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If there was a Māori nation state it would come in at No 157 in the population rankings - bigger than 40 countries that exist today.
Those who identify as Māori number more than 900,000 already and the 1 million threshold will be crossed this decade, according to early census figures released by Stats NZ.
The Māori nation would be bigger than Fiji. It would be bigger than Guyana, the Solomon Islands, Bhutan, Montenegro and Luxembourg. It would be nearly twice the size of Malta and three times the size of Iceland.
At close to 20% of Aotearoa’s population - and a younger and faster-growing population than the ageing Pākehā one - where Māori go, is increasingly where New Zealand goes.
This is important. It’s interesting. It’s fraught.
What are the implications of this in terms of political, economic and social power?
With New Zealand catching the hyper-partisanship virus from America and Europe, these questions are now landing awkwardly in Aotearoa.
Two government ministers with Māori heritage - Winston Peters and David Seymour - are campaigning strongly against what they warn is a path of separatism for New Zealand. Peters and Seymour both say that their desire is for a single standard of citizenship rather than one where your family tree determines your rights and obligations.
Across the aisle, Te Pāti Māori is calling for a Māori Parliament.
On the National Māori Action Day, organised to coincide with the Budget to protest the coalition’s policies towards Māori, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi said: “It’s now time for us to step comfortably into our rangatiratanga and to not give too much to this Pākehā government with their Pākehā Budget for their Pākehā economy.”
The party’s Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi has claimed, in reference to reform of Oranga Tamariki, that “this government will not waver in its mission to exterminate Māori”.
Into this cauldron lands a little book (just 126 pages before the notes) which asks some big questions.
The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation by Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman is published by BWB Texts and carries the subtitle “the future of Aotearoa depends on how Māori engage with capitalism.”
There has been a low hum of chatter in the media about the Māori economy for some time now and considerable interest about its growing size and influence.
Māori own 50% of the fishing quota, 40% of forestry and have stakes of 30% in lamb production, 30% in sheep and beef production, 10% in dairy production and 10% in kiwifruit production, according to an analysis quoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
In many respects Seymour and Peters have picked up the cudgel from Don Brash who, in his Ōrewa Speech of 2004, called for an end to what he claimed were separate rights for Māori.
That Māori fare worse in almost every social, health and economic metric measurable is undeniable.
Peters and Seymour argue that remedying this should be done on the basis of need not race. Brash said the same thing, so none of this is new. Except now the stakes are much higher.
In the 20 years since Brash received a mud pie to the face at Waitangi, the Māori economy has grown from $16 billion to $70b. It’s been growing faster than the economy as a whole and is expected to reach $100b in assets by 2030.
So, the assertion on the book’s cover that the future of New Zealand depends on how Māori engage with capitalism is an argument easily made. But the possibilities the book explores will disappoint anyone hoping for a unified way forward.
Scobie and Sturman say the Treaty of Waitangi “creates a basis for dual legal systems” and “there are, or could be, at least dual economic systems”.
It’s an interesting idea but how it would work is never fully explained.
They draw on the experience of Ngāi Tahu to frame many of their book’s economic arguments; Scobie is of Ngāi Tahu descent and the Te Waipounamu/South Island iwi was early to the treaty settlement process.
Much of the economic philosophy leans towards Marxism and Karl Marx is among those listed as influencing the authors’ thinking, alongside local left-learners Jane Kelsey, Morgan Godfrey and Margaret Mutu.
The book is harsh on capitalism: “Capitalists increase profits by forcing down costs of production through the depression of wages and increasing the intensity of labour through increased mechanisation,” it says.
But there is little balancing of the ledger.
According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2015 the number of people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) dropped from 36% to 10%. That means one billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty.
The year 1990 is a useful benchmark because, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of the world has operated an economic model roughly commensurate with capitalism. If you go back further, the declines in poverty are even more stark. Global rates of extreme poverty were about 80% in 1820 and are under 10% today.
There’s no shortage of ills to blame capitalism for (grotesque rates of inequality; the climate crisis) but it takes wilful blindness to expunge any benefits of capitalism.
The authors see Rogernomics in largely negative terms, too.
“Neoliberalism emerged in the 1980s as a re-articulation of the capitalist state and provided huge gains for capital (protecting and expanding private property) but large losses for people (reducing spending, social support and union membership),” Scobie and Sturman write.
Neoliberalism is a convenient whipping boy, but how many would want to return to the country we were before the economic reforms, which started with the fourth Labour Government in 1984? The past was indeed another country: shops couldn’t trade on weekends, workers had to belong to a union, the top tax rate was 66%, you needed a permit to subscribe to an overseas journal and a doctor’s prescription to buy margarine.
The book sees Māori painted into a corner. “The reality for Māori seeking to maintain or reconstruct Māori economies is that it is impossible to remain fully outside of capitalism because of its global dimensions and expansionary dynamic. And it is impossible to do good within capitalism because of its constructed scarcity, the tendency for the profit rate to fall and the imperatives of the market.”
While the authors lament the inequalities of capitalism their depiction of pre-European equality is hardly uplifting: “While there were inequalities between rangatira, commoners and slaves in pre-colonial Māori society, no one was very rich or extremely poor in a relative sense.”
Some fascinating hypotheticals are raised, including a “best of all worlds” scenario where “Māori could have had access to the technologies and lifeways introduced through contact” without the systematic colonisation that followed. Obviously, this remains unprovable.
The book also has to wrestle with the uncomfortable question of what Marxist philosophy should make of the success of Ngāi Tahu, which has turned its 1998 treaty settlement of $170m into assets worth about $2b.
It notes that “while many acknowledge this capitalist accumulation as a success, others argue that the model has financialised aspects of Māori land, bodies, lifeways and self-determining authority”.
Scobie and Sturman write that much of the land returned to Ngāi Tahu “has been repackaged and sold off again as residential property to maximise financial returns”. They count this as “short-term profit-maximisation, driven by conventional incentives” and say it “could have significant long-term consequences for the mana of Ngāi Tahu”.
It describes the situation Ngāi Tahu finds itself in as an example of the “clash between colonial-capitalist values and indigenous values”, which could lead to a future where the iwi “might be rich and landless”.
There’s a great job done of setting treaty settlements in context, noting that about $2.2b has been spent between 1993 and 2018 - “a tiny fraction” of the $1322b of government expenditure over that time.
It reminds us that the Crown acquired 34.5 million acres of land - more than half the landmass of New Zealand - for £14,750, leaving Ngāi Tahu with just 35,757 acres, in repeated breaches of the treaty.
The book ends with some fascinating questions.
“What are the opportunities for Māori to directly resource their own rangatiratanga beyond having an asset base in the colonial-capitalist economy?”
“Is there a future in which Māori can collect taxes, rates, levies or their equivalents directly, rather than having to apply for funding from their treaty partner.”
“Are we to expect the Crown-as-capitalist state to continue to fund its own withering away? Or are we advocating for alternative approaches to sovereignty that require land back?”
While no answers are provided to these questions, asking the questions is useful alone and for that, The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation makes a valuable contribution to the debate.
Guyon Espiner is an investigative journalist and presenter at RNZ. He hosts the TV and radio interview show 30 With Guyon Espiner.
