Waitangi’s relaxed vibe and how middle NZ holds the key to Treaty issues - Steven Joyce

OPINION

I always enjoyed going to Waitangi for the annual celebrations. Notwithstanding what we often see on the small screen, the day itself has a relaxed holiday vibe to it.

The weather is almost always beautiful, the location is stunning, the pace of events is easy and people are for the most part friendly and welcoming.

Even the protests tend to have a performative element to them. I’ll never forget waiting on the road outside Te Tii in 2014 for John Key’s car to arrive and for him and his ministers to be welcomed on to the marae. The convoy was late so ministers, the media, protesters and onlookers all stood around chatting together in the sun on the road outside the marae entrance. When the cars swept up, everyone quickly took their places. The cameras switched on, the ministers took formation behind the PM and the protesters surged forward. Amid jostling and yelling, we all made it onto the marae. The cameras switched off and peace resumed.

This is not to say positions aren’t strongly held and passionately believed in. Just that we are a complex people, and political foes are often relatives and friends in other contexts. We are a product of our history and the history of our ancestors, but often those histories cross over and don’t suit sharp boundaries.

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I of course have my own history of protest at Waitangi, but that is another story.

Steven Joyce being hit by a flying dildo as he addresses media at Waitangi in 2016.

This Waitangi will likely be more difficult than many. Indeed, the last time race relations were this charged was after the Don Brash Orewa speech in 2004. The political left tend to blame the right for “inflaming tensions” in order to get elected, and Brash himself was accused of “playing the race card” But the truth, as always, is a little more complex.

The backstory to the Orewa speech was that in the early 2000s an assertive Māori caucus within the Labour Government were pushing their agenda along quickly, and this caused discomfort amongst many non-Māori. The pace of change was rapid and people were feeling left out. The courts made a decision overturning a common belief the Crown owned the seabed and foreshore on behalf of all New Zealanders, and Labour’s proposals to address the court decision were seen as excessively bureaucratic and too favourable to iwi, giving, among other things, a veto right to all development along the coast.

Politicians give speeches all the time, including on race relations, and the only reason Brash’s one resonated the way it did was because of the widespread discomfort felt by a significant proportion of the population about the pace of change and the feeling they were being excluded.

The rest is history. A spooked Labour became heavy-handed, legislating away seabed and foreshore rights completely, and that angered Māori. The Māori Party was born and Labour lost its monopoly on the Māori seats. In 2008 John Key’s Government, under the leadership of Key, Bill English and Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson, went into partnership with the Māori Party, and painstakingly rebuilt the consensus on Crown-Māori relations, which survived intact until the election of the new Government in 2017. Then the pattern started to repeat itself.

A newly assertive Māori caucus in the Labour-led Government, led by firebrand Willy Jackson, started to make demands the wider public didn’t support. This was initially held in check by the coalition with New Zealand First - that all changed after the 2020 Covid election. Labour had an absolute majority and the only grouping within Parliament with the numbers to derail the Government was its own Māori caucus.

Willie Jackson and former Labour leader Andrew Little at Waitangi. Photo / Jason Oxenham

They used their new power prodigiously – raising the expectations of iwi Māori and unsettling many non-Māori. The two biggest issues among many were Māori seats on councils and Māori veto rights on Three Waters entities – neither of which were campaigned on.

Once again a sizeable group of non-Māori New Zealanders were starting to feel excluded from democratic decision-making. Once again politicians picked up on those concerns, and both Act and New Zealand First made explicit “one New Zealand”-style commitments at the 2023 election which resonated with many. Political pendulums that swing out also tend to swing back - and that is what we are seeing now.

Rhetoric post-election has got heated on both sides. Many iwi representatives who have got used to seeing their wishlist fulfilled are not happy at the change, and egged on by the more extreme guise of the current Māori Party are using deliberately inflammatory language.

On the other side, the more extreme types are getting wound up about stuff they didn’t care about six years ago, pushing back for example on the use of Māori language in any context, rather than just the Māorification of the names of government agencies, which to be fair has taken on something of a virtuous sanctimony within the public service.

The “Principles of the Treaty” debate may or may not be the debate we have to have, but we are having it.

Maori King Tuheitia Paki and his wife Makau Ariki Te Atawhai listening to speeches at Ratana Pa on January 24 this year. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Unsurprisingly, the solution to all of this is in the middle. Broadly 80 per cent of New Zealanders across all ethnicities want to just feel like we all belong. They see us as a multicultural society which is at the same time proud of our unique Māori heritage. They want to see improvements in outcomes for disadvantaged Māori, but they don’t want to feel excluded themselves on the basis of ethnicity. They believe historic breaches of the Treaty should be remedied, and they also believe one person, one vote is sacrosanct.

They are uncomfortable with public service ministries being divided on ethnic grounds but they do believe there is room for different types of service provision to different groups, including ethnic groups. These days, no one bats an eyelid at the Wānanga or Whānau Ora – both of which do great work.

The truth is that if we go back far enough, all of our ancestors moved here. It is also a truth that a treaty was signed between the British Crown and indigenous Māori. It is true we have done a better job than most countries in reconciling our indigenous culture and history with the benefits, challenges and opportunities of modern Western life, but it is also true we have much more to do.

What we need now is our new Prime Minister to pick up the challenge and chart a path that ensures the broad middle holds. As we head towards Waitangi Weekend, we should celebrate what brings us together not the relatively minor differences that drive us apart.

We are a small country. Our strength is in celebrating our diversity and our shared history, encouraging initiative and personal responsibility, and working to provide opportunities for all. In that way lies success. Political and social media-fuelled angst from either extreme about our differences only drives us apart.