A Cause Too Far

Maori Sovereignty On the Rise

Sometimes controversy is useful in that it pulls back the veil, exposing what people really think. The controversy within the Maori Party over the Marine Bill is an apt example. Maoridom is in deep trouble.

Firstly, we believe it increasingly likely the Maori Party will not survive as a stand-alone political party. It may end up merging with the Greens or Labour, but Maori politics is clearly riven. It appears possible, if not likely, that Humpty Dumpty will not be put back together again. Party leader, Tariana Turia complains that too many Maori do not understand Parliamentary democracies. She means by this that an influential and articulate group of Maori have reached the point of becoming zealots for a cause. The cause is Maori sovereignty. Any support, for any programme or law which does not deliver now is regarded as a feckless compromise of principle.

Turia, however, is a gradualist. She too is a Maori sovereigntist, but she takes a long term view. She believes the battle must be fought and won inter-generationally. She sees Maori coming back to the cherry for repeated bites until they secure their goal of being co-rulers in New Zealand--which, as she sees it, is nothing more nor less then Maori's rightful place. She revealed her perspective in an impromptu speech at the party's recent meeting.

And I think that what we have got now (in the Marine Bill) is not the greatest deal in town but I will tell you that it wouldn't matter who the Government was. The fact of it is that National and Labour, their voting public is what we call middle New Zealand and they are the ones who actually rule the Government.

Those Governments go out and they poll every week to see what middle New Zealand is saying and do you really think from your experience out there at home that they are on our side.

That's why it is so difficult. It doesn't matter what our take [issue] is, be it tr (sic) reo, be it whatever, it is always going to be an uphill battle. But hey, watch this space because over the next 40 years Aotearoa is browning up and it will be at that time that our mokopuna will come back and they will take their rightful place as leaders in this land and they are the ones who will take us forward.

Turia believes that Maori birth rates will mean within a generation they will command enough votes to ensure the constitutional changes they seek. Maori will achieve its rightful place as leaders of New Zealand. Co-sovereignty, if not outright sovereignty, is the goal. She, however, advocates a non-revolutionary gradualism in achieving it. She is playing within the rules, as it were.

But the radical sovereigntists are not only absolute in their convictions. Like all ideologues they are also impatient. Hone Harawira is their poster boy. Hone has two mantras: "no compromise" and "now". Hone is one of those benighted chaps who believes that if he does not secure everything he would prefer to secure nothing, otherwise he would be guilty of a tawdry capitulation to principle. He is joined in this by a younger (now middle aged) educated Maori elite who have swallowed the historical revisionism perpetrated upon the Treaty of Waitangi, and who really do believe that the Treaty gave the Maori co-sovereignty rights over New Zealand. This belief, to them, is so fundamental, no compromise is possible. They believe that nothing good will come to Maori until their mana is restored.

So Hone is constantly cheered on; he seems to be arriving at the point where he believes that within the Maori Party he alone speaks genuinely for Maori.

Mr Harawira said last week that when Dr Sharples and Mrs Turia spoke they represented the interests of the party. "When I speak I represent the interests of the electorate, I represent the interests of a sector of our community that does not accept this bill."

Note the slur upon his colleagues. They have become compromised. They no longer really represent Maori. I alone speak what they really believe inside, but are too compromised to say out loud.

"The division isn't there at all. All I'm doing is voting the way all of my colleagues feel and voting the way a lot of Maori people feel about this second piece of legislation.

Now the rumour is swirling that Hone is going to make a bid for leadership of the party. According to one of his cheerleaders, David Rankin,

"Over the past several weeks, I have been informed by two people close to the Maori Party hierarchy that Hone Harawira is planning a coup against the party's co-leaders, Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples," Mr Rankin said yesterday. . . . Mr Rankin said Mr Harawira was to challenge his leadership over the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill, which replaces the foreshore and seabed legislation and passed its first reading on Wednesday. . . .

Mr Rankin said: "Maoridom themselves do want (sic) the foreshore and seabed returned to them with total ownership and total control and Hone's preaching this and what's happening is he's getting a massive groundswell of support from the people. "It is clear that Hone does not have the numbers in the parliamentary party for a successful leadership bid but among the party membership, his support is substantial, and party officials are looking at that support base and wondering whether they can afford to squander it."

This is a revealing quotation. According to Rankin, Maori stand with Harawira--with the ideology of no-compromise co-sovereignty. They have bought the bill of goods. This is understandable, of course. For generations Maori have been indoctrinated in the politics of envy and victimhood. The co-sovereignty narrative fits perfectly into that paradigm. But envy is rarely patient and never reasonable. Envy, coupled with the inevitable attendant sense of grievance and injustice, would rather see everything destroyed for everyone than the present inequity to continue. Hence, Harawira's "now or nothing" approach to the foreshore issue.

Secondly, Rankin reveals the operating paradigm of co-sovereignty. "Maoridom themselves do want (sic) the foreshore and seabed returned to them with total ownership and total control." Ooops. The cat is out of the bag. Total ownership and total control. Only fools and blind horses would not face up to this with intellectual integrity. Yet it is the dirty secret which no-one wants to talk about publicly--certainly not in the mainstream media. Prevailing white liberal guilt prohibits it.

Imagine the (legitimate) furore if Brian Tamaki declared, "Destiny wants the foreshore and seabed returned to its members, with total ownership and total control." The rumblings of outrage and malcontent would deafen even the most hardened Christchurch quake survivor. But, with Rankin and the Maori co-sovereigntists (or outright sovereigntists)--not a murmur registering anywhere on the Richter scale.

What will the outcome be for Maori? One scenario is to be thoroughly post-modern and argue that in our pomo world, the paradigm of Harawira and Rankin is not only valid, it is legitimate. They may well succeed in overthrowing (by means violent or peaceful, it matters not) the current constitutional arrangements and indeed Maori sovereignty will come to pass. Who knows? Who cares? It is all a mess of pomo pottage to which our culture well and truly sold its birthright long ago.

Another scenario would be the triumph of Turia's gradualism. The Maori Party will continue to forge a very successful and powerful alliance with the white liberal middle classes which fondly cheers on Turia and her colleagues as a way of assuaging their feelings of guilt and pity. This coupled with the "browning" of the population will mean that the two main political parties will both cede more and more national sovereignty up to Maori elites. (After all, this has been the actual reality for over two decades now.)

A third scenario is that the Maori Party will split and evaporate as a viable political force. But the ideology of Maori sovereignty will not go away. At least not in the foreseeable future. Grievance politics do not die, they continue to fester until they break out once again in suppurating sores.

The sad part is that none of this will really help Maori. It all represents false diagnoses and false cures. Maori must repent and return to the Lord Jesus Christ. Once, when the Gospel of our Lord first came to their fathers, Maori responded out of their deep degradation and great need. But within two generations their hearts grew first cold to Christ, then hard, and yet porous like Rangitoto scoria. Into that porous rock has flowed every kind of false gospel, from socialism to Mormonism to animism. Degradation and re-enslavement has been the outcome. The current popular false gospel of co-sovereignty, breathtaking in its hubris and arrogance, will, if successful, prove to be the most destructive yet.

When it comes to rebellion against God, beware of what you wish. He who sows to the wind, reaps the whirlwind.