Showing posts with label Mana Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mana Party. Show all posts

07 February 2012

Waitangi Day from a distance

Being a kiwi living in London, Waitangi Day is notable only because it is not hard to remember 6 February, although with the exception of a work colleague (Australian) mentioning it, it would be easy to forget it.

Despite the news, only reported in NZ, of the Waitangi weekend pub crawl (and only reported because one man complained about it), there is nothing to note it here.  It's refreshing for me, in part because of the cringe of the usual annual show is largely invisible. 

Waitangi Day has tended to be a time when mainstream politicians celebrate the purported partnership between the state and iwi (said to be Pakeha and Maori, a curiously romanticised albeit blatantly incorrect rendering of the situation).  It is a time presented as a chance for more "understanding" and raises the Treaty of Waitangi in a way that meets the desires of many who see it as quasi-constitutional.

Meanwhile, it is a chance for protests.  This time it is unsurprising that Hone Harawira's gang of Marxist ethno-nationalists have seen it as a chance to be rude and to make far from novel demands for the state to hand over property, power and money to those who his lot approve of.

Yet there is another view.  It is one that treats New Zealanders as individuals.  That doesn't mean must or should deny their ancestry, or claim whatever ethnic, national or other identity one wants.  It is not, despite the squeals of racists like Hone Harawira, about being "anti-Maori".  What it is, is about the state being colourblind.   It embraces the Treaty of Waitangi for what it is.  Not the creation of a distinction between the amorphous non-entity called "Maori" and the Crown, but the granting of individual rights and property rights to Maori residents, in exchange for ceding final authority to the state.  

It is a view that means that Maori language and culture can thrive, if those who want it to do so make their own efforts to promote it, whether as individuals or through iwi authorities, or other non-governmental bodies.  It is also the view that government doesn't promote culture either, but steps to one side not only from Maori, but everyone in areas where its role should not be as great as it currently is.  It means using property rights, contracts, rule of law, societies, voluntary groups, relationships and choices to build and develop the communities, institutions, businesses, sports, art, culture, inventions, discoveries and everything else that is the creation of humanity.

Yet, even setting aside my vision of a smaller state, there is a valid view that today, in the 21st century, the state should not treat individuals or corporate bodies differently depending on their ancestry or the ancestry of those who own or control it.

It rejects the infantile claim that New Zealand is bicultural, when it is populated by people of multiple cultures (the "bicultural myth" was generated by Maori nationalists wanting to portray Maori as being separate from the state which represented "Pakeha" culture.  Multiple cultures undermines the myth that Maori are also not represented by the state).  Cultural is not homogeneous.  It is not defined by ancestry, or ethnicity, or religion.  It is multifaceted.  In a world where people make connections across boundaries with modern communications technologies, people are themselves multicultural as they have relationships based on business, family, sports, arts and other interests.  The cold monaural world of "identity politics", which more than a few Maori educators inculcate among their students, is quite simply inaccurate.

The neo-Marxist "identity politics" view means that anyone who "identifies" as Maori is, by definition, disadvantaged by the state and society.  This is regardless of their personal wealth, education achievements, employment or own individual status.  Maori are, in the world of the likes of Harawira, automatically oppressed.  Daughters of lawyers and doctors, who are Maori, are deemed "disadvantaged" and deemed fit for affirmative action programmes, whereas sons of labourers or convicted violent criminals or cleaners, who are "Pakeha", are deemed to not be so deserving, as the state is presumed to be on "their side".

Identity politics have plagued much of the world for centuries.  It isn't just Europe or countries once colonised by Europeans that have been damned by it.  

Those that reject this view blithely and cheaply throw the word "racist" at it.  They think that for Maori to exist and be acknowledged, the state must treat Maori as a distinct entity, separate from the state and implicitly not represented by the state.  The Maori seats help entrench that by implying that a Maori voter is somehow, peculiarly, not represented as well as a non-Maori voter.  

Maori are separate from the state, as individuals themselves are.  However, it is time that the tired view trotted out by the likes of Hone Harawira, Margaret Mutu, Metirei Turei and other nationalists is confronted for the poison that it is.  It denies any need for the state to be colourblind, it demeans and diminishes the status and rights of all those who do not identify as Maori, and actually diminishes the individual rights of Maori by focusing on "rights" of corporate iwi entities, politicians and governmental entities.

There are three parties in Parliament that explicitly embrace the nationalist view of Maori relations with the state (Mana, Maori and Green), and three which appease it (Labour, National and United).  Could there be a party that rejects this without being so blundering in its language that it can be interpreted as being denigrating to Maori?

22 November 2011

Asset sales bad, asset purchases good?

A simple, impertinent question, to ask all those on the left of the political spectrum in New Zealand.  Labour, the Greens, Mana, NZ First (socialism can be nationalist) and the Maori Party.

You are all trying to scaremonger, use barely shrouded xenophobia to frighten the average voter into being opposed to the government selling assets.  The first thing you all emphasise is that "foreigners" will take over, with the implication that foreigners will be out to rip off consumers.  Even in competitive sectors (like electricity, which has five suppliers, or aviation where Air NZ ran 100% private for 12 years, including 4 years under a Labour government).  The implication being the foreigners are devils, unlike the benign, beloved New Zealand government.

The second thing you do is contradict yourself.  Whilst you imply that the assets you want to keep provide cheaper services (and goods if you include Solid Energy) than they would if owned by foreign devils, you then say the government will be losing out on lucrative revenue.   Hold on.  This lucrative revenue comes from the consumers you don't want ripped off.   Are you implying the government could make more money from consumers that it does now from these assets (given you think the government making money from selling goods and services is a good thing), or that taxpayers (the people who effectively carry the liabilities, but don't directly carry the benefits) are getting a lower rate of return than they would have done, had you simply gone out and bought them shares on the stockmarket on their behalf (or better yet, let them invest the money themselves)?

However, your biggest contradiction is in your attitude to the two sides of the government asset ledger.  The government buying assets has considerable costs.   

Labour bought Kiwirail at a price well in excess of its market value, and subsequently Labour and National have spent over NZ$750 million - which is greater than the purchase price itself, in buying more "assets" for the business.  This is money that has come from borrowing, it is money from taxpayers pockets, and is money that is almost certainly never going to be recovered ever from them.  The main beneficiaries of this are the foreign (devils they are not now) businesses who manufacture these assets (don't even start claiming you can make tiny short runs of trains in New Zealand when mass production of cars is grotesquely inefficient on the scale of a country this side), and the small number of New Zealand businesses that benefit from rail freight being effectively subsidised (Fonterra, forestry companies, Solid Energy, freight forwarders, shipping companies).  Why is this good?  Don't use words like "strategic", "environment", "future-proofing", use financial measures, like you use for asset sales.   Why can't you?   Why don't you consider the enormous transaction costs of that purchase, and the Air New Zealand transaction? 

Beyond that obvious example, there is Kiwibank, Air New Zealand and indeed any capital expenditure by the state in any sector.   You don't seem to care when the state increases its pool of "assets" (regardless of whether they raise revenue, most don't), you don't care whether consumers get a good deal from those assets or their owners,  you don't care whether taxpayers make money from them.   

In other words, you don't apply the same standard to asset purchases as you seek to apply to asset sales.

Is that because you are all really full-blown socialists who believe in public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and like the growth of government ownership of the economy?  (surely you don't all think like that?)  

Or is it because you are conveniently using this rather modest policy (yes National doesn't have many that are easy to argue or communicate), one that in almost every OECD country would be considered relatively benign and inconsequential by the political mainstream (far-left and far-right excluded), to bait the rather deep seated xenophobia and "tall poppy" suspicion of quite a few New Zealanders, who are inately suspicious of foreign business people, and subscribe to the Muldoonist paternalistic feeling that you can't really trust business people to "see you right"?

You want to frighten people into thinking that foreigners will rip them off, will "asset strip" these "great assets" and the country will be "worse off" because people like you don't control them and don't spend the money raised by them.  You like them to believe you are better at spending their money than they are, and that you're a kinder gentler business person than they are.

In other words, aren't you all just playing the Winston Peters card?