After the ongoing political debacles of the past year it’s heartening to be reminded that politics can be something constructive and politicians can actually be capable of being leaders. That reminder came with the death of former prime minister Jim Bolger.
My only professional encounter with Bolger was an interview in 2016 on the launch of Vincent O’Malley’s book The Great War for New Zealand. Arguably, the high point of Bolger’s time in office was negotiating the settlements with Tainui and then Ngāi Tahu.
He was a King Country farmer who had grown up in coastal Taranaki, where iwi were subjected to invasion and confiscation. He had lived with a dark history under his feet, then he stepped forward and created history of a different kind.
It’s easy to forget how fraught the Māori-crown relationship was when Bolger was PM. But no one knew what came next, which only made the settlement between the crown and Tainui all the more remarkable. They both entered discussions with no precedent.
“Nobody really had any idea,” Bolger told me. “The Treasury figure [for treaty settlements] was about $250 million. And I said that’s ridiculous. After the cabinet committee meeting got nowhere, I said to Doug Graham [treaty negotiations minister], I don’t know exactly what the figure will be at all, but I think it’ll be at least a billion dollars.”
What Bolger thought was the minimum eventually became the government’s capped maximum, known as the Fiscal Envelope, provoking a fierce backlash from Māori. But there were also fears bordering on hysteria from some Pākehā.
So it knocked the gale-force winds out of a few sails when it was announced Tainui would settle with the crown for $170m. In context, the amount was really nothing more than a goodwill gesture. The greater gesture was Tainui accepting it as a way to move forward, which opened the door for other iwi to do the same.
For all the leadership he showed, Bolger was more inclined to give the credit to Tainui. “It was complex and it required an extraordinary amount of goodwill on behalf of Tainui and then Ngāi Tahu. Those are the two that really set the parameters for the treaty settlement process that is ongoing today. Enormous credit goes to Tainui and Dame Te Ata and her brother Bob Mahuta to have the courage to go first.
“It was an extraordinary moment. You knew it was historic and a breakthrough that, at least from my perspective and, I presume, from Tainui’s, at last the crown was facing up to make amends to the extent possible for the sins of the past. And that was at the core of. How did we settle? We had to determine what was fair to this generation of New Zealanders to make settlements for the misdeeds of their forebears. That was the challenge. What is fair? How do you define fairness in these circumstances? How do you define fairness in a generation or three of lost opportunities for Māori?”
But he believed the debate about what is fair can’t happen in the absence a deeper awareness of history. “I’ve been arguing for years that we need to write an honest and complete history of the colonial period, including the land wars. Like most New Zealanders who were brought up in the education system in the 40s and 50s, we were essentially taught nothing on the colonial land war period.”
Bolger’s Irish heritage made him deeply aware of the parallels between Māori colonisation and “700 years of English domination and the confiscations of Ireland”.
He was critical of those on the right who minimised the loss Māori suffered. “If any group should be conscious of the loss of property rights, it should be the right. They’re more than happy to prattle on about property rights at the drop a hat but seem unwilling to accept that Māori had exclusive property rights when the Europeans arrived.”
He described what happened to Tainui and many other iwi as “theft”. “It was nothing more than a naked, blatant land grab by the colonial forces and settlers.”
Bolger’s leadership set the bar in terms of what was possible in the relationship between Māori and the crown. No political leader since has reached that bar, let alone surpassed it.
Helen Clark butchered her chance in her response to the foreshore and seabed legislation. John Key and Jacinda Ardern managed to be inoffensive but ultimately ineffectual. And the current lot, while they have come out in praise of Bolger, are effectively undoing the progress that happened on his watch. The massive goodwill he created has been trashed by the current government.
But Bolger – prime minister, farmer and thoroughly decent bloke – will go down in history as someone who had the mana, the courage and the humility to sit down and listen and try to understand people whose background and experience were starkly different from his own. He recognised injustice when he saw it. And then he did his utmost within his powers to try to do the right thing.
Moe mai rā e te Rangatira.
