The Star: May 06, 2021

The Star Thursday May 6 2021
20
OPINION
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Is democracy under threat?
Former TV
sports and
news reader
Peter
Williams
writes
about plans
for a
co-governed New
Zealand democracy
I WANT TO talk about a very
important issue. It’s called
democracy.
As Winston Churchill once
said, apparently, “no-one pretends
democracy is perfect. In
fact, it has been said that democracy
is the worst form of government
except for all those other
forms that have been tried from
time to time.” But the question
I think we should be asking in
this country is this: Is democracy
under threat?
Now, on the surface, that
sounds like an absolutely preposterous
proposition. After all, we
are a long-standing democracy
based on the Westminster or
British system of letting the
people decide who should govern
them.
We had our first elections in
this country in 1853. They were
not perfect though because only
property owners could vote.
Over the next 40 years that
changed and evolved and by
1893, when women were granted
the vote, every New Zealand person
aged 21 or older could vote
for one nationwide parliament
and for local councils. And so,
for 128 years, that is the way New
Zealand has been governed.
We get to vote, and every vote
has been of equal value. And
theoretically, the majority decides
the direction of travel.
But are we seeing that system
under threat? I ask that in the
light – not just of the city where
I live and broadcast from, Tauranga,
now being governed by
appointed commissioners and
them making decisions which
the majority are likely to disagree
with (like the creation of a
Maori Ward, and a rates rise for
residential property owners that
could be as high as 20 per cent) –
but in the very slow and almost
secretive release of a paper called
He Puapua during the election
campaign last year, and the fact
that the full paper has still not
been released officially.
But if you read what is available
on the Te Puni Kokiri website
you should be very worried
about the future of democracy
as we know it in this country.
In short, this paper called He
Puapua is a report of a working
group on a plan to realise the
United Nations Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
or if you want for short, UN-
DRIP – or the DRIP.
He Puapua has what it calls a
Vision 2040, just 19 years from
now, the 200th anniversary
of the signing of the Treaty of
Waitangi. The vision says that by
2040, the Government will have
implemented the relevant instruments
to share power more fairly
with Maori in our constitutional
arrangements.
Now let that sink in. To share
power more fairly with Maori in
our constitutional arrangements.
The problem can be sheeted
back to the first John Key-led
National Government which
started in 2008. Prior to that, the
United Nations had produced its
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples in 2007, which
said that indigenous peoples had
a right to self-determination.
The prime minister at the time
Helen Clark said we’re not signing
that, and New Zealand abstained.
But three years later, John Key –
as part of his deal with the Maori
Party – sent Pita Sharples off to
New York to sign it.
The UN itself said the declaration
was non-binding and
aspirational. But, for whatever
reason best known to them, the
Labour Party has now decided
that the DRIP will be enacted
in this country over the next 20
years and He Puapua sets out
a way that will, in the words of
conservative political commentator
Muriel Newman, lead to
tribal control of New Zealand by
2040 and the end of democracy
as we know it.
The move for Maori wards
on local councils all around the
country is the start of it, and the
suggestion that appointed and
unelected iwi representatives
get full voting rights and full
stipends on the Wellington City
Council is another example.
Muriel Newman writes about
the slow boiling frog effect. If
this happens, and there is every
indication it will, it will happen
slowly, incrementally and by the
time we realise what has happened,
it will be too late.
So how do you feel about
this? Are you happy that a fraction
of the population, that is
those who claim some Maori
ancestry, which is around 15 per
cent of the population, may be
able to share 50 per cent of the
Government’s decision-making
and control vast amounts of the
country’s economic resources,
including the most valuable of
all – water?
On the surface this seems preposterous
does it not? In Vision
2040 it says the following: “If
Maori are to exercise governance
power, there needs to be support
for this. The Crown’s main
contribution will be resourcing.
There are multiple streams from
which financial contributions
might be sourced, including, for
example, levies on resource use
where Maori have a strong claim
to ownership, such as water.”
Can you believe the arrogance
of that statement? Can you ever
disagree with what John Key once
said: “Nobody owns the water.”
And he was absolutely right. It
is swept up from the oceans and
falls from the sky. It is one of the
wonders of nature. It belongs to
all of us and the resource must
never be put in “ownership.”
To have a paper presented to
the Associate Minister of Maori
Development, and Minister
for Local Government, Nania
Mahuta with such a suggestion
in it, and not have it dismissed, is
frankly a very worrying thought.
There is a gradual realisation
among some people of what is
happening. Not only Muriel
Newman but also the left-wing
writer Chris Trotter, has written
about this paper and suggests
that Jacinda Ardern move very
swiftly now to shut down any
talk of a change to New Zealand’s
governance arrangements
over the next 20 years.
But is there any sign of that?
•HAVE YOUR SAY: Share
your opinion on Williams’
column. Email barry@
starmedia.kiwi Emails
should be 200 words or
fewer
Of course not.
What is also worrying is the
silence of the National Party on
this. But then, maybe they’re
embarrassed.
It was them who started it with
John Key sending Pita Sharples
off to sign up to something that
Helen Clark would not have a
bar of because she realised the
long-term implications of it.
And now it has come to pass.
I don’t want any racist tirades
about this issue, I want some
reasoned discussion. And for me,
it comes back to this. I believe in
the concept that all people are
equal, that in this country everybody’s
vote is as important as
everybody else’s. We are all New
Zealanders.
Yes, we may have descended
from Maori or Chinese or Scottish
or English, but we all live
together in this country as New
Zealanders. My antecedents
came here 173 years ago. Am I
any less of a person, any less of
a New Zealander because my
forefathers and foremothers arrived
here 500 years after other
settlers?
Is somebody born in England
or India or China who came here
in the last 10 years and now has
a New Zealand passport any less
of a New Zealander than me? I
would hope not. But if we have
some sort of devolved co-governance
arrangement whereby
50 per cent of the power is in the
hands of the small proportion of
the electorate, is that acceptable
in a nation which has known
the concept of parliamentary
democracy in some form or
another since 1853?
Isn’t this one of the most
important questions facing New
Zealand’s future? Yet no one in
the Government wants to talk
about it in the open.
• This first appeared on
breakingviews.co.nz
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