Shafted by their own council

So this is what it has come to.

The Kapiti Coast District Council, according to today's Dominion Post, has identified 40 "sacred" Maori sites on which owners will not be allowed to subdivide, alter existing buildings, or disturb the land.

As I write this, I'm fervently hoping the citizens of the Kapiti Coast will be laying siege to the council offices and that the mayor, the councillors and the council functionaries (who I suspect are the real villains of the piece, because that's usually the case) will be cowering in terror in a basement panic room.

If not, they certainly should be. But it won't happen, because the populace has become so desensitised to this type of attack on their rights that they have become utterly supine.

According to the Dominion Post, letters were sent to affected Kapiti property owners last month giving them four weeks' notice that the historic status of the "wahi tapu" sites would be included in the new district plan, which takes effect this week.

Landowners appear to have been taken by surprise. One said the letter came out of the blue.

If I correctly interpret  a statement by Waikane Community Board chairman Michael Scott, details of sites deemed to be tapu have already been entered on land information memorandums (LIMs) and titles. In other words, property values have potentially been undermined even before owners have had a chance to react.

Affected owners will be able to make submissions on the proposal until March 1, but it looks suspiciously like a fait accompli. After all, it's far easier for a council to defend something that has already been imposed than to convince people beforehand that it's fair, reasonable and necessary. The council bureaucrats will probably count on a high proportion of owners, weakened and demoralised by decades of increasingly brazen encroachments on their rights and freedoms, rolling over and passively accepting it. And they will probably be right.

Now, how did this come about? Well, from what the Dominion Post tells us, the council commissioned three local iwi to look at possible sites of historic interest to them on the Kapiti Coast.

They came up with a list of 400, which has been whittled down to 40 for inclusion in the proposed district plan.

What evidence was required to establish the validity of the iwis' claims? That's not clear, but I'm hoping someone on the Kapiti Coast will have the gumption to file an offical information request demanding to know.

One property owner is quoted as saying Maori researchers believed a pa site and an urupa (burial ground) may have been on his land. But the property had been in European ownership and farmed since 1830, and previous owners had never mentioned a pa site.

The owner is now prevented from carrying out earthworks, modifying existing buildings or subdividing. Just like that.

According to Michael Scott, who is a lawyer, the restrictions mean owners will not be able to dig a hole and put a swimming pool in. A farmer will be allowed to graze stock, but not disturb the land surface.

Does this mean, I wonder, that a property owner will have to pay koha to the local iwi for the right to plant lettuce and tomato plants? I'm not being entirely flippant, because given the now-routine ritual subservience to Maori claims, which can delay a highway construction project because of concerns that a taniwha might be disturbed, anything is possible.

The most obvious objection to what the KCDC is proposing is that it's a flagrant violation of  property rights - in other words, the right to determine what to do with one's own assets and possessions. Tragically, this fundamental right has already been so circumscribed that most people have given up trying to defend it. (It says a lot about the architects of our Bill of Rights Act, passed by a Labour government in 1990, that  reference to property rights was omitted.) 

But even more alarming is the casual acceptance by the Kapiti council that certain people who define themselves as Maori should have the power to determine what other people do with their land - in other words, the conferring of special privilege on the basis of race. Twenty years ago such a proposition would have rightly been regarded as outrageous. But this is the logical and inevitable outcome of a pernicious policy of biculturalism under which people's rights and privileges are determined by the extent to which they can claim, however tenuously, Maori ancestry. 

We don't know who these iwi representatives are or on what basis they determined that certain pieces of land are sacred and inviolable. They are not elected and not accountable for the consequences of anything they recommend. It's power without responsibility, the antithesis of democracy.

The real villains, however, are not the local iwi (after all, it's human nature to avail oneself of any special treatment offered) but those in the Kapiti council who have orchestrated this abuse of power. Elected, paid and entrusted by the hapless citizens of Kapiti to ensure their interests are protected and their rights respected, they choose instead to shaft them.

And the worst part about it is that Kapiti represents, in microcosm, what is happening all over New Zealand on a grand scale. 

Who's the Humpty Dumpty here?

Anti-alcohol obsessive Professor Doug Sellman doesn’t want for chutzpah.

In this morning’s Dominion Post, he tut-tuts about the terms “moderate drinking” and “responsible drinking”, calling them “Humpty Dumpty terms”.

A Humpty Dumpty term, presumably, is one that means whatever the user chooses it to mean, as in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. Effectively, Sellman is saying such terms should be taken with a grain of salt.

Funny, then, that the same man doesn’t hesitate to make grotesquely alarmist statements about “heavy” drinking. In 2009, Sellman made the absurd claim that 700,000 New Zealanders – the equivalent of the combined populations of Wellington and Christchurch (pre-quake) – were “heavy drinkers”.

I think he’s guilty of Humpty Dumptyism himself. He asserts the right to use the arbitrary term “heavy drinker” while simultaneously pooh-poohing the notion that anyone might be capable of “moderate” or “responsible” consumption. He can’t have it both ways.

In my book, anyone who consumes alcohol without suffering adverse health consequences, breaking the law or suffering relationship problems can accurately be described as a moderate, responsible drinker.

That describes the vast majority of New Zealanders. But Sellman and others of his ilk are so fixated on the conspicuous minority who abuse alcohol that they are blind to its social benefits.

Perhaps I should add health and economic benefits too, because as Canterbury University economist Eric Crampton pointed out in the same newspaper story, drinkers on average earn more than non-drinkers, light drinkers have a lower mortality rate than non-drinkers and light-to-moderate drinking produces better ageing outcomes.

Crampton is possibly the only person on the public payroll prepared to counter the incessant barrage of hysterical anti-alcohol propaganda emanating from academia and the health bureaucracy. Thank God there are still one or two independent thinkers in the universities.

Where private affairs have public consequences

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 21.)

Certain aspects of the American character puzzle me.

Their ardent patriotism is one. It’s on display everywhere, from “God Bless America” bumper stickers to the Stars and Stripes that flutter from houses in virtually every street.

Another is their intense religiosity. No one from New Zealand – a country so irreligious that some Christians are almost embarrassed to admit they go to church – can fail to notice the fervent faith of many Americans.

It’s especially noticeable in the more conservative states, where on Sundays it’s common to see acres of cars parked outside large, imposing churches, even in sparsely populated rural areas.

That brings me to another curious aspect of the American character. Public morality is an infinitely more sensitive issue there than in New Zealand.

That was obvious from the political furore that blew up over the revelation that the military hero General David Petraeus, who commanded US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, had conducted an affair with a much younger woman who wrote his biography. The scandal ended his brief career as head of the CIA.

Paula Broadwell had spent much of last year “embedded” with American troops in Afghanistan as she gathered material for her book. In this context that term, which is usually applied to journalists reporting the war, took on a whole new meaning.

As often happens with political scandals, one disclosure led to another. The Petraeus scandal soon enveloped other people – notably socialite twin sisters from Florida who had a penchant for cultivating politicians and senior military figures.

One of the sisters, Jill Kelley, complained to an FBI agent that she was receiving threatening emails – supposedly from Broadwell, who appeared to suspect Kelley of making a play for Petraeus. Another four-star general, John Allen, was then exposed as having exchanged suggestive emails with Kelley.

Are you managing to keep up so far? If not, never mind. Because the interesting point is that in America, private affairs often have public consequences.

In Italy and France, it’s generally assumed that prominent men will have extra-marital liaisons. In fact it’s almost expected of them, as if you’re less of a man if you don’t have a mistress tucked away somewhere.

Though the Brits tend to be more discreet, the British public too has generally been tolerant of infidelity in high places. Mild-mannered former prime minister John Major’s reputation didn’t seem to be seriously harmed – in fact may even have been enhanced – by the revelation that he had carried on a four-year affair with backbench MP Edwina Currie.

David Lloyd George, leader of Britain’s coalition government in the latter years of World War I, was nicknamed the goat on account of his womanising (he was also, by all accounts, prodigiously endowed), and King Edward VII had a string of high-profile mistresses.

In Britain, things seem to get messy only when there are national security implications, as when Defence Minister John Profumo was famously sacked for having a relationship with call-girl Christine Keeler, who was simultaneously sleeping with a Soviet spy.

Closer to home, Australian prime minister Bob Hawke had a reputation as a philanderer. Like Petraeus, Hawke had a relationship with his biographer (the exotically named Blanche d’Alpuget). The Aussie media knew of Hawke’s infidelities – the relationship with d’Alpuget was public knowledge – but it was never a hot political issue.

Closer still, New Zealand journalists have tended to turn a blind eye to politicians’ affairs, even when they were relatively common knowledge (as in the case of the late Robert Muldoon, who was once the subject of a wickedly witty fake newspaper billboard that read Rooting pig shot in Ngaio; PM safe). The general view was that it was none of the public’s business unless the relationship compromised the participants politically, implicated them in illegality (as in the case of two Labour MPs who were outed for homosexual activity before it was decriminalised) or reflected poorly on their ability to do their job.

An exception was National MP (and later Speaker of the House) Doug Kidd, whose affair with a parliamentary secretary was exposed by the feminist lobby in 1983 with the express purpose of causing him political embarrassment. The feminists were gunning for Mr Kidd (as he was then – he was later knighted) because he had moved to amend the abortion law.  

Otherwise, the only recent sex scandals I can recall in New Zealand politics were those that came to public attention because they were the subject of police complaints. The politicians involved – National’s Richard Worth and Labour’s Darren Hughes – both resigned.

The big difference in America is that even when an adulterous relationship has been between consenting adults and there has been no suggestion of criminality, the code of public morality often demands that the transgressor be punished.

For a long time, a respectful American press left presidents alone. Franklin D Roosevelt had mistresses, one of whom was even assigned a code name by the Secret Service. Dwight D Eisenhower’s relationship with his English female chauffeur during World War II was never referred to while he was alive. John F Kennedy scattered his seed with impunity, knowing he was protected by the sanctity of his office.

All that changed post-Watergate, when the US media began applying much more critical scrutiny to politicians.  Two high-flying casualties were senators Gary Hart in the 1980s and John Edwards in 2008 – both contenders for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination who became soiled political goods when their extra-marital activities were made public.

Even in business, careers have been destroyed by affairs – as in the case of Lockheed Martin president Chris Kubasik, who was forced to step aside because of his relationship with a subordinate.

President Bill Clinton is a remarkable exception to the rule. Miraculously, perhaps due to personal charisma, America seems to have forgiven him his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky (and Gennifer Flowers, and Paula Jones, and probably others that we don’t know about).

Adultery and politics are natural bedmates, if you’ll pardon the metaphor. The personal characteristics that make men successful in politics – ambition, charisma, energy – are often the same as those that make them sexually adventurous and attractive to women.

No doubt that’s true of many military commanders too. And it’s hard not to feel sympathy for General Petraeus.

Few men wouldn’t have been tempted in his situation: isolated from home and family, in a lonely, dangerous and unimaginably stressful job, suddenly finding himself the subject of flattering attention from a much younger woman. But he has paid the price demanded by a tradition of censorious public morality that probably dates all the way back to the puritanical Pilgrim Fathers.

 

Our most important political commentator

If I had to name the most important political commentator in the country, it would be Colin James.

For starters, he has longevity on his side. I first met him when he was No 2 in the Dominion's press gallery team behind Keith Hancox.

That was in 1969. James makes even the Herald's John Armstrong and Newstalk ZB's Barry Soper look like johnnies-come-lately.

That gives him a wider and, dare I say it, more mature perspective than most others covering politics. He's able to evaluate political trends and events within an historical and cultural context that escapes younger journalists.

That's part of what makes him so valuable, but the other factor is that he floats above the daily political drama and takes in the big picture. While other political journalists are reporting from the skirmish lines, amid the blood and severed limbs, James is on a strategic ridge several kilometres back, coolly surveying the scene through binoculars and taking in the broader implications.

For a typical example, check out his latest column in the Otago Daily Times. Other political writers are totally absorbed with Labour's leadership tensions, but James gives them only a passing mention. He's more interested in the latest report of the Land and Water Forum, which has largely been ignored by the rest of the media but may have far more significant long-term ramifications than David Cunliffe's bungled leadership aspirations.

James doesn't write with the flair and wit of a Jane Clifton. Reading his columns requires a mental change of gear, since his style is dry and can be somewhat oblique. But his insights are always interesting and you sense that his judgment is sound.

He's also fair and even-handed. James is one of those political journalists who carries purity to excess (in my view) by choosing not to vote, but in any case it's hard to discern what his personal leanings, if any, might be. Given the intensely partisan nature of much political commentary since the emergence of the blogosphere, that only reinforces his credibility.

John Key and that gay red jersey

(First published in the Dominion Post, November 16.)

ACUTE sensitivity disorder has gripped the nation again. The latest outbreak was touched off by prime minister John Key’s comment that a radio interviewer’s red jersey looked a bit “gay”. As predictably as Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell, the gay lobby rose up in anger.

Protesters labelled it a slur against gays and took to the streets wearing red tops as a gesture of solidarity with the oppressed. Sir Ian McKellen, perhaps mistakenly thinking his on-screen aura of Gandalfian wisdom has somehow carried over into real life, went online to register his dismay.

I suspect most New Zealanders would have viewed the fuss with an air of worldly resignation. They have become well-accustomed to minority groups rearing up on their hind legs at every imagined slight.

If the gay rights lobby is to be believed, Mr Key’s statement was likely to excite prejudice against gay men. But what’s more likely to generate a backlash is the fuss gay activists make every time someone says anything that might be construed, however tenuously, as an attack on them.  

In many people’s eyes, it reinforces the impression – am I allowed to say this? – that they are a bit precious.

We live in a robust, liberal democracy. People say things every day that could cause upset if the maligned parties were of a mind to take offence. Most of us manage to ignore it and get on with life.

In Mr Key’s case, he was merely making an attempt to sound blokey in order to connect with that radio programme’s predominantly male, rural audience.

Politicians do this all the time, possibly without even realising it. I remember years ago hearing Helen Clark being interviewed on a youth-oriented radio station in Auckland. It was a different Helen Clark than I’d ever heard before: both her manner of speaking and the language she used were obviously calculated to communicate with that particular audience.

No one can seriously accuse Mr Key of being anti-gay. How quickly his critics forget that he has ingratiated himself with gay men too – for example, by speaking at the Big Gay Out rally in Auckland last February and posing for photographs with transvestites and bare-chested gay men.

That’s what politicians do: pander to whichever group they happen to be addressing at the time. But surely there are far worse things a prime minister could be accused of than trying to be one of the boys.

* * *

DEAR ME. The Labour Party’s problems are graver than I thought.

At the party’s annual conference on Sunday, leader David Shearer will deliver a speech that is being treated as a make-or-break moment. Many in the party are unhappy with his performance and will look to his address for a sign one way or another: either he can galvanise Labour with an inspirational, visionary speech or he becomes a footnote in the party’s history.

Trying to shore up his credentials in an article published in this paper last week, Mr Shearer was reported as saying: “I believe I have very strong views. I am very value-driven as a politician.” He went on to say he had lived the values of “opportunity, fairness and giving people a fair go”.

Really? Is that the best he can do? He “believes” he has strong views? Is he waiting for confirmation from someone else? Such equivocal language is likely to reinforce rather than counteract suspicions about his lack of fire.

And how strikingly unoriginal to say he believes in “fairness” and a “fair go”. Show me a politician who doesn’t profess to believe in a fair go. It’s probably the most shop-soiled cliché in the politician’s lexicon.

Mr Shearer’s comments ahead of his speech hardly seem likely to create a sense of feverish anticipation. But then, are his prospective rivals any more promising?

The Listener recently published a profile of another Labour Party David, the ambitious David Cunliffe, and it seems he too has trouble breaking out of the cliché trap. In his own words, he has certain ideals and values “and they are about fairness, about equity, about opportunity and it’s good old Kiwi stuff, you know”.

Wow. There’s fresh thinking for you. Isn’t there anyone in the Labour hierarchy capable of elevating the political dialogue above the level of a 1960s bumper-sticker?

* * *

I WAS ASTONISHED recently to see a BBC correspondent named Jeremy Bowen reporting from the Middle East on One News.

How did this bloke ever get on television? He’s male, for a start, and he’s more than 50 years old – a veritable fossil. He’s got thinning grey hair and an unfashionable moustache. Doesn’t the BBC have any respect for its viewers?

Then there’s Orla Guerin, another BBC reporter who keeps popping up in world trouble spots. At least she’s female, but come on – she’s 46 years old!

What’s more, she doesn’t seem to care too much about her appearance. She doesn’t even wear makeup. Can’t they find her a backroom job somewhere?

How much nicer to see the pretty young things TVNZ and TV3 employ. Thank God our own broadcasters still strive to maintain some sort of basic standard, even if the Beeb doesn’t.  

Bowden's alarming Treaty analysis

Muriel Newman's latest NZCPR Weekly contains an alarming analysis by Roger Bowden, former professor of economics and management at Victoria University. Bowden's advice, in a nutshell? Forget all that government propaganda about the proceeds of state asset sales going towards health and education, because the money will be entirely swallowed up paying for Treaty settlements.

These ongoing liabilities include the outrageous "top-ups" built in to the Tainui and Ngai Tahu settlements, whereby what were considered fair compensation sums at the time they were negotiated get ratcheted up to ensure some sort of spurious relativity is retained.

Here's the most salient bit from Bowden's analysis:

Let’s start with the annual appropriations for running costs, covering such things as negotiation costs, the Waitangi Tribunal & representation, and disbursements under the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act. The 2012 budget request is $169,969m. The same annual sum (can it ever diminish?) capitalised over 10 years at the current NZ govt bond yield, as the opportunity cost of capital, comes to $1,409m.

Now add in the cost of outstanding and projected settlements up to 2016 (not 10 years, but bear with me here), amounting to $2,800 m. Together with the capitalised running costs, that comes to $4,209m, if my arithmetic is correct.

I’m not sure whether this includes the ratchets promised to Tainui and Ngai Tahu in previous settlements, which at the time envisaged a total of $2 billion instead of the $4 billion so far awarded or projected. Last I heard, Tainui and Ngai Tahu will be sharing a top up of $138.5m, but there will be more down the track as the settlements continue to mount. Nor does this year’s Waitangi Vote allow for future annual costs under the ‘co-management’ regimes that are becoming the norm for Waitangi settlements.

But any way you add up the sums, the message is that present and future commitments under just the one Vote, Treaty Negotiations, will comes to something like 5-6 billion dollars in total present value, probably even more. It’s hard to find Votes with a similarly spectacular explosion. No doubt there are others on a smaller scale; the ministerial travel budget, perhaps? But otherwise, even the traditional biggies like Health and Education seem under control, at least on Treasury projections, especially for Education, which is projected to level off, even turn negative. Expect yet more belt tightening after the latest revenue figures.

 

Coincidentally, the latest Treaty settlement bill, compensating Auckland's Ngati Whatua tribe, passed through Parliament yesterday. Compared with the Tainui and Ngai Tahu deals, it's relatively small beer. But there are many more potentially large settlements in the pipeline, and there's a very real prospect that the Crown will have to negotiate water access river by river, hapu by hapu, if the courts rule in favour of Maori water rights .

Bowden concludes by saying: "The conclusion is inescapable. We need the partial asset sales to finance the soaring costs of the Treaty industry."

All of which raises the question that no politician seems willing to confront: how far can New Zealand continue wading into this morass before it becomes completely unaffordable (if it isn't already)?

 

Pagani has good news for the right

In a revealing interview with Audrey Young in today's New Zealand Herald, former Labour candidate and political commentator Josie Pagani lifts the lid on the toxic factionalism within the party.

It seems that anyone who doesn't fall into line with strident far-left agitators in the blogosphere or the unions - and that means people like John Tamihere, David Shearer and Pagani herself - can expect to be exposed to ugly personal campaigns of vilification.

This of course will come as good news to the right, because if the hard-core socialists in Labour prevail, they will render the party unelectable.