THE SILENT MAJORITY

The Crown has a long and dishonourable history of minimising and neutralising the rights of minorities in this country by imposing norms which silence even the majority.  For example, prior to the 1984 elections, the Labour Party promised to honour the Treaty and settle Treaty grievances.  But when they became the government, they created a process in which Māori had to accept the demands of multiculturalism and “the public good.”  

The concept of multiculturalism is harmless enough as a descriptive term for communities where a number of different cultures live.  But used by the Crown as a normative term, multiculturalism became a way to neutralise Māori demands and minimise the redress of their rights.   

For example, when Moana Jackson released his 1988 report on Māori and the criminal justice system, which critiqued both the system's basis in a monocultural philosophy and the outcome of criminal convictions for Māori within that system way over and above that of non-Māori, Jackson concluded that parallel legal systems for Māori and non- Māori in Aotearoa were mandated by the Treaty.  But under the normative banner of “multiculturalism” then Minister of Justice Geoffrey Palmer, rejected the idea of parallel legal systems out of hand. 

While Jackson's report was quickly sidelined and repressed by the Crown, his analysis still resonates powerfully, and the justice system still remains a source of great misery for Māori to this day.

Another example was the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975.  Since 1978, the Tribunal has written a number of reports, but no effect has been given to the vast bulk of the recommendations contained in those reports.  Instead the Crown has largely ignored the reports’ findings and opted to directly negotiate settlements.  The results to date have been a triumph for normative multiculturalism and ongoing misery for Māori.

Now we see similar normative tactics being used to neutralise and minimise other minorities and their rights, but with the added twist of secret lawmaking which bypassed the select committee process and censored much of the official advice that informed that lawmaking. 

Under the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill the carers of disabled adult family members can now be paid; but only if they accept that they can never take legal action against Government for being discriminated against, that spouses and parents aren’t covered, and that payment will only be made if the disabled person is assessed as having high or very high needs.  Similarly, calls to address the high level of childhood poverty in this country have produced the Education Amendment (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Bill.  It does nothing to address the causes of childhood poverty, but it will further stigmatise decile one and two schools.

It is clear that minorities in this country are at the mercy of a Crown which thinks nothing of short-circuiting its own lawmaking processes.  Of course, none of this would be possible without the silent majority.