David Seymour: I went to Oxford to test my beliefs and learned a sad thing about NZ

David Seymour debating at the Oxford Union debate. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

THE FACTS

• David Seymour debated at Oxford Union on the topic “no one can be illegal on stolen land”.
• Seymour’s team argued for universal human rights and against categorising individuals as victims or villains.

You’ve been invited to debate at Oxford.

Really?

Yeah, the one Lange was in.

Is it a prank?

We think it’s real.

Okay, then, but we can’t use taxpayer money.

That conversation is how I ended up debating at Oxford Union.

The question of the debate was that “no one can be illegal on stolen land”. It was a clever moot, tapping into colonisation and immigration. What Government has the right to tell would-be migrants they can’t come, when every inch of the planet has been fought over at some time?

I went to test my beliefs that human rights are universal, that we should stop searching the past for reasons to doubt one another and focus more on where we’re going than where we’ve been. I think those beliefs held up well, but I learned something sad about our country, too.

Every Thursday in semester time, the Union invites guests to debate. Most people don’t realise Lange was one of six or eight debaters. His speech, and the uranium line, obliterated the others.

I had a student and a couple of American “immigration enforcement experts” on my team. On the other side was the president of the Union, an Australian senator, an Oxford academic, and someone best described as Noam Chomsky’s daughter.

At the end of the debate, the audience divides, going through one door or another to register their vote for or against the motion, like Parliaments of old.

The president of the Union opened, saying our team of white guys in tuxedos had “something in common”, that all borders are drawn in blood, and that New Zealand “invites, exploits, then hunts” migrants. Since she came in an Alice in Wonderland dress with a two-metre hoop skirt, though, you can’t help but like her. I think she was in on the joke.

The Australian senator said “white immigration” to Australia is unlawful, then described her own migration from India without explaining the difference. The academic wanted open immigration rights for anyone whose ancestors had been colonised, but it wasn’t clear how far back this went. Chomsky promised to make seven points in her speech. I listened, but can only guess they were above my pay grade.

My team agreed that, yes, history is filled with barbarism on all sides, but who decides where it stopped and started? Should we count Scottish victims of the Clearances as victims or villains? How about descendants of Māori who slaughtered other tribes in the musket wars? How do we account for people who, like the new Pope, have ancestors on both sides of conflict?

We argued that grouping ourselves into victims and villains, based on ancestry, is exactly what leads to oppression and discrimination – seeing an individual as just another faceless member of a guilty group.

Even if you could pick a time when land stopped being owned and started being stolen, you would create another problem, determinism. No wonder young people are depressed and anxious, being told they are either victims or villains in stories written before they were born.

Building a better world, we said, needs a commitment to treat each person as a thinking and valuing being, deserving equal rights and dignity. I think the arguments for equal rights stood up well, but I learned something about New Zealand from how the events in Oxford were reported at home.

What a depressing little country we can be. TVNZ based its coverage around an activist saying I shouldn’t be able to speak because free speech is dangerous. The headline was me “defending” speaking. What a contrast with the Oxford Union’s commitment to free speech.

Stuff’s coverage announced, sneeringly, that I “debated at Oxford, and lost”. Nowhere in the article does it explain how the debate is decided, or that my team, not I, lost by a margin of 54-46. It quotes a handful of audience members who disagreed with me, but didn’t try to inform the reader of what I said or why nearly half voted for my team.

Anyone reliant on these outlets would prove the adage that if you don’t read the media, you’re uninformed; if you do, then you’re misinformed. I thank the Herald for its more balanced coverage and this right of reply.

Thank you, Oxford Union, for the wonderful opportunity to freely debate controversial topics. Yes, all borders are drawn in blood, but if you want a better world, you need to ask not where we came from, but where we’re going. Some in our media could learn from your spirit.

David Seymour is the Deputy Prime Minister and Act Party leader