Category: Guest Posts
I think it would be a disaster for New Zealand to move to a written constitution of the sort almost certain to be offered. And I would run a mile from incorporating or entrenching the Treaty into any such instrument, not least because overwhelmingly no one knows what it means when applied to any specific issue. So all you will be buying is the views of the top judges, instead of your own, the voters. That’s not a trade I would ever make.
Obligations are well known to people with jobs. They have obligations to their employers to be there on time, to observe the conditions of their contract and generally toe the line during their hours of employment. Working parents are obliged to put their children in some sort of care, be it formal or family-based. In return they receive a pay packet that furnishes their needs and wants, not dissimilar to a benefit, though usually more generous.
The Maori water claim is not just an argument over an increasingly valuable resource. It is also another nail in the coffin of racial harmony and national survival.
School has always been, and is still, a means to an end. That end is the entry of emerging adults into the world of work – or rather, as is largely the case today, the transition to higher or further education leading on to a career track. Societies spend megabucks on schooling and have a right to expect a return, namely the production of young people with the cognitive skills and attitudes towards study and work that will turn them into productive citizens who will benefit society in return.
In any mature society, the issue of having, abiding by or amending, a country’s constitution is of national significance and importance. This facet of national life determines not only how political power will be exercised but also how it will be kept in check - matters of profound significance and therefore to be exercised with great diligence and care. A constitution is the source of ultimate or supreme law of a country, to which all other legislation is subservient.
Our crisis is one of character. We are in the situation we are in because of the sort of people we are. Any solution must spring out of our own energy and faith in ourselves, out of a shared understanding of the world and of our hopes for the future, and out of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood which impels us to care for each other but which also impels those who are cared for to desire that they pull their weight in striving for the common good. ‘Without vision the people perish.’ Most of all, we must have faith in ourselves.
In recent years iwi have been extremely successful in pursuing their demands for public resources and political power. The intriguing question is how to explain such total success given that many New Zealanders, both Maori and non-Maori, are increasingly concerned about the run-away juggernaut of iwi ambitions.
The New Zealand public have been duped. Kiwis supported keeping MMP at last year’s referendum in a large part due to the promised “MMP Review”. We were told that MMP would be improved by the Electoral Commission. We were promised an MMP 2.0, a version that would address its weaknesses. Instead, what we’re likely to get is an MMP more suited to the interests of political insiders, worse at holding MPs to account and even more susceptible to tails wagging dogs.
“Just say no,” was a famous catch phrase sponsored by former US presidential first lady Nancy Reagan to persuade American children not to engage in violence, premarital sex, and illicit drug abuse. We could well revive that campaign here in New Zealand, but applied to the government’s response to Maori tribal demands for water rights and ownership in the lead up to partial privatisation of mining and energy state-owned enterprises.
We have come to be divided by a new racial bitterness that will soon be incurable. A vocal racial minority continues to make increasingly extreme demands upon what remains of our national resources and possessions, and even the appeasement of those demands does not satisfy the appetites of those who see every act of generosity as a sign of weakness, and who then demand yet more. To continue in these courses is very short-sighted, for that path leads inevitably and all too swiftly to an apartheid nation, national bankruptcy and civil strife.
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