Citizenship and Voting in New Zealand

An Archaic Anomaly That Needs Fixing

[We reproduce an essay by Michael Reddell, writing in Croaking Cassandra]

. . .  today I wanted to focus on the one chapter that really caught my attention, by Kate McMillan, a senior lecturer in politics at Victoria.  Her chapter bears the title “Fairness and the borders around political community”, and isn’t really about immigration, per se, at all.   Rather she focuses on something I’d never known before, that New Zealand is very unusual internationally in when we allow new arrivals to vote.

Only five countries in the world have provisions allowing resident non-citizens to vote: Malawi, Chile, Ecuador and Uruguay –  none known these days for taking many immigrants –  and New Zealand.   In most countries, only citizens get the right to vote in national elections (there is a much wider range of rules for local elections in many countries).  The United Kingdom also allows residents who are citizens of the Republic of Ireland or “qualifying” citizens of Commonwealth countries to vote in parliamentary elections, but there is no general entitlement for non-citizens residents (including those from EU countries other than Ireland).

New Zealand’s rules seem to have evolved from something very like the British system.  Until 1975, “the right to vote in New Zealand local and national elections was granted only to British subject adults who had been resident in New Zealand for at least a year”, and similar provisions had been in place in Canada and Australia.  McMillan reports that Canada and Australia at around this time shifted to a citizenship-based voting rights model, the same choice that had been made by most new states as they decolonised in the post-war decades (Malawi presumably being the exception).

New Zealand made a different choice.

Reality and the Past

There is None That Does Good--No, Not One

Over the past couple of years or so we have witnessed ideological cadres of the Left wanting to tear down all societal monuments and reminiscences of those who are now deemed impure.  In the United States, for example, public monuments to Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate general, are under attack--literally.

Some New Zealand academics have started a "me-too" dance.  Got to keep up with our brothers and sisters in the US.  A junior lecturer at Massey University has discovered that William F. Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1912-1925) was a flippin' racist.  (Please excuse the academic jargon).  Therefore, said activist has argued, Massey University (named after the errant PM) bears guilt by association.  The name of the University should be changed.

A racially-charged debate is igniting over research that has revealed "white supremacist" comments made by the prime minister Massey University is named after.  Now, almost a century on, a top academic is calling for the university to consider a name change.  The controversial call comes from Massey lecturer and recent PhD scholar Steve Elers, who was startled to uncover blatantly racist comments made by William Ferguson Massey.  [Stuff]

Elers has discovered the following sentiments expressed by Massey:

No Firsts Among "Equals"

False Egalitarianism

We were irritated to read recently about an elite special military unit--consisting of both Australians and New Zealanders--whose courage, skills, and exploits have been suppressed for decades.  For no good reason, it would seem.

One can understand suppression of military exploits that might expose those who participated to danger.  Or, if the danger would come to those presently serving, we can understand keeping things locked in a deep, dark dungeon.  All of this would appear very reasonable.  But not this time.

Families of a forgotten World War II crack commando unit are calling on the New Zealand Government to officially recognise their behind-enemy-lines feats more than 70 years on.  There were 22 New Zealanders who signed up to the ultra-secret Z Special Unit which caused mayhem waging a guerrilla war against the Japanese in the Pacific.

But after the war, they were silenced by 30-year secrecy agreements.  Many died before they could tell anyone - even their wives and families - exactly what they did in the war. [NZ Herald]

What state, or military secrets were being protected, one wonders, by the secrecy?  The Aussies have at last seen the light and decided to allow their heroes to come out into the light.  But not NZ.

Tricks Upon the Dead

The Webs of Deceit

The cynic, Voltaire gave us a bon mot about the discipline of history.  We have often had cause to mention it in the pages of this blog.  "History," he said, "is the living playing tricks upon the dead."  He meant that history is made up and told to serve the interests of those who write, not those they write about.  He would have known.  He was part of one of the greatest mythological revisions of Western history we have yet seen.  As one of the Enlightenment philosphes he was one of the scribblers re-writing history to glorify ancient paganism and demonise the Christian faith.  He was grinding his own axe, and he knew it.  Consequently, he was cynical about the entire enterprise of historical research.

For all serious and professional historians, a good adage is, "Beware the revisionists".  It beholds anyone to inquire about any particular axes being ground.  Revisionist causes are alive and well when it comes to New Zealand history.  Central are contentions now trumpeted as infallible truth about the Treaty of Waitangi. 

Here is the debate in a nutshell.  Firstly, for the revisionists:

A Much Needed Corrective, Part III

Disinterring The Good From the Bones

As we have often recounted, Voltaire astutely observed that the writing of history is a trick the living play upon the dead.  He would have known.  He lived amidst and participated in one of the great acts of historical revisionism.  The "historians" of the Enlightenment deliberately rewrote and recast Western history to become of narrative of classical (pagan) glories, followed by a millennium of Christian ignorance, superstition, and darkness.  The classic of the genre (but by no means an isolated case) is Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Voltaire's sneer is apropos.

Early New Zealand history has been similarly recast.  The trick played upon the dead in this instance--both Maori and pakeha--is that Christianity in general and the missionaries in particular were a perfidious influence.  The myth of the noble savage has emerged once again.  Rousseau would have been very pleased. 

Keith Newman's Bible and Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori--a New Perspective (New York: Penguin Books, 2010) is a much needed corrective to this tsunami of scurrilous revisionism.  In the conclusion, he summarises by means of ironic understatement some aspects of the "great trick":

A Much Needed Corrective, Part II

God Moving in Mysterious Ways

We plan to write a couple of supplementary pieces on  Keith Newman's Bible and Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori--a New Perspective (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).  These will not strictly be in the category of reviews, but reflections upon just some of what is contained in this valuable book. 

The first is the persistence, patience, and courage of the earliest missionaries.  They were a mixed lot and for ten years laboured in New Zealand under extremely tenuous circumstances, ending up with little to show for their efforts.  Often times they were in danger of losing their lives. 

The missionaries were relatively safe under Hongi's protection, but it was a peace fraught with tension.  Marsden had traversed much of the upper North Island, built relationships with many chiefs and promised missionaries would soon come and live among them.  However, those sent to bring the "good news" remained landlocked at Rangihoua, often fearing for their lives.  After a decade in New Zealand, the missionaries had little to show.  (Op cit., p. 60). 

From a mere human perspective, one would wonder how it could be that any good would ever come of their efforts.  They were a  messy bunch, those early missionaries.

A Much Needed Corrective

Credible Messiness

We have just completed reading Keith Newman's Bible and Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori--a New Perspective (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).  The title suggests a post-modernist tome.  If that is the reader's expectation, however, he will end up disappointed.  In fact, Newman's work is only a new perspective to our post-modernist ears which have been filled with repeated extrusions of revisionist wax to where we fear our society can no longer hear the true story of our past.

In that sense, then, Newman's Bible and Treaty is a must read for every Christian in New Zealand.  It is not the definitive word (few things ever are), but at the least it is a healthy corrective to the revising of our history by pagans (both Maori and Pakeha) who have very big axes to grind.

The preface provides an effective apologia for yet another book on early New Zealand history.  Firstly, Newman writes to correct the recent demonising of missionaries:

New Model Colonies

Nineteenth Century Changes to Colonisation

In his book Fairness and Freedom, historian David Fischer provides some interesting insights into the world-view in Great Britain which shaped the colonisation of New Zealand in the nineteenth century.  He notes that the New Zealand experience was different from what occurred in the British imperialist and colonial experience up until that time. 

The Colonial Office was run by Sir James Stephen for much of the first half of the nineteenth century.  He took a particular interest in New Zealand.

Stephen summarized his purposes [for New Zealand] in a single sentence: "The two Cardinal points to be kept in view in establishing a regular colony in New Zealand are, first, the protection of the aborigines, and secondly the introduction among the colonists of the principle of self-government, to the utmost extent in which that principle can be reconciled with allegiance to the crown."