Category: imported_guest
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.
The whole thesis that there is a ‘sustainability’ crisis and that it requires urgent global attention, depends on a substructure of belief in such things as global warming, irreplaceable resource depletion ‘footprints’, and gathering problems of poverty and disease. All of these are, to a greater or lesser extent, disputable, and ought to be disputed, if unnecessary and counter-productive action is to be avoided.
In 1996, the Adult Literacy in New Zealand survey of adults aged 16-65 found 66% of Maori and 41% of non-Maori were below the minimum level of literacy required to “meet the complex demands of everyday life and work.” A 2006 survey's results were no better: it found 43 per cent of adults with some sort of literacy issue, and half the population with numeracy difficulties.
Immense intellectual, or at least mental, efforts have gone and continue to go into denying the obvious, that on the whole family stability is better for children than instability, and that not all forms of family, or perhaps I should say household, life are equal from the point of view of children’s welfare. The terrible saga of the Kahui twins is but another illustration of the obvious.
There is deep disquiet throughout the country about iwi claims for water rights. However by focussing on the resource itself; previously the foreshore and seabed, this time water, next time airwaves, geothermal energy, and so on, we are in danger of overlooking the source of the issue, of overlooking why such claims can be made in the first place. To find the fundamental flaw in the tribes’ case for the ownership of public resources such as water we need look not only at what is to be owned but at who is claiming ownership.
In March 2012 central government launched a multifaceted reform programme, Better Local Government. The aim is to “refocus” local councils in the interests of improving governance, efficiency, and management. It identified eight areas for action.
Though our Citizens Initiated Referendum (CIR) has failed narrowly to get to its target, the Coastal Coalition will continue to campaign strongly against National’s Marine and Coastal Area Act (the 2011 Act). So I ask that all Coastal Coalition members stay in touch, and help us with this fight.
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