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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics article by writer Chris Trotter
MP Willie Jackson’s Dilemma
The good news is that Willie Jackson has been spooked into a measure of common sense. So concerned is the Maori Development Minister by the contents of the draft plan for implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that he is refusing to present it to cabinet.
A moment’s thought will confirm the significance of Jackson’s decision. If a stalwart advocate of Maori economic and social advancement of Jackson’s vintage has been left shaking his head, then the draft plan must be as near as dammit to He Puapua as makes no difference.
Therein lies Jackson’s problem. The moment the He Puapua report entered the public domain it was too late to order it to be shredded. It became a ticking political time-bomb that could only be defused with the co-operation of all sides of the tino rangatiratanga debate. That it was not – yet – a government document was, however, a godsend for Jackson and the Labour Government. They had, at least, a few months to do what was required to prevent a politically fatal explosion.
This was, of course, the reason why Jackson and his colleagues asked Maoridom to respond to the UNDRIP/He Puapua challenge first – and behind closed doors. The hope was, clearly, that the good and the great of Maoridom would bend all their powers to producing a draft plan of action that the Labour Government – not to mention the rest of New Zealand – could live with.
Unfortunately for Labour, that is not what happened. After 70 hui across the country, the mood of Maoridom was made strikingly clear. UNDRIP is not a document to be finessed with fine phrases and then fobbed-off with only a handful of hard-and-fast recommendations. The radical vision of He Puapua had already worked its magic. Nothing less than a bi-cultural, co-governed Aotearoa would be deemed acceptable – especially by the younger generation of Maori nationalists.
How radical is the draft plan? Radical enough to recommend one justice system for Pakeha and another for Maori. This is the late Moana Jackson’s vision of the future. His body may be in the ground, but his spirit is strong among that part of Maoridom for whom the full reclamation of tino rangatiratanga is now non-negotiable.
The realisation that ‘responsible Maoridom’ had not come through for him must have struck Jackson hard. So hard that he was forced back onto that most traditional of Labour memes: the fundamental decency and common sense of the New Zealand working-class. Jackson’s interim solution to the draft plan’s imminent crisis is to divide the intellectuals and ideologues responsible for the He Puapua vision from the ordinary, hard-working, Maori New Zealander:
I know what the average Maori will think and they’re not walking around every day thinking about the United Nations’ Declaration of Indigenous Peoples – they’re thinking about their housing, their health, their education.
Well, yes. But Jackson’s problem is that his Pakeha colleagues have been aggressively selling the notion that Maori housing, health and education can only be improved by the rest of New Zealand living up to Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s implicit promise of “partnership”. Now, generally-speaking, it’s a pretty safe bet that working-class people have a great deal more on their minds than politics. But, that doesn’t mean that they’re deaf. Tell them that their future and politics are intimately entwined often enough, and loudly enough, and, you never know, they just might start paying attention. Labour may just have lumbered itself with a revolution of rising expectations.
This is the essence of Jackson’s dilemma: he can neither withdraw, nor water down, the draft plan without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering political fire. His Pakeha colleagues face the same problem – in reverse. If the Labour Cabinet signs up to a dual legal system, then all hell will break loose.
Jackson gets it:
You can imagine some of the wants or asks from [Maori], but as I remind them, it’s not just about them. It’s about what do we want to do as a government and how do we want to honour that declaration and how do we realistically go forward getting people to recognise there are indigenous obligations without them thinking we’re going to take their houses off them.
Which is precisely why the revolutionary He Puapua report should have been shredded the moment it emerged from the Maori nationalist dream-factory that manufactured it.
Still, it’s an ill wind that blows no good. Labour’s dilemma is Te Paati Maori’s red, white and black opportunity. Any watering-down, let alone withdrawal, of the draft plan will be seized upon by Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as proof positive of Pakeha Labour’s perfidy. After five years of promising Maori the moon, after repeated pledges to institute co-governance, the Labour government will have proved that, when push comes to shove, it is no more willing than any other coloniser to surrender its white privilege.
And to Jackson’s colleagues in Labour’s Maori caucus, Te Paati Maori will jeer: ‘Fool me once, shame on you: fool me hundreds of times, and I must be a Maori Labour Party MP!’
Paradoxically, earning such angry rebukes from Te Paati Maori just might be the best response Labour could hope for. Making a solid democratic virtue out of rejecting the separatist recommendations of the draft plan is probably the only way this Government can remain a contender in the 2023 election. Such a strategy would also allow Jackson to sharpen his class analysis of Maori society. (What a pity he will be unable to point to the tangible gains in housing, health and education that might have made such a strategy viable!)
Not that the right should feel free to sit back with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy the movie. If, in the admittedly unlikely event that the parliamentary right/left balance remains relatively even, the parliamentary support of a Te Paati Maori swollen with the votes of those Maori outraged at yet another Labour betrayal (anybody remember the Seabed and Foreshore?) may prove critical to National and Act being able to form a government.
What price will be extracted from Christopher Luxon for the votes of Te Paati Maori?
The last time such a question was put to a National leader, the answer turned out to be the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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