OPINION
New Zealand’s mainstream media have been clever. When the former Maori Development Minister informed the nation that he knew of Maori who would ‘make war’ if the incoming government committed itself to holding a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi, his comments were reported. No one would be justified in accusing the nation’s editors of suppressing Jackson’s comments. What defenders of New Zealand’s democratic values and institutions would be justified in observing, however, is that Jackson’s inflammatory remarks were not given the prominence they merited.
Twenty years ago, a senior Maori politician claiming to know tangata whenua willing to ‘make war’ upon their fellow citizens – rather than permit them to vote on the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi – would have been front-page news. And rightly so.
To threaten the peace and tranquillity of the state with the threat of war is about as serious as it gets. A senior politician and former minister of the crown, upon hearing such threats and believing them to be genuine, is morally obligated to inform the police and the Security Intelligence Service. Why? Because even the threat of levying war against the Crown is treason.
That the threat is being made in response to the mere possibility that the opinion of the nation’s citizens might be sought, by way of a referendum, on the meaning of an historical agreement signed by representatives of the British Crown and diverse Maori chieftains, more than 180 years ago, makes matters considerably worse. What sort of person threatens to ‘make war’ over a measure as quintessentially democratic as a referendum? What is the message conveyed by the person or persons issuing such a threat?
First and foremost, the assumption conveyed is that the nation’s citizens, collectively, are likely to take a position on the Treaty that is radically at odds with those threatening to ‘make war’. More succinctly: they think they’d lose.
But, to threaten violence against a majority of the population, even before a vote has been taken, signals many things – none of them wholesome. Clearly, those behind this threat have absolutely no respect for democracy. They are indifferent to the duty of every citizen to accept the outcome of the democratic process. Without such acceptance, democracy cannot function. To reject the will of the majority is to proclaim one’s preference for a political system in which the will of the minority prevails.
That this position is often disguised behind a declared abhorrence for the ‘tyranny of the majority’ in no way makes it more acceptable. Those who resort to this kind of rhetoric expect their audience to think about all manner of vulnerable minorities – gays, transgender, Muslims, Jews – rendered unsafe by the prejudices of the majority. Implied, but not stated, is the idea that there should be some power greater than the people, some institution with the authority to overrule and/or strike down the majority’s prejudices. A Supreme Court, or constitutional council: a body against whose judgements the bigots will protest in vain.
This argument cannot stand, however, because at its heart it rests, once again, on the notion that, in certain situations, the judgement of a minority (about the rights of a minority) must be allowed to outweigh the will of a majority.
But a moment’s consideration of New Zealand’s social and political history lays bare the falsity of this notion. The most obvious case in point is the struggle of gay New Zealanders to free themselves from the legislative regulation of their sexual lives. Not having a judiciary empowered to strike down such legislation (always assuming our judges were of a mind to change the law and not as prejudiced against homosexuality as the rest of the population) the gay community had no other option but to make its case for acceptance, and personal freedom, to the people of New Zealand. They had to soften hearts and change minds, or, at least, to liberalise the thinking of a majority of the people’s representatives. Which is exactly what gay New Zealanders did. It didn’t happen overnight – but it did happen.
Clearly, the Maori conveying threats of war to Pakeha New Zealanders via Willie Jackson lack the good faith in the good sense and compassion of the ordinary voter that underpinned the struggle for gay rights. Obviously, these Maori are convinced that their case for constitutional change would be dismissed out-of-hand by a majority of the electorate. So convinced are they, that the arguments they reach for, by way of an alternative to free and open debate culminating in a vote, are the guns and bombs of the political terrorist.
Meaning that Jackson’s informants, in addition to rejecting the principles and practices of democracy in favour of minority rule, are prepared to unleash violence against those they perceive to be standing in their way. Like the Palestinians, they see their homeland, “Aotearoa”, occupied by colonisers. Their rights – as Aotearoa’s ‘indigenous’ people – include the right to resist, by any means necessary, the occupation of the colonial oppressors.
Whether or not Jackson accepts this position matters less than that he clearly understands the arguments for constitutional change currently being advanced by Maori make it very difficult to see how tangata whenua and tangata tiriti could continue to occupy the space we call New Zealand, without the country’s multicultural majority submitting, constitutionally, to the will of the Maori minority.
Jackson confirmed as much when he steadfastly refused to submit the report of his special, hand-picked group of constitutional reformers. He was simply unwilling to put the group’s proposals to Cabinet, fearful that if the document was leaked to the media, and ordinary New Zealanders finally got to see what Maori were anticipating by way of the ‘indigenisation’ and ‘decolonisation’ of their country, then all hell would break loose.
That report remains under wraps. The incoming government would be doing itself, and the country, a big favour by releasing its contents to the public. At a stroke, all the fears inspired by the ‘unofficial’ He Puapua Report – itself kept secret – would be confirmed.
But that’s not all that would happen. If the suppressed report of the constitutional reformers was released to the public, and examined in depth by editors and journalists, it is highly likely that the ACT Party’s proposal for a referendum on the Treaty’s meaning would, overnight, become an urgent public demand.
That being the case, the mainstream media would almost certainly conclude that, in the interests of combatting the white supremacy and racism endemic to our settler society, its coverage of the report should be limited to a 300-word news story on page five – and never mentioned again.