Judith Collins begins the debate on the report of the Privileges Committee into the haka in the House. (Photo: RNZ, VNP/Phil Smith)
Parliament convincingly exposed its own racism this week, as it continued to tone-police how Māori can express themselves in the house, writes Brian Tweed.
Our government consistently denies that it’s engaged in racist practices. This could be because no one in government actually understands what’s involved in being racist.
Firstly, the government, or anyone these days, can’t explicitly express racist ideas as they might’ve done 60 or 70 years ago. Take a look, for example, at the Hunn Report, published in 1961, which openly stated that assimilation of Māori in to Pākehā culture was the best way to go and should be carried out as fast as possible.
Racism in our current situation is less overt. It requires the dominant group to perform a number of cultural contortions in order to maintain an idea of themselves as the “good” people.
When you can’t openly express your racism you might recode it in economic terms. The obvious example is the ACT Party’s insistence on “equality before the law” and “property rights”, which is just code for protecting those who already possess and control wealth, and for manipulating the law to help them keep and extend that wealth and power. And who is it that already has wealth and power?
Secondly, the dominant and powerful culture is portrayed as not a culture at all. It recasts itself as a “modern state”, or as an economic system with a set of rules (that is, the law), which it portrays as neutral and natural and “right”, and therefore beyond challenge, and applicable in a one-size-fits-all approach.
This allows the unacknowledged racist to point to an apparently legitimate and external set of rules to justify their actions. They can say things like: “We are doing our job.” “We are applying the law.” “We are doing what’s required.” And so on.
This conveniently masks the fact that they themselves invented the state, the economy and its rules, all of which emerge from one culture.
Thus, we hear government politicians insist that everyone must follow the same rules (“our” rules) and that once in parliament, “we” are all simply MPs, among other homogenising and assimilating claims.
And in this way, they’re able to distance themselves from their own racism.
When faced with challenges about being racist, the first step is to claim that they are just following the rules, just doing their job, and use these statements to deny that anything could possibly be racist. Challenged further, another cultural contortion occurs — they adopt the terms of the challenger and use those against them.
A perfect example of this is when Gerry Brownlee and others started talking about how Te Pāti Māori MPs had broken the “tikanga” of the house when they did their now world-famous haka. Suddenly, our parliament has “tikanga” and those bad Māori have therefore broken a central tenet of their own culture by not following it.
Another example is David Seymour’s gross distortion of tino rangatiratanga as meaning all New Zealanders being able to make the choices they want to.
But of course, our parliament, as a colonial institution, cannot possess a tikanga, which encompasses specifically Māori cultural concepts. Our parliament is anything but tika.
Gerry Brownlee has been an interesting and instructive figure throughout the saga of the haka in parliament.
His immediate reaction was to tone-police. He couldn’t cope with the way things were being expressed. So he shifted the focus away from the obvious injustice of the Treaty Principles Bill and on to the rights and wrongs of doing haka in parliament.
Now let’s go back a little further. Remember when Brownlee was schooled by Moana Jackson during a debate about the Foreshore and Seabed bill? This was in 2005 on the current affairs programme Marae. Brownlee was expressing ideas that sound like things the ACT MPs love to say now — about how Māori have special rights and privileges that they shouldn’t have, dividing a wedge between the people of this country and so on.
Moana responded with these prophetic words:
“It is quite wrong to call the addressing of needs based on a breach of rights a special privilege… it’s also wrong because it misinterprets our history where the taking of power, the taking of land from Māori, resulted in the privileging of Pākehā.”
Fast forward again to Brownlee’s “Oh don’t do that!” reaction when Hana started the haka, and his subsequent suspension of parliament. An expression of Pākehā privilege if ever there was one.
Let’s get a few facts straight about this. The haka happened when all votes had been cast, and it accompanied the vote of Te Pāti Māori, who were the last to vote. It was part of the vote of Te Pāti Māori.
The Privileges Committee now claims that the haka disrupted the vote. In fact, it was Brownlee’s reaction that disrupted parliament. A more mature Speaker would have understood the haka and allowed proceedings to carry on. Everyone had already voted, after all. How much better off would we all be now if Brownlee had done this?
Fast forward a few months to the formal defeat of the Treaty principles bill in the House in April. Here we see a happy smiling Brownlee singing the waiata “Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi” along with everyone else, while ACT MPs predictably walk out (because democracy is only okay when it goes your way apparently).
What’s the difference here? Ah yes. It had been agreed in advance that the waiata would be sung. Brownlee was happy this time about including a Māori cultural practice because he was still in control.
Fast forward one last time to Brownlee’s reaction to the unprecedented proposed punishment given to those Te Pāti Māori MPs by the privileges committee. He now seems to think that the punishment is too harsh. So, Gerry, do you think you should have handled things a little differently in November? Hopefully, he’s beginning to understand more deeply what Moana was talking about.
This brings us to the most important aspect of the saga. The issue of who is in control and how this embodies unacknowledged racism.
Te Pāti Māori MPs know that the authority for their haka comes from te ao Māori, from tūpuna, from the iwi to whom that particular haka belongs. They need no permission from parliament to haka.
But parliament thinks it’s in control (of everything). So the real issue emerges.
The problem with the haka in parliament was nothing to do with the performance of haka, whether it disrupted a vote (it didn’t), or whether some pop-up House “tikanga” had been breached.
It was about power and control, and how this is related to the kind of unacknowledged and denied racism (masquerading under a number of other guises) that plagues parliament and, indeed, our society as a whole.
Simply put, being Maōri and doing Māori things is okay as long as people in power control what is involved, and when and how it appears. It is a cultural contortion which creates an impression of inclusion while upholding unacknowledged racism.
For parliament to control how Māori appear in parliament is little better than excluding Māori altogether. I would argue it’s worse because such controlled inclusion has the effect of diffusing challenge and creating the appearance of “good race relations”, a myth mainstream New Zealand has been careful to cultivate over the years.
Picture Gerry Brownlee again when he lost control of how a Māori practice happens — picture his gulping, alarmed face during the haka in parliament. And remember the proposed punishment.
Now picture Brownlee and parliament when he was back in control during a Māori practice — smiling and singing “Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi”.
Despite all their protestations, there can be little doubt that our government is inherently racist, and blind to the the contorted ways it enacts that prejudice.
Brian Tweed is originally from the UK. Brian has worked extensively as a mathematics and science teacher and advisor in both English-medium and Māori-medium schools in New Zealand for the past 30 years. He is a senior lecturer in Te Kura o te Mātauranga, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehūroa / Massey University teaching the history, sociology and politics of education.
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“But parliament thinks it’s in control (of everything). So the real issue emerges”.
Correct.
Some commentators are talking about “the sovereignty of parliament”.
But this idea is mistaken on a number of levels.
First, because in New Zealand’s “constitutional monarchy without a constitution” the British monarch is sovereign. Parliament’s own website states this as a fact.
Second, because the present case is not about parliament exercising sovereign authority over the public. It is about the government members within parliament attempting to impose their authority over members of the opposition – even to the point of considering the option of imprisoning those opposition members. In other words, within the governing majority there is a mindset that is totally incompatible with democratic principles and is found elsewhere only in what are charitably called “authoritarian” states. It is not about “parliament governing itself”. It is about one section of the parliament trying to ride roughshod over the other.
Third, because neither King Charles nor parliament actually have a valid claim to sovereign authority in Aotearoa. In a democracy sovereign authority should derive from the people which means that those who elected Te Pati Maori members to the House should have the power to call them to account for their actions, and no one else. Unfortunately, the way the colonialist regime is set up, no provision is made for such timely accountability to the judgement of the people, but if it was I am pretty sure that those who voted for Te Pati Maori candidates would be standing solidly behind them in the current controversy. The Privileges Committee can presume to judge Te Pati Maori members only because the system as it stands does not allow the people themselves the democratic right to assess their own representatives.
In conclusion, we can say that the furore over the haka has cast a revealing light upon the various institutions which make up the colonialist regime, and the anti-democratic attitudes that prevail within those institutions. Only a return to Te Whakaminenga and the principles of rangatiratanga can offer Aotearoa a way out of the division and strife that are part and parcel of the colonialist system.