At Waitangi in 2018, Jacinda Ardern asked to be held to account each year for her Government's performance. Photo / File
At Waitangi in 2018, Jacinda Ardern asked to be held to account each year for her Government's performance. Photo / File
COMMENT:
Labour's Whānau Ora Minister, Peeni Henare, is of course right that politics has something to do with this week's urgent Waitangi Tribunal claim against his performance in the job.
Dame Tariana Turia, Dame Naida Glavish, Dame Iritana Tawhiwhirangi, Lady Tureiti Moxon and Merepeka Raukawa-Tait are hardly political debutantes. They and their ally John Tamihere know perfectly well their political power as Māori leaders taking such a step just before the so-called "Māori calendar" of Rātana and Waitangi Day.
The particular issue prompting the move is their allegation that Labour is trying to transform the cherished Whānau Ora programme into one delivered not by Māori, but by arms of the state. This, they claim, has meant $20 million promised to promote Māori wellbeing through Whānau Ora has been lost in the Wellington bureaucracy.
The deeper and broader context that drives the ongoing tension between Labour and leaders such as Turia, Glavish, Tawhiwhirangi, Moxon, Raukawa-Tait and Tamihere is two-fold. It involves, first, the demand for tino rangatiratanga to be expressed in social policy and, second, the growth of the Māori asset base from the return of Māori property and payment of reparations under the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process and through Māori entrepreneurialism generally. The latter makes the former more realistic than at any time since colonisation.
Make it your business to know
Start your day with the latest business headlines straight to your inbox.
Very roughly, Turia, Glavish, Tawhiwhirangi, Moxon, Raukawa-Tait and Tamihere are talking articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty whereas Labour struggles to think outside article 3.
This is unlikely to change. At Waitangi last year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was infamously unable to even precis the three articles of the Treaty when asked by reporters, something any primary school student is now expected to be able to do.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that she was either unable or unwilling to answer the five kuias' letter raising their concerns some months ago. Turia is more brutal: the Prime Minister, she says, is out of her depth.
Article 3 of the te reo text of the Treaty promises Māori "the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England" — for which we would now substitute "New Zealand". The focus on duties, which interestingly does not appear in the English text, is a reason Māori volunteered so readily for the world wars.
Tariana Turia says Ardern is out of her depth. Photo / File
Article 3 shouldn't be considered less important than the other two, but Labour tends to read it as some sort of local blueprint for left-wing ideologies developed by white men in Europe in the 19th century.
That has led to political blunders such as Helen Clark's maternalistic "Closing the Gaps" rhetoric and Margaret Wilson's absolute clanger that Treaty of Waitangi settlements needed to be seen "in the context" of the "Closing the Gaps" policy.
Māori rightly took the view that the Treaty's promises about governance, chieftainship and property rights — and the right to seek redress for their breach — would hold true even were Māori better off on average than Pākeha.
Some Māori leaders went further, challenging the very notion that Māori education, health and social outcomes should be benchmarked against Pākeha ones, which aren't always too flash anyway when viewed globally.
Why, they asked, would Māori necessarily want their kids to do as well on average as Pākeha kids in high school classical studies? On the other hand, reaching the Pākeha average in calculus and chemistry is hardly an aspirational goal in a global sense.
Many of those in control of today's Labour Party have exposure to the Māori world limited to the Grey Lynn Community Centre and watching John Campbell highlight South Auckland poverty on TV. They tend to believe that the Crown will have met its Treaty obligations when it provides schools, hospitals, houses and welfare benefits to Māori the same as it does to Pākeha.
They struggle to grasp that Māori might not have the same confidence as they do in the local state school — even if it now has its own marae — given that it used to thrash their great-grandparents for speaking their language.
While Pākeha liberals worry about Oranga Tamariki allegedly snatching Māori babies from their whānau, they think that's probably because its cultural training courses are under-resourced. It is difficult for them to comprehend that the problem might be the overbearing nature of any central agency.
This outlook means Labour has led National in establishing bureaucracies and tribunals to address Māori concerns, but has found itself playing catch-up over the past two generations in meeting Māori aspirations for self-determination and also redress for the theft of property.
It was National, for example, that first supported kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa Māori and wānanga, drove the historic Treaty settlement process in the 1990s and 2010s, and backed Whānau Ora.
Despite Andrew Little's efforts, Labour's record on Treaty settlements remains derisory.
Labour remains more sceptical of all forms of special character schools than National. It moved for ideological reasons to abolish the charter school model that many Māori, even Labour's Willie Jackson, had embraced so passionately. The perception Labour is undermining Whānau Ora in favour of state organisations is part of the same pattern.
In what the Herald's Simon Wilson called a historic speech, Ardern asked at Waitangi in 2018 to be held to account each year for the performance of her Government.
She doubled down on her accountability message last year, with aspirations "to reduce unemployment, to increase education, to get rid of the inequality between Māori and Pākeha".
Leading into her third Māori calendar as Prime Minister and towards her re-election campaign, there is no evidence she has delivered to Māori even on those measures. She will continue to fail politically and in terms of policy outcomes until she and her circle grasp that Māori aspirations are not limited to the type of equality promoted by white men in Europe in the 1800s on which Labour's mission remains largely based.
- As a PR consultant and lobbyist, Matthew Hooton has worked for the Treaty Tribes Coalition, Auckland's Independent Māori Statutory Board, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, Ngāi Tuhoe, Te Puni Kōkiri and the Māori Economic Development Taskforce, and has accepted speaking fees from Te Ohu Kaimoana. These views are his own.
