HAKAS, TRANS DRESS-UPS, KISS-UPS, VITRIOL TO KILL THE BILL

 

 To comment please open your gmail account or use my email address, FB Messenger or X (Twitter). 

That nasty epithet, "racist", is often used now as a club to beat anyone who believes in equal rights and suffrage about the head, to shame them into silence. It's very effective. So much so that 140,000 fair-minded Kiwis were excluded from the Justice Select Committee hearings on ACT's Treaty Principles Bill, which attracted three times more feedback than any other bill, ever.

Which raises the distinct possibility of the bill's architect, David Seymour, walking out on his Coalition partners and taking with him the only spine to be had among them. Oh for a Kiwi Donald Trump: effeminacy is the besetting sin of New Zealand's current leadership, painfully obvious in MPs who sit inertly gaping at hakas, trans dress-ups, kiss-ups and vitriol. Of the first reading of the Bill, veteran broadcaster Barry Soper said he'd “never seen hatred like that in Parliament”. 

The haters who oppose the TPB are actually exercising their democratic right to their  opinion that the rest of us shouldn't have a democratic right to our opinion. They're typified by iwi lobbyist Chris Finlayson, who destroyed Urewera National Park.

So we turn to Professor Elizabeth Rata, who as an academic, a sociologist and a Maori who discovered "neotribal capitalism" is better placed than most of us to submit her opinion on the Treaty Principles Bill.

 "Once Maori tribes were given back assets, they behaved just like white New Zealanders"

 

What is the best title given to any New Zealand legislation? My money is on the 1877 Education Act – 'An Act to make Further Provision for the Education of the People of New Zealand' – the People of New Zealand. So as early as the 1870s there's the commitment to a united people who belong to, and benefit from, the nation 'New Zealand'.

Nearly 150 years later that commitment is under serious threat from those who would replace liberal democracy with tribal sovereignty and, by doing so, create a racialised society – apartheid.

 

 

Consider the two words 'liberal', 'democracy' and their connection. Both give us something that none of our ancestors living in kinship groups had.

'Democracy' gives us a system of parliamentary sovereignty, of law, of regulation. It recognises that our common humanity justifies equal rights. Those rights belong to the individual citizen, not to the group.

The word 'liberal' gives us the freedom to be different – as individuals and in voluntary associations based on a range of shared interests –culture, heritage, language, sport, music, religion, politics, and so on.

This is what makes liberal democracy remarkable. As citizens we have the same political and legal rights. As members of civil society we are free to be different. This is an enormously important point. It is the combination of rights, responsibilities and freedom within democracy's governance and laws that makes the modern world vibrant and prosperous.

 

Waititi: "If people don't like the type of language I used in parliament, they should look at themselves in the mirror."

 

That's why I support the Treaty Principles Bill – because it provides a coherent and succinct statement capturing what liberal democracy is – something we should all know, especially the Members of Parliament who represent us, the People of New Zealand.

 

 

Until now, the Treaty has been a sacred cow milked by senior lawyers and judges for all it's worth

First world nations need liberal democracy's creative tension – an invigorating tension between rights and responsibilities, and between having the same rights and having the freedom to be different.

The Bill is the symbolic link to the hope found in both the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and in the 1852 Constitution Act. Nineteenth century New Zealanders, especially those who had been slaves, decimated by war, of low genealogical birth status, or from impoverished backgrounds – they put their faith in a peaceful and prosperous future for their descendants.

 

In the 21st century we can strengthen that faith for our descendants by agreeing to the principles in this Bill.

 

New Zealand's future may be that of a prosperous first-world liberal democratic nation or a third-world, retribalised state. A first world tribal nation is a contradiction in terms. It is not possible. There can be no prosperity without individual equality and freedom. There can be no social equality without prosperity.

We are at a crossroads. The value of the Bill is that it not only forces us to confront this fact but allows us to do so within the parliamentary select committee process rather than through cultural posturing, intimidation, perhaps even violence. The very existence of the Bill is liberal democracy in action.

Professor Elizabeth Rata is a curriculum expert and author of A Political Economy of Neotribal Capitalism

ELIZABETH RATA: Oral Presentation to the Parliamentary Justice Committee on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill

 

Indeed the mystery of Christ runs the risk of being disbelieved precisely because it is so incredibly wonderful

- St Cyril of Alexandria (January 28)