Maori experience offers crucial lessons on ‘top down’ Indigenous voice to parliament model
A proper Indigenous voice may benefit Australia, but Anthony Albanese’s unseriousness and dissembling have likely ruined this attempt. Before starting again, hopefully he sought advice on Wednesday from New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
Don’t confuse reports of so-called Maorification with New Zealand’s half-century of reconciliation with Maori tribes. The former is usually virtue signalling by inner-city white liberals. The serious business of resolving historic injustices, including land theft, and recognising contemporary Maori property rights has near-universal political and public support.
If the Australian Prime Minister is serious, bipartisanship is mandatory. For New Zealanders, it’s inexplicable he has turned Australians off.
Maori have had a guaranteed voice in New Zealand’s parliament since 1867, choosing between voting in Maori or general electorates. The Maori seats initially addressed the problem of Maori land being collectively owned under a property-based franchise. Mostly held by Labour, the seats historically helped National by removing a chunk of Labour voters from general rolls. Under proportional representation, they assure Maori representation without affecting which major party governs.
National periodically calls for their abolition, but half-heartedly. New Zealand’s constitution is unwritten but, after 156 years, it surely includes the Maori seats. The consensus is they’ll remain until Maori say otherwise. Similarly voice-like is New Zealand’s Maori Council, legislated for by National in 1962 with Labour’s support.
With 48 members, it’s the peak organisation for 16 district Maori councils and 120-plus Maori committees, seeking and then voicing consensus to the government and courts. In 1975, Labour established the quasi-judicial Waitangi Tribunal to examine contemporary breaches of 1840s Treaty of Waitangi, with National’s support.
Ten years later, Labour allowed the tribunal to consider injustices back to 1840. National was opposed, with a then-youthful National MP, Winston Peters, leading its attack. Yet National kept the 1840 rule and outperforms Labour in settling claims.
The courts also have helped Maori aspirations, simply by applying ordinary statute and common law. It’s not one-way. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected Maori claims the government couldn’t sell minority stakes in state-owned hydro-electricity generators.
Judicial decisions have been accepted by Maori litigants, the public and National and Labour governments. Wobbliest was Helen Clark, who legislated to overrule a unanimous 2003 Court of Appeal judgment that tribes could explore residual property rights in the foreshore and seabed. John Key reversed Clark’s disgrace, respecting ancient English common law.
Fears white New Zealanders would be banned from beaches never materialised. The shemozzle is mostly forgotten.
More than 50 historic claims have been resolved, mostly by National but all with bipartisan support. Most tribes invested settlement funds wisely, becoming major economic players. The few that invested poorly accepted responsibility.
More important are formal apologies and the return of stolen land, if still government owned. Private land, even if originally stolen, is off limits. Some tribes have had land returned by the government, only to immediately give it back for all New Zealanders. The return was enough to settle the historic hurt.
Even among Kiwis irritated by things such as television weather reports using Maori rather than English placenames, most support the reconciliation process.
Polling by Talbot Mills suggested in May that more than 70 per cent of Kiwis considered the treaty a living document relevant to most government decision-making, or at least New Zealand’s founding document demanding historic injustices be resolved and Maori interests protected. Just 20 per cent rejected it as a historic irrelevance. Albanese’s handling of his voice proposal, especially if passed narrowly, makes such legitimacy unattainable. Unlike the Maori seats, the voice lacks 156 years of prescription. Unlike MPs for those seats, the voice will remain separate from the existing system. Neither will it have quasi-judicial status like the Waitangi Tribunal.
Unlike the Maori Council, Albanese’s proposal is top-down, launching a peak organisation before saying exactly who it is for, how urban and remote Aboriginal voices will be balanced and how representatives will be appointed. Existing Indigenous processes should be used, but voters deserve those details in advance.
Insufficient legitimacy would deprive the voice’s conversations with the federal parliament of similar public acceptance to court judgments and negotiated settlements in New Zealand.
Worse, Albanese is disingenuous when he claims the voice won’t evolve into something like the 2017 Uluru Statement’s Makarrata Commission, including a truth and reconciliation process, treaties and reparations, plus unforeseeable change.
Conversations are about parties reaching new and unimagined destinations, and a voice will slowly change Australia and its state.
Evolution will be across decades but Indigenous Australians, even more than Maori, take a long-term perspective. Managed respectfully and cautiously, Australia will change at the pace the majority accepts. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Matthew Hooton is a political commentator in New Zealand who has previously worked for the National and Act parties and the mayor of Auckland.