Colin James: Tradition will take some defrosting

What does a third-world nation want most? To be as rich as a first-world nation.

There is an exception: Bhutan's official measure of performance is gross national happiness. Bhutan is poor. Four-fifths of its population are subsistence farmers and it is 134th out of 177 on the United Nations Development Programme's index.

No matter. Bhutan is happy - officially. It is preserving its culture and tradition (though it is occasionally inventive about the latter).

Some Maori, perhaps many Maori, would happily Bhutanise this country or at least its Maori component. They put cultural integrity and tradition first. For 30 years, this has been the most visible side of Maori. The result has been a spectacular recovery of the culture and its status in the public and, increasingly, private life of the nation.

There are still many settlements to be done and much argument and tension over Maori delivery agencies and taonga, which will keep activists and the media excited for a generation. But the critical battles are over.

What next? That was the point of last week's stagey Maori economic development summit (hui taumata).

The what-next is to get Maori richer. Maori are a sort of third-world nation lurking within this supposedly first-world one.

If they don't get richer, the nation's economic potential will be seriously blunted. Maori are a quarter of the population under 15 and so, inevitably, their proportion of the total population will climb towards that level.

If Maori continue on average to get less well-educated and less skilled and get lower-paying jobs than non-Maori, that will cut economic performance, make the country less attractive to investors and high-flyers and generate a downward spiral. Some, National leader Don Brash among them, would argue we have been sliding down that spiral for decades.

This is part of the positive point buried under the fuss over the Waananga o Aotearoa: the waananga has been motivating illiterates to climb the educational ladder. Mainstream institutions had failed and, thereby, failed all of us.

The hui taumata was not the election-year gimmick National grumped about it. By focusing on electoral manoeuvring, National risks missing a boat its friends in the Business Roundtable are firmly aboard.

Sure chairman Rob McLeod (Ngati Porou, from the bay next door to John Tamihere's, and active in iwi affairs) was a keynote speaker, on his favourite topic of the wealth locked up in substandard performance. But flinty Roger Kerr also attended and added his name to McLeod's to a congratulatory press release afterwards. McLeod and Kerr know something few have yet registered:

* There is a proliferation of modern, market-driven businesses run by Maori in much the way anyone runs a business.

* Younger Maori are turning mind and energy to educational and economic development, rather than fighting land and cultural battles.

* And that younger generation is preparing to challenge the stultified, culture-based and, thus, uneconomic management of iwi assets.

This sort of new Maori does not give a quarter on culture. Speaker after speaker at the hui said economic development must not be at the expense of the culture. There were several references to the immutable place of "taonga land" among iwi assets.

This gave the impression that most felt the recovery of the culture had been so recent that it was still fragile and needing protection. So expect to hear about culture and tradition for a long while yet.

But, over time, as Maori grow surer the culture is secure, getting richer is likely to count for more. And that will change the way iwi assets are managed.

Ngai Tahu's 38-year-old chief executive, Tahu Potiki, himself steeped in culture, foreshadowed a changing emphasis as "democracy" over time drove a "dedicated focus on performance, with express permission to trade out of deadweight investments".

"This will take a significant leap of faith and courage from Maori leadership," Potiki said. Put another way, Maori will need the courage and confidence to modernise and adapt the culture, to defrost tradition.

That is what happened in the Anglo-Celtic countries: industrialisation and globalisation drove cultural change. If Maori are to "live as Maori and be citizens of the world", as Professor Mason Durie put it, the culture will change to meet that world.

The message was not lost on the hui. When a woman harangued it on the Maori Party's righteous mission, the usual attentive quiet in the hall gave way to a low murmur, which subsided when she sat down - rather like the murmurings and mutterings that silence a boring or wrong-headed speech on a marae.

The hui taumata's thrust was educational improvement, iwi independence, less reliance on the Government, more reliance on other partners and more Maori in business on their own account, taking advice from the best, not just their tribal connections, all underpinned by strong families (whanau).

It is hard to imagine Brash and National disagreeing with that thrust. Indeed, those themes should logically have National's stamp all over them, not Labour's. Instead, National's rhetoric on Maori issues is still locked, negatively, into the rights debate - at the very time the Government and increasing numbers of Maori are moving beyond rights to development.

Getting richer, after all, was what the Treaty of Waitangi was principally about for Maori in 1840: access to modern technology for economic development (and to beat old enemies with new weapons). The rights arguments came later, after Maori society and its economy were destroyed in the second half of the 19th century and Maori were made an economic underclass.

There are three lessons for business.

The first is a negative. Most Maori live as a social and economic underclass. Bringing the average Maori contribution up to match the overall average - McLeod's goal - is a decades-long transformation. That transformation is just beginning now in the primary schools and there is no assurance of success.

The second is a positive. A Maori middle class is now fast emerging, although still relatively small.

Middle classes - professionals, managers and entrepreneurs - are economic drivers and political democratisers. So there will be more businesses run by Maori (independently of any new bureaucratic entity, as scoped by Fran O'Sullivan in the Business Herald on Monday). And as the middle class democratises iwi, iwi will modernise their governance and so open up scope for business partnerships.

The third is a big positive.

One hui session focused on creativity. Prime Minister Helen Clark noted that Maori artists had been chosen, on merit, to represent this country's art in two major international showcases.

That reflects an energy that is also reflected in the other arts, especially music. A distinct brand - unstuffy, modern and national, not parked in a traditional Maori corner - is developing, off which business can piggy-back to advantage abroad.

And it comes just when Maori are getting into business seriously. There is money to be made. But not in Bhutan.