Changes in the National Party leadership have brought to the fore, in the media at least, some important questions:
- To what extent should one’s standing in a political party be based on merit?
- To what extent on gender?
- To what extent on indigenousness? (race being too broad a term).
There is no simple answer. Let us assume, for example, that a party’s leadership team comprises 50% making it on merit, 25% on gender and 25% on indigenousness. But what if a person falls into two of these categories? What if a competent woman holds the role of party leader, as would seem to be the case now? Is she counted twice, once on the merit basis and once on the gender basis? Or is she counted only once (merit or gender) leaving an empty space for another contender to enter the leadership team? What if a Maori woman makes it on merit, is she counted three times (merit/gender/indigenousness) or only once, thereby creating spaces for two other contenders?
Another question that remains unaddressed is the sexual proclivities of people in a party’s leadership team. There seems to be no public record of such. We do not know to what extent, if at all, people are being discriminated against because of their homosexuality, their lesbianism, their bisexuality or their transgenderism. For all we know there may be a Maori lesbian who cannot make it into the leadership team on merit but should certainly be considered on three other counts: gender, indigenousness and lesbianism.
Finally, there is the vexed question of left handedness versus right handedness. Some 10% of the population is left handed but there appears to be no study to determine whether they are fairly represented in party leadership. This is a shocking oversight. We know, for instance, that the greatest political leader in living memory, Winston Churchill, was left handed.
On the other hand, so too is Barak Obama so perhaps this is a matter best left to another time.
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