Winston Peters speaks to the media following his 'State of the Nation' address in Christchurch.
Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
He has introduced a bill to remove “diversity, equity and inclusiveness” (DEI) provisions from public sector employment guidelines.
Support for Donald Trump in New Zealand is strongest among young men and among Act Party voters, according to a Talbot Mills survey
Listen sunshine, I’ve been around a lot longer than you have and I know what I’m talking about.
When your grumpy Uncle Winston talks to you like that, what do you say? OMG, sigh, Winnie, do try to keep up?
NZ First leader Winston Petersis determined to wage a war on wokeness. In his big “state of the nation” speech on Sunday he called it “one of the most concerning and insidious cancers in our society today”. But honestly, why are we even talking about it?
The answer is that in the Trump-inflected world we now find ourselves in, things are changing.
One of those things is the global appeal of Donald Trump himself, which shows up in surprising ways even here. The Spinoff has reported the result of a poll of 1003 people by Talbot Mills Research which shows 30% of us “strongly or somewhat approve” of the job Trump is doing as President.
Double that proportion strongly or somewhat disapprove, but still, he’s got a fan base.
And it’s not who you might think it is. The usual view is that Peters’ war on wokeness is aimed at older voters who remember a time when things were easier, more hopeful, just better.
It’s no good asking if they’re thinking about their childhood, a time almost all of us recall as being filled with bright, bright, bright sunshiny days.
For many of us life really has become faster, more complicated and potentially more confusing. Peters has always tried to appeal to those who feel left behind by that.
But the new Trumpians among us, Talbot Mills has revealed, are young men.
Men under 40 in their survey gave the American President a net approval rating of +14. They were the only demographic that approved of him more than they disapproved. For women under 40, it was -39.
We now know, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, that young women are from cosmopolitan Europe while their brothers and male partners, if they have them, are from Alabama.
There’s a corollary to this, often overlooked: the older you are the more likely you are to be appalled by Trump. Women aged 60 and over gave him a net -67 approval rating and men in that age group weren’t far off, at -62.
Peters may have a base among the elderly, but #NotAllElderly, if I can put it that way.
Trump’s war on wokeness has been channeled through Elon Musk, with a big focus on “DEI”: hiring policies that recognise the value of diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI is now banned in US Government agencies.
Peters is a fast follower. He’s had the Public Service (Repeal of Diversity and Inclusiveness Requirements) Amendment Bill drafted, seeking to remove all guidelines for promoting Māori involvement and other aspects of diversity and inclusiveness in the public service. For the bill to progress it will need to be drawn from the ballot of members’ bills.
Peters says it’s necessary because “New Zealand is a country founded on meritocracy, not on some mind-numbingly stupid ideology”.
As it happens, the ideology on which some would say America and New Zealand were both founded was given its purest expression recently by a man called Darren Beattie.
Beattie used to be a speechwriter for Trump and is now employed as Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department. Peters met his boss, Marco Rubio, in Washington this month.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Photo / Supplied
Last year Beattie wrote: “Competent white men must be put in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralising competent white men.”
Our Deputy Prime Minister obviously wouldn’t put it that way. But Beattie’s view is the ideological well from which the war on DEI wokeness draws its water.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon isn’t fazed. His response to Peters’ bill was: “I’d just say, when we took the keys to the place, it was pretty woke, and it’s entirely appropriate that we look at what else we can do to make sure the public service delivers.”
“I think that New Zealand leaders are smart, and they will see that DEI is actually about ensuring talent has the opportunity to thrive.”
The logic ought to be hard to escape. DEI policies require employers to think systematically about inclusion and diversity. Without them, history shows that women and minorities are more likely than Beattie’s “competent white men” to be excluded. Even if, as occasionally happens, those men struggle to demonstrate their competence.
Either you believe, with Bhreatnach, that DEI adds to the talent pool. Or you believe Beattie is right.
Auckland councillor and former Cabinet minister Maurice Williamson is a fully fledged enthusiast for the war on public-service wokeness.
He said recently, “Instead of having a one-legged lesbian from the South Island who’s into saving gay whales, because we don’t have enough of them on our team at present, I want people who get jobs in the public service to be on merit.”
Is it funny, reducing a serious issue about institutional discrimination to that kind of absurdity? Grumpy Uncle Maurice seems to have forgotten he was once a champion of diversity, boasting of a “big gay rainbow over Pakūranga”, his old electorate.
The real-world consequences are not funny. Peters might think wokeness is a “cancer”, but anti-wokeness has subverted our battle against real cancer.
Williamson’s protege, and successor as Pakūranga MP, Health Minister Simeon Brown, recently abandoned plans for DEI-informed free bowel-cancer screening for Māori and Pasifika from the age of 50. Currently the eligible age for everyone is 60. Under Brown’s new anti-woke regime, that will fall to 58.
This policy discriminates against Māori and Pasifika, because about 26% of bowel cancers in Pacific peoples occur between 50-59 years old, compared to about 11% in the non-Māori or Pacific population. A DEI approach, based on equity, would acknowledge this.
Health Minister Simeon Brown has taken the war on wokeness into cancer prevention. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Despite all the bombastic fury directed at the Greens, Labour and all the other woke liberals, they are not the real target of anti-wokeism. In 2020, Peters even voted for the DEI law he now wants to abolish. His enemy is the Act Party.
All three parties of the governing coalition are locked in a battle for the Trumpian vote and Peters knows the rise of Trumpian young men tends to skew Act. That Talbot Mills survey showed Trump enjoys a net favourability rating of +13 among Act supporters, higher than NZ First’s +2 and much higher than National’s -21.
As a symptom of the divided country we live in, Labour and Greens supporters give Trump net -57 and -56 ratings, respectively.
Those Trumpian votes could determine whether NZ First stays in Parliament after the next election. And if all three parties remain in coalition, they will determine the relative strength of each.
Winston Peters, Simeon Brown and Act leader David Seymour are all chasing those votes. But for Peters, something else is at stake.
The most important battle in New Zealand politics is not between the forces of woke and anti-woke. And nor is it between National and Labour, which despite all their blustery attacks on each other have a relatively common approach to basic economic policy.
The vital battle is over the future of free-market neoliberalism.
It’s a triumph, says Act. It’s failed, say the Greens, Te Pāti Māori ... and NZ First. Peters’ mission is to prevent the misery of market excess.
National and Labour both uphold neoliberalism’s basic tenets. But they wrestle endlessly with the degree to which they should intervene in the market with welfare spending, regulations and targeted support for industries and regions.
And yet, while the economy is important to voters, arguing about neoliberalism is often fruitless. It’s a boring, confusing debate full of righteous economists.
Anti-wokeness, on the other hand, gets headlines and stirs deep feelings. It’s a proxy war that allows all three parties of the coalition to blow their own trumpets, hoping to win those Trumpians over.
Peters sniffs blood in the water, because Act leader David Seymour’s school lunches programme is a neoliberal fiasco and it’s exposed him as a surprisingly inept administrator. When Peters gives up the restrictions of being Deputy Prime Minister in May, he will go to war.
He and Seymour will cause a lot of collateral damage with their tiresome war on wokeness. But don’t forget, they’re fighting each other.
