Dame Anne Salmond recently wrote a column on Newsroom berating people for having views on the Treaty of Waitangi when they cannot even read the Māori version of the treaty.
So, what she is saying is that even when customs, laws or treaties impinge on your daily life, you cannot hold any views on these matters if you are unable to read the relevant documents in their original form.
It is safe to say that this view would come as a bit of a surprise to biblical scholars who are not well versed in all of Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Clearly no Hindu or Buddhist can have any views on their own religion if they cannot read Sanskrit. And no one can say anything about Islam if they are not familiar with Arabic.
Immigrants to countries like France or Germany can express no views on tax or social welfare policies if they cannot read, write or speak the language!
This is obviously ridiculous and highly parochial. I have a feeling that even Dame Anne understands that frivolity of her argument.
What Dame Anne is engaging in is what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls “bullshit”.
This is where intellectuals and policy makers, who have no good answers to valid questions from regular people, essentially resort to using jargon to sidestep the matter.
The message is: We are smarter than you, we know better. You are not smart enough to understand how things work. So, shut up and sit down while we tell you exactly what is true even if what we are telling you differs dramatically from what you are experiencing in your own lives. We will be your one single source of truth.
But it is difficult to remain silent in the face of events that affect our lives fundamentally. For instance, in all of the talk about co-governance and Māori sovereignty (or lack thereof) where exactly do the quarter of the population that are neither Māori nor Pakeha fit in?
If and when the Labour Party comes back to power and empowers the worst excesses of the Te Pati Māori, their favoured coalition partners, what happens to this group of people? Do they have a future in what is now often referred to as Aotearoa rather than New Zealand?
I recently spoke to a journalist who asked me how concerned I was that New Zealand may fall into all out sectarian warfare where the property rights of some groups are no longer guaranteed. I responded by saying that I think the probability of this happening is not high, but it is clearly not zero.
Countries do reach tipping points when the old norms are set aside (see the events in the US currently for an example). It seems to me that in New Zealand we may be at one of those pivotal moments in history where New Zealand needs to choose between being a liberal democracy or an ethno-centric nation.
The same journalist asked me my views on righting historic inequities. I understand this. But the problem is that many commentators like Dame Anne are arguing for righting historic inequities via creating current inequities. How is this any better?
The best answer to addressing historic inequities is a liberal democracy, where same laws apply to everyone, where everyone counts equally, and everyone gets the help, and the opportunities proportionate to their needs.
As David Lange, not a white supremacist, as far as I know, pointed out in a 2000 speech (paragraph 9):
"Here I come back to the government’s aim of closing the gaps between rich and poor, and the way in which it was overtaken in public understanding by the subsidiary goal of closing the gaps between Māori and the rest. I don’t describe the second goal as lesser than the first out of any wish to minimise the effect of growing inequality on Māori people. What I mean is that from the point of view of a democratic government, the first goal can encompass the second, but the second can’t encompass the first. If the government’s goal is to reduce inequality, it follows that it will do whatever it can to improve the position of Māori.
Democratic government can accommodate Māori political aspiration in many ways. It can allocate resources in ways which reflect the particular interests of Māori people. It can delegate authority and allow the exercise of degrees of Māori autonomy. What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government, or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both."
If your response to people seeking equality among citizens is to suggest that one cannot ask questions if one does not understand te reo Māori, then your argument is not particularly strong, and you have likely lost the debate already.
Ananish Chaudhuri, PhD.
Professor of Experimental Economics | University of Auckland
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