasised doing the best you can, rather than simply participating.
He said that principle would be a good thing to inject into the wider education system.
“As a nation, a bit of ambition is no bad thing and we should be striving,” he said. “I think it’s a fair criticism of some elements of the education system more generally [that] they seem to have a focus on maintaining wellbeing at all costs.
“That’s all well and good, but there’s a big, bad world out there. We live in a competitive world and if we want to maintain the kind of living standards that we’ve got used to, it doesn’t land on our plate. We’ve got to go out there and compete and do well.
“New Zealanders have always found ways to succeed in little niches all over the place and we’ve got to keep on finding them – and that requires people to reach for the stars.”
Earlier, Goldsmith spoke about the long hours he works as an MP – from before 8am until after 10pm, some days – but says his wife and children, who he calls “the greatest joy of my life”, remain his priority.
“Two [children] have left home and two are still at home and they’re all doing well. Politics varies enormously. If you are the electorate MP in a provincial town, you have a lot more focus on you and your family than if you are a list MP in Auckland, for example. So they haven’t had enormous pressure,” he said.
“There’s been slightly embarrassing circumstances where they’ve had to answer essay questions on quotes from me and things like that, which has been quite funny, but all in all, they’ve done pretty well and obviously I’ve had a big focus on spending as much time as I can whenever I do.
“But one of the things that writing biographies inoculates you against is the idea that no matter what you do in your life and how successful you are, if you get towards the end of your life and your core relationships aren’t in great shape, life is a failure. And so I’ve always had a real focus on that.”
Listen to the full interview here.
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
