CONSTITUTION-LITE

There are two different and anomalous constitutional conversations going on right now which most Pākehā are missing out on because they either don’t care or don’t know.  And the main reason for their ignorance is a totally inadequate education that hasn’t taught them the true history of our country, doesn’t even mention our constitution, and hasn’t prepared them to hold this conversation.    

But instead of educating them, the current government has set up the ‘Constitutional Advisory Panel’ (CAP) to review the size and length of term of Parliament, and whether or not it should be fixed; the size and number of electorates, including changing the method for calculating their size; the integrity of electoral legislation; the Māori Electoral Option and participation in elections; Māori seats in Parliament and local government; and the role of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Bill of Rights.

That would be all well and good if parliamentary and local government politics were all that a constitution had to cover.  But they’re not.  In fact they make up less than one third of a constitution, and to review only those aspects amounts to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship of state. 

Where is the review of the state itself; its distribution of sovereignty and lines of accountability?  When do we talk about the relationships between the three main organs of that state?  And, alongside the role of the domestic Te Tiriti o Waitangi, where is the review of the role of He Whakaputanga o Ngā Hapū o Nu Tirani as well as that of the international agreements to which New Zealand is party? To not include these issues and many others in the review is a farcical anomaly. 

Meantime the CAP and its terms of reference have produced some farcical anomalies of their own, including the demand by at least one group of Pākehā that ‘the Treaty’ be expunged from the conversation altogether.   I’m reminded of a cartoon during the National government’s infamous Dawn Raids of the 1970s against Pacific Islanders which showed a woman of colour coming through New Zealand Customs, and an officer pointing to the snake rising out of her luggage while his boss yelled at him, “Never mind the snake!  Check if she’s Samoan!”

Another anomaly is that the CAP has a budget in the region of $3 million and a reporting deadline to Parliament of September 2013.  Meantime, Mātike Mai Aotearoa has held about 150 hui around the country in the past three years on a budget of $300,000 and will report back to the Iwi Chairs Forum in November 2013. 

It’s clear that, until we are able to talk maturely about our constitution based on knowledge rather than on ignorance, the anomalies are set to multiply.  Because it’s an undeniable fact that if current constitutional knowledge was measured in calories, there would be no obesity problem amongst New Zealanders who have been, and continue to be, fed a diet of ‘constitution-lite’.