Bruce Bisset: Survey quite cunning in design

Bruce Bisset.

Deconstructing TVNZ's arguably racist "Kiwimeter" attitudinal survey points up one simple lesson: if you're going to try to find out what makes New Zealand society tick, don't get a foreigner to ask the questions.

That's probably a tad unfair on Canadian firm Vox Pop Labs, since they doubtless designed the survey on the basis of the briefing papers the prime minister's department - ahem, sorry, state television - gave them. Nevertheless, Vox Pop are not local, and it shows.

Because it's hard to get people to participate en masse in even a five-minute click-through survey, they're arranged to keep us engaged fully but briefly. So there's little depth to the questions, making the worth of such exercises dubious.

Oddest in this one, for me, were the dinky "national symbols" one has to choose between on a most-like / least-like basis. Quite why we needed two British choices (Union Jack and Crown) or two rugby (ball and All Blacks) when one would have been sufficient is beyond me.

Also, "great outdoors" is a particularly Canadian/US expression, and the symbol doubtless got marked down accordingly; I'd bet "scenic beauty" would have garnered a lot more favour.

Note that except for "great outdoors" and "beach holiday" icons, the environment didn't feature - at all. Funny that.

By now you're wondering what I make of the fuss over the Maori questions, particularly the one asking whether people agree "Maori should not receive any special treatment".

That may seem offensive, but in an attitudinal survey of the type this purports to be, it's a valid question.

Because the way people answer it - and the other two about our history of discrimination, and conversely taking pride in Maori culture - as well as the equally-loaded immigration questions, gives a broad-brush picture of how racist, or not, the "average" New Zealander may be.

Seeing the graph of collated data - which I assume is accurately rendered - in the results section peaking toward the "assimilationist" (horrible word) end of the spectrum, the answer seems to be: quite racist.

Does that surprise? No. What does surprise is that everyone to the left of centre should be offended by this, pretending it's the question and not the answer that's at fault, thus unintentionally (I hope!) working to sweep this unpleasant fact under the clean green carpet.

Instead I would have thought the outing of this blemish in the national psyche would be grasped with glee and held up as an example of entrenched colonial mores.

See, I get that the question can be seen to imply Maori receive "special treatment" when in fact they have never been the equals they should always have been under the Treaty of Waitangi, and therefore that presumption is racist.

But if you asked it another way - baldly, "how racist are you?" with a 0-10 scale - few people would answer honestly.

And that's the point. As skewed as the survey appears, it's quite cunning in its design.

What offends me is the categorisation of people into camps with labels such as "patriot" or "sceptic". A patriot, apparently, is a right-wing bigot who thinks everything's wonderful, but oddly wants to change the flag; a sceptic is a centrist who leans toward bigotry but wants to keep the current flag. Maybe it's Canadian.

So, there are plenty of holes, but also some meat - enough to suggest a decent follow-up could be socially useful. But it's more likely this is a one-off PR "tester" run solely to suit the ruling cabal.

What use they'll make of it is the real question.

That's the right of it.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.