Arguably, the country has never been united as it was during the first Covid 19 lockdown, in 2020. When the off switch was thrown, politicians and bureaucrats had no idea how co-operative people would be in a measure that would turn out to save thousands of lives. There might have been a massive outbreak of “yeah-nah”. Instead, the population acted en masse in their own best interests.
Three years later and it’s by no means certain that people would be as co-operative if the situation were repeated.
Ironically, according to the results of a Herald poll late last year, although most people thought the Covid response got it right, a slim majority of people said they thought it had also driven us further apart. Indeed, the intervening three years have seen divisions deepened and a bracing spotlight of reality thrown onto the gaps between citizens in all sorts of areas.
According to one recent report, three social features drive current social division: “the enduring legacy of race, the changing nature of capitalism, and the fracturing of our collective media landscape.” That probably sounds familiar, but it is actually from Time magazine, describing the background to the US Capitol riots. So, there’s nothing special about us.
Another US publication, the Atlantic published an essay suggesting that polarisation could be reduced if their country moved to a proportional representation system. They might want to have a word with us before going too far down that road.
What is often forgotten in this discussion is that we have always been a divided society. It just wasn’t acknowledged. The image of this country as one where Māori and Pakeha got along just fine, there was no class system, there was broad agreement on the likes of free speech, and we did not have extreme wealth or poverty was a chimera.
Believing it made it much easier for those in power to keep control, because those without power didn’t get taken seriously.
Some of those gaps have widened in recent years, but they have always been there. When people refer to a time when we are all united, they are actually referring to a time when diverse voices, which usually means people who disagreed with them, were rarely if ever heard.
In June, Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures released a discussion paper on the cohesiveness of New Zealand society. Or rather, the growing lack of it. Explanations were not hard to find, echoing those in Time magazine.
“The list of possible causes is long and includes high income inequality, poor housing affordability, personal safety, the economy and climate change,” said deputy director Dr Anne Bardsley.
The report authors described “weaponised narratives” on social media driving divisions even deeper. Unlike the stories told on mainstream media, these reach their audiences with little in the way of checks or balances, but the readiness with which they are believed spills over and casts traditional media into doubt as well.
There have been other events that divided us. The most momentous was probably the 1981 Springbok tour, when not just communities but families were split over whether or not a team from apartheid South Africa should be allowed to visit a country which (in theory at least) made racial harmony a priority.
New Zealand came back from the deep divisions of the tour. The Springboks went home, arguments petered out and wounds healed. The nation appeared to return to business as usual. But scars remained, and a direct line can be drawn from the spotlight the tour threw on race relations to today’s attitudes around bicultural issues and what needs to be done about them.
There’s not much point looking to politicians to resolve these problems. Outside pandemics, they can afford to exploit and amplify divisions because they don’t need to have everyone onside and ready to vote for them. They just need to persuade a very small number of voters in order to make the difference and get them over the line. There is almost no group to which some politician or other won’t cater in order to gain power.
Covid brought a lot of things out into the open, and they can’t be put back again. To some people that’s a regrettable state of affairs. To others, it means that we have an opportunity to confront the grim realities of life in Aotearoa and do something about them.
