Trying to pull a Guy Fawkes on the nation’s founding document
Weekend freebie edition
Hello! Here’s this week’s freebie edition of More Than A Feilding which begins in the customary way with an invitation to become a paying subscriber.
I’d love to be able to give it all away, but sadly New World and the bookshop and Hammer Hardware continue to put their stuff behind a paywall, so I’m forced to follow suit. Trust you understand.
In a moment, this week's free edition, Trying to pull a Guy Fawkes on the nation’s founding document plus a preview of other recent editions.
But first, the button.
Trying to pull a Guy Fawkes on the nation’s founding document
Sunday column Jan 21
You might look at this dismal trio, Prime Minister, Deputy, Deputy -in-waiting, and think: how could anyone take these people seriously? Surely they can’t last.
But what if the people who've put them there don't take them all that seriously either?
What if they don't need them to be any good, they just want to see them doing - or not doing - what they’re wanting?
That would make it a lot easier to explain the first poll of the year. National over 40%, NZ First falling away a bit, ACT sitting comfortably.
What did their voters want to see them doing?
The expectation of the National voters seems to have been just let us go back to what we were doing and never mind that it’s not sustainable. Just let us drive, drive, drive and keep on driving up the price of houses and pretend we can go on like this forever.
If you just want to be able to go back to the way things were, and to hell with the consequences, then you really won't be much worried if the Prime Minister is a meaningless blatherer.
Not forgetting, of course, everyone who spent money to get them elected: the tobacco people, the fossil fuel people, the property people. National clearly hasn’t forgotten.
Winston's loonies mainly want someone hanged. But he knows how to keep them waiting.
And then there's the ACT Party trying to pull a Guy Fawkes on the nation’s founding document with their treaty principles bill.
Not that they’re putting it that way. They claim to be just clarifying things,constitutionally. Well, who could object to that?
They claim to be getting the principles agreed and settled. Again, sounds sort of reasonable, eh?
But if you’re at all familiar with the treaty and the history, you’ll know that what’s at play here is wilful misrepresentation.
Their leaked Bill proposes three new principles based on the Articles of the Treaty:
Article 1: the New Zealand government has the right to govern all New Zealanders
Article 2: the New Zealand Government will honour all New Zealanders in the chieftainship of their land and all their property:
Article 3: all New Zealanders are equal under the law with the same rights and duties.
At first blush that might sound okay. But it entirely distorts what has so far been agreed and done. It’s trying to take us off in a new direction, and not in a good way.
In the fascinating and horrifying world of nature, we can find a parallel.
Cordyceps is a genus of fungi that infects a host insect, taking over its body, and eventually producing fruiting bodies (mushrooms) that emerge from the host's body to release spores. That is to say they get inside another living thing and take it over.
And that's what that nice, reasonable David Seymour is trying to do here with Te Tiriti. It makes a new set of foundational constitutional principles that mirror the founding document. But in crucial ways it resets it in terms that serve to undermine and marginalise the original partners to the agreement.
Astute eyes on social media taking their first look at the leak could see the score.
As well as being an obscenely meaningless travesty of Te Tiriti, the phrase “chieftainship for all NZers” sounds a hell of a lot like “Sovereign Citizenship”, which tells you everything about where it’s coming from. It is absolutely ACT setting up for “you can’t have pollution standards, that’s a violation of chieftainship”, “you can’t stop people beating their kids, that’s a violation of chieftainship”, “you can’t stop people wandering around a hospital with whooping cough, that’s…”
One phrase in particular strikes me: with the same rights and duties.
Perhaps they are thinking of duties like don't pollute, and don't rip people off, and don't be evil. But we know the tune that goes with these words. Duties, in this context, is much more likely to be code for: Don't you be putting your hand out any more. We’ve had a gutsful of the decency of the welfare state.
Anna Coddington put this on her Instagram, and it’s excellent:
One thing we all need to understand about this is that @actnewzealand have grossly cherry picked from the 3 articles of Te Tiriti and have done so from the te reo Māori version in an attempt to legitimise it to non-Māori who can’t understand what those articles actually say. David Seymour is a part Māori man, presenting sections of a Māori language document and telling people it means something it doesn’t. In particular…
The proposed article 2 erases historical theft of Māori land. Passing this into law would protect stolen land in the hands of current “owners”. This also ignores the words preceding those printed here: “Ko te Kuini o Ingarani ka wakarite ka wakaae ki nga Rangatira ki nga hapu”- “the Queen guarantees to Rangatira (Māori chiefs) and to hapū”… the chieftainship of their land and property. I don’t think anyone disputes that such promise was not honoured. Vast amounts of land and property were stolen. Māori today still live with the fall out of that. But you’re trying to…. pretend that didn’t happen?
The proposed article 3 also ignores key parts of the text. It also seems like it’s been edited by someone who doesn’t speak Māori because the cherry picked section starts in a weird place. What Te Tiriti actually says is “Ka tiakina e te Kuini o Ingarani nga tangata maori katoa o Nu Tirani ka tukua ki a ratou nga tikanga katoa rite tahi ki ana mea ki nga tangata o Ingarani”. Tiaki means protect. The Queen promised to protect ngā tāngata Māori- the Māori people- and give them the same rights as English people. That didn’t happen 🙃 Act would have you believe that we all have the same rights now but I would argue otherwise (maybe in another post this one is long enough).
These proposals are simplistic and moronic. They show a clear lack of understanding of what they’re trying to “clarify” without bothering to consult people who do understand it.
Non-Māori friends, tāngata Tiriti mā, don’t underestimate how triggered and tired your Māori mates are gonna be in the next couple years. Writing posts like this is tedious but I can’t fathom letting this go past my eyes without comment. Hei āpōpō Māori mā! #toitūtetiriti
Notionally, of course, none of this matters. Luxon and Paul Goldsmith have been at pains to say they won't support it past the first reading.
But just getting things framed in this way is undermining. And the ACT people, and the Taxpayers Union meme-makers, and the ThinkTank types, they all know: all you need to do is pour this stuff into the empty vessel that is our modern media and let it ferment. You take advantage of a lack of knowledge to present something that sounds rational and reasonable but which serves to undermine and marginalise. And you just repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes accepted wisdom. Here we go again.
Complacent neglect by Luxon’s crew is bad enough. But this stuff is awful.
Also this week in More Than A Feilding
Friday
Week in review, quiz style
Thursday
Get better work stories, get bigger words
Luxon, NZ First, Big Tobacco, and the Scrabble of life
Wednesday
A nice solid proposition
So. Won't it be great to see that 80 billion get invested thanks to the government plan to borrow it all and then dish it out over three big authorities responsible for getting all the overdue work done?
Oh wait! Silly us! We voted no to that because all the election billboards said this is a plan to give all the water to the Māoris. Don't divide us, lefty government and Māoris with your evil plan!
So now there's sewage in the water and all the pipes are leaking, and the wall of money is not coming to live with us and be our new Daddy after all.
Tuesday
A bit further on from the edge of nowhere
Four nice things for a Tuesday
Monday
Don’t let them fool you, ordinary folk of Aotearoa!
In order to achieve fairness, we need to allow for unfairness that has come before
I sometimes give the NZ Herald the epithet Waikato Invader in recognition of its origins: a newspaper established by Auckland business interests to press the case for a war of colonist oppression and confiscation and annihilation.
Not that they put it that way. But that’s what it was.
Its response over the weekend—the Waikato Invader— to a vast coming together of tangata whenua, a gathering of enormous meaning and power and emotion, was to all but ignore it. Given their extensive front page coverage of irate white men on tractors in recent times, it's hard not to see bias.
