The Principles, Revisited

Time for foolish acts of renunciation

In the last effort here at Brenty’s Two Cents I raised issues with implications for conservation law reform. As it happened the government announced conservation law reform proposals the following week. These proposals raise some big questions like freedom of access to the DOC estate, and how much control Wellington should have over the bush. We might come back to them another time, but I encourage readers who care about our special places to have a read.

Today, though, it will not have taken a careful reader to notice what is fast becoming the only show in New Zealand in 2024: the Treaty Principles Bill. I’ve avoided commenting on this, except in narrow parts of the discussion, because I have been too chicken. But among other things, last week’s hikoi in Wellington laid down an invitation to mere mortals to comment on the Bill. Here is one such effort.

Q+A and the Working Group

The Bill’s proponent is David Seymour, leader of the Act Party. Seymour appeared on Jack Tame’s Q+A programme on TVNZ+ on Sunday 24 November 2024. The following Tuesday, some at the Gravity Credit Management™ Working Group, or TWG, commented that they had seen Tame trash Seymour. What I saw on Q+A was rather different: two men politely exchanging propositional barbs, each with their stronger and weaker moments, and each uncovering one foundational issue with each other’s arguments. (Seymour’s issue is traversed here, Tame’s does not seem to have been widely noticed.) Both men eventually declared one another’s argument “cute” but made little headway with one-another.

The politeness on show on Q+A was to me a model, though not one we should always adhere to. But the focus on “arguments”, arguments about very complex law no less, was telling – and it failed to get at the essence of the national “conversation” Seymour himself has raised.

TWG was much better with Labour MP Arena Williams saying that you don’t need to be an expert to contribute to this conversation. Even as a lawyer with probably more and longer knowledge of Treaty law and history than many, or many non-Māori at least, I welcome this. One thing people love to hate about lawyers is that there always going to be an argument for and against everything, and lawyers seem seldom to notice that making arguments can often fail to move another heart. So I welcomed Williams’ view of the Hikoi as gathering of New Zealanders of all walks of life, one about facing the future with unity and positivity. I wasn’t there, but even allowing for skepticism of all media outlets, a sad must these days, this was my very strong impression also.

But the very best thing about the TWG in recent weeks have been Damien Grant’s efforts. Like him or not, and I’d have to say I’d enjoy a couple of beers with him, Grant has stood out as one of the few public voices to take Seymour seriously in terms of believing that Seymour believes what he says, rather say than making a political stunt; and by holding back from assuming the worst of Seymour for what he is saying. It would be easy to explain this by saying that Grant shares a political disposition with Seymour, if not an actual friendship. But this would be a little too easy, because with Willie Jackson last week, and Williams this week, Grant is also making an obviously genuine effort to understand others’ perspectives, and feeling around for a way forward from what he is learning.

A wānanga is no bad thing

Grant and many on the “right” (useless though these terms are today) are for having the principles “conversation” out in the open. I am with them. Whether passing the Bill is the appropriate way to advance the discussion - and I don’t think it is - is a completely different issue. More on this later.

The sense of different public and private positions on similar issues was a clear source of mistrust in the previous government, as even Willie Jackson seemed to comment in last week’s TWG!

We all know that that mistrust contributed, if not led directly, to a gathering at Parliament. It was one of New Zealanders from all walks of life: they were even surveyed that time. They said they were concerned with questions of unity and of how to face the future with positivity. Of course it was complex and dynamic, but these questions had been raised, they said on arrival, by vaccine mandates. We all know that that gathering ended with gutting scenes of New Zealanders beating one-another up. It showed that political mishandling of deep issues could lead to a situation where some felt the only solution was violence.

So can we trust the people with this wānanga - with this opportunity for sharing, reflection, deliberation, and orientation towards the future? For many, Seymour in 2024 is “doing a Trevor”, and we know how this movie ends. And so former Prime Minister Rt Hon Dame Shippley, former Treaty Negotiations Minister Hon Chris Finlayson KC and former PM Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, all want “the conversation” over. Others like Matthew Hooten are similar, because they know the Bill isn’t the answer to the questions Seymour has raised. And in an addition to these kinds of argument, other politicos are saying these risks are being run solely for political gain: a recent commenter to this effect is Peter Dunne. But if their sense of trepidation at, or of a disinclination for, a public wānanga was understandable before the hikoi, did not that day show us that their alarm was itself overblown? (And perhaps politically motivated?)

The consequences of the wānanga turning ugly make it readily possible to see Shippley, Finlayson and Hipkins on this. The obviousness of Hooten’s conclusion make it possible to see him. The real possibility of political gain to Seymour make it easy to see Dunne. So let’s not be too harsh. But let’s also notice a key problem with these views: that many start by taking another at something other than their word - natural though this may be for political foes. Another is that they don’t suggest the levels of trust in New Zealanders that New Zealanders have shown they deserve – as if we should have to demonstrate it anyway.

Foolish renunciations

What if we did take both the Bill’s proponents and opponents at their word? Took seriously that there are genuine and strongly-held views around all of the questions raised? That, as Seymour himself and others like Shane Jones have said, there may be other ways to approach the issues than Bill/no Bill. Or took seriously that silence on the part of many could represent anything from or between forms of exhaustion, to forms of fear, to more nefarious or distasteful attitudes? Took seriously that we are likely to have to put in real work to understand each perspective, not least because many will be articulated by normal people fumbling and iterating and speaking past each other like normal people and groups do - like different actors the nation over often have for 184 years?

What if we just took seriously the events of the previous week? The apparent outcome that when New Zealanders were invited to extend towards each other, vast numbers reciprocated voluntarily. And if they went another way, as all good free-speechers say, now we have an opportunity to understand them?

It would be nice to think those cultivating the national conversation could extend both opponents, proponents and holders of any other view on the Bill a generosity of spirit, a capacity to be surprised, and that kind and level of effort. And where there are differences in what or how much reading one has done, that they could resist a temptation to automatically hold the other in contempt for that difference.

“Naivety”, some will say, “these aren’t workable assumptions”. But wiser men than me have made lives out of “little acts of foolish renunciation”. And when it concerns the future of our common lives here together, there seems no better time renounce those kinds of assumptions – to make just such an act. And so how wonderful it was to see Williams in her exchange with Grant towards the tail end of this week’s TWG. This was an exchange that opened a view to a new set of possibilities, ones only to be approached by walking through the door of vulnerability. Grant made his foolish little renunciation by asking questions, hearing answers, and allowing himself to be moved by them. Williams made hers by listening to Grant, saying "I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt”, and going from there. That’s leadership.

If this has felt like an ambivalent effort, that’s because it has been. The issues raised by the Treaty Principles Bill are deep. As they have since 1840, they will endure. They manifestly aren’t going to be advanced through a short 2024 Bill whose specific fate is already virtually assured, and whose content has core issues. They won’t be advanced solely by lawyers’ back and forth, or by making television shows sketching such exchanges, or by the wide viewing of such shows. They may not even be advanced by six months’ discussion and deliberation with one another. But if in the long run they aren’t, the issues raised by a Treaty wānanga aren’t our biggest problems.

Conversation is life, so bring on the wānanga. And bring on some foolish renunciation.

A short word for this week on my common theme around sense of place as it relates to all this. It is just to welcome the hikoi and the national wānanga for the reminder that most of us know no other home than our islands, and no matter the economic situation that a shared sense of belonging somewhere together actually matters.

And properly finally: Grant, I suggest, has located the key issues, and some of the differences on them, better than many. More on this in due course. But for readers keen to dine out on my being a fan-boy, I hate to disappoint. More next time on how his comments that “a haka isn’t an argument” and similar stuff from Heather du Plessis-Allan aren’t helpful, but do helpfully gesture at a so-far unspoken dimension of the wānanga.

For now, thanks for your interest in Brenty’s Two Cents. As ever, feel free to find me and get in touch to discuss, as some have and do.

AB

27 November 2024