David Slack: Bullshit Backlash and Bleeding Hearts

Reviewed by ELEANOR BLACK

The subtitle says it all: The Confused Person's Guide to the Great Race Row. And what a lot of us there are.

I consider myself fairly well-informed — I read the paper and listen to radio news everyday, scan internet news sites most days, watch television news when I can — and was embarrassed to score just five out of 12 in David Slack's now infamous online Treaty quiz, which he has reproduced and expanded upon in this slim but ambitious book.

I'm in good company. Nearly 5500 people have taken the quiz, and the most common result? Five out of 12. Only 16 smarties have scored a perfect 12. (You can access the online version of the quiz by going to Slack's entertaining weblog, Island Life, on publicaddress.net).

The reason for our ignorance? Well, for a start, says Slack, formerly Geoffrey Palmer's speech writer, there's an awful lot of misinformation flying around disguised as fact. People still think, for example, that Maori doctors who get into medical school through the quota system don't need the same minimum marks as their Pakeha counterparts to graduate.

To set the record straight, Slack — who interviewed several Treaty heavyweights, including Margaret Wilson, Sir Douglas Graham and Sir Tipene O'Regan — takes us right back to 1840. He argues the Crown was not really interested in policing another troublesome (and expensive) colony, but concerned about the treatment of land-rich Maori by settlers keen to carve off farms. At heart, the Treaty, which he reprints in Maori and English so we can all refresh our memories, was intended to protect the best interests of both parties.

He notes colonial secretary Lord Normanby's special instructions to Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson: "[Maori] must not be permitted to enter into any contracts in which they might be the ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves."

Then follows a lamentable blow-by-blow account through the decades of how those instructions were largely ignored.

It comes as no surprise that Slack wrote Bullshit in eight weeks. It is chatty and easy to follow, but elegant it ain't. No matter, it does the job. A lot of useful information is presented in short, digestible chunks, although I think those on the right end of the political spectrum will find little here to change their minds — and may even resent the picture of a laughing Don Brash on the cover.

Each chapter starts with a statement of the sort we confused people mutter to each other over our coffee cups: "It's easy to make a settlement when you're writing cheques with someone else's money." Or this little stink bomb: "I'll tell you what they had when we got here. Nothing. They were running around in grass skirts, killing and eating each other."

Anyone who watched TVNZ's much-hyped race discussion State of the Nation will recall the beefy, moustached man who hijacked proceedings by raising the cannibal issue.

Would he gain anything by reading Slack's book? Doubtful. But the less-entrenched members of that mostly bewildered studio audience would probably be grateful for it.

* Penguin $28