Opinion: When Hobson’s Pledge placed a wraparound advertisement on the New Zealand Herald’s front and back pages, controversy erupted. The advertisement – which was clearly noted as such at the top of the page – demanded the restoration of the foreshore and seabed to public ownership. The problem arises as a result of an interpretation of the 2011 Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act by the Court of Appeal.
One possible outcome of that decision is that Māori could gain a measure of control of New Zealand’s entire coastline out to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit. The question is a vexed one. The act’s predecessor, the foreshore and seabed legislation, cost Helen Clark’s government dearly and led to the formation of Te Pāti Māori.
In July, the government announced a timetable for implementing its coalition promise to restore the Marine and Coastal Area Act to what Parliament had originally intended, with a limitation on the applicability of customary title. This prompted outrage from tribal leaders and threats to orchestrate a repeat of the protest action against Labour’s 2004 foreshore and seabed law change. One would expect that.
But the Herald has come in for criticism for running the advertisement in the first place. Te Pāti Māori announced a boycott of the Herald, which is rather like shooting oneself in the foot because it has closed off a publicity opportunity. Co-leader Rawiri Waititi announced the boycott with hyperbole typical of many of the party’s press releases.
The Māori Journalists Association was also critical of the Herald, claiming that although commercial realities had to be taken into account, taking money from organisations such as Hobson’s Pledge was not an answer.
Co-chairperson of the association, Māni Dunlop, suggested there was an element of déjà vu in the advertisement, in that it seemed like a rerun of the Iwi vs Kiwi debates of the early 2000s. But there is a more immediate problem.
The intense backlash the Herald has faced for running the advertisement seems more an exercise of a type of “cancel culture” and the silencing of a point of view rather than debating the issue raised in the advertisement in a rational way.
I recently spent some time at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. A group of young men used their own form of cancel culture or the hecklers’ veto (and heckling is encouraged at Speakers’ Corner) by repeatedly and loudly shouting “shut up” to speakers with whom they disagreed. Some of the speakers observed that was not an argument and that there was an irony that people would want speakers to shut up at Speakers’ Corner.
In New Zealand, where we have the freedom to express and to receive ideas, suggesting that those ideas not be published is an example of a “shut up” approach.
Those who are critical of the Herald may be better employed exploring the reasons Hobson’s Pledge is wrong and debating the issue rationally. But in these days of exaggeration and confrontational rhetoric, that may be too much to ask or even expect.
But debate has happened. A group of legal academics answered the claims in the advertisement, setting out four reasons it was misleading and incorrect. This demonstrates the value of freedom of expression. If the advertisement had remained unpublished, the debate that has finally started would not be taking place.
Better to get the ideas out there and debate them even if that debate, like those at Speakers’ Corner, is passionate and robust. Better to have contrary views put forward rather than yield to the cancel culture and “shut up”.
David Harvey is a retired court judge.
