IN PRAISE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE MAORI PARTY

We New Zealanders were all ‘boat people’ at some stage, or in recent times, ‘plane people’. No-one arrived in New Zealand without a memory. We should celebrate and respect these memories. The first people in any nation deserve special treatment, especially to redress historic grievances which New Zealand, perhaps more than any society, at any time, has made much effort to rectify. We are proud of this. However we reject the historic memories of core European values and law at our peril because these are the values and institutions that have taken us from a primitive, lonely, lovely group of islands, to the front rank of nations in regard to all those things nations aspire to – our life expectancy, education, health, employment, justice system - are among the world’s best and have been for several generations.

In recent years we have followed the politically correct principles defined elsewhere as post-modernism and relativism. These deeply imbedded theories claim that all truths are relative, thus there is no right or wrong because at certain times in history, what was wrong became right, e.g. votes for women, and what was right, e.g. slavery, became wrong. Post-modernism, beloved of the founders of sociology, argues the decline of any absolute truths. While all cultures deserve respect because there is much joy and much to learn from diversity, it becomes dangerous when carried to extremes, all values are not equal. There are modern and universal values that reflect the memories of our European history. Western societies do better in the main because of the lessons from the “Age of Reason”, the ‘enlightenment’ when human rights, freedom from religion and of religion, equal rights under the law, and eventually, democracy were born. This march to reason and freedom began much earlier. Iceland’s democracy began when warrior priests gathered in 930AD and declared, “Icelanders have no other king than the law!” The glorious revolution in England, the Magna Carta, that established the principle of the king seeking the people’s consent for taking their money, and that kings also should be subject to the law. These were big ideas, others such as property rights and the genius of the ‘limited liability company’ that gave life to the ‘big idea’ that a commercial entity could live beyond the life of its creators, protected families from the threat of imprisonment, changed the concept of inheritance, and fundamentally changed how we manage risk. This gave the Dutch and then the English the commercial edge. All these ideas make up modern and successful New Zealand. To get first world results, you need first world policies. The rejection of tribalism, witchcraft, and the separation of church and state destroyed the idea that people were born into a certain “fate”. Earlier, it was pre-ordained that some should always be serfs or slaves. That splendid hymn we still sing in church talks of “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small ….. The Lord God made them all.” And then goes on to say, “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.” Progress abolished ‘fate’ and the welfare state spread opportunities and extended freedoms. That’s why it’s chilling to see signs of third world values creeping into New Zealand, often done in a sense of goodwill towards cultural sensitivity. The police treating Maori murders of children differently, our bureaucracies and businesses making cultural pay-offs to advance their programmes, excuses for unacceptable behaviour in the name of Maoridom, Koha or Samoan Lafo, as gifts to politicians.

I almost coughed my morning coffee through my nose when I witnessed a Maori Party MP say he would live by Maori rules not white man’s rules. When the Maori Party leaders came out against Koha as gifts for politicians, I cheered, if they stand up against the patronage, privilege and pay-offs in our system elsewhere they deserve much praise and support. Alas, cosy, crony relationships have developed in many areas of Government expenditure that need exposure and the cleansing air of transparency and competition. There can be only one law and these rules are accepted by the people because they are made in their names by people whom they have elected. The King or Queen is also subject to the law and not above it, and that’s another reason why suggestions that political parties might pass retrospective legislation to validate expenditure that was spent on their personal party advantage strikes a blow at our values of governance, despite the confusion about the opaque rules of government expenditure in these areas.