Sudden Shifts: Bill English Backtracks, And Winston Peters Changes Tack

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IF THE PRIME MINISTER was embarrassed about backtracking on National’s immigration policies this morning, he didn’t show it. Under enormous pressure from the regions to abandon his government’s plans for restricting the inward flow of cheap foreign labour, Bill English sounded surprisingly relaxed. It was almost as if National’s plans had been released for only one purpose: to demonstrate to Winston Peters the dangers of making immigration control a central plank of his election platform.

Certainly, when asked how his government’s imminent backtrack would affect National’s chances of reaching an agreement with NZ First, English became positively laconic:

“Mr Peters will be getting the same message in the regions, actually, as us. And I think it’s one of the reasons that he’s not on about it as much as he was – because the demand for people to do jobs in the regions is really strong. He’ll be hearing what we’re hearing: that those economies are going strongly and they need people to get the work done. And in Auckland as well – not just in the regions. So I think the policy direction is going to be driven by the strength of the economy.”

Poor Winston, provincial intolerance isn’t what it used to be. If he thought the sudden influx of scores of Filipino dairy workers into Southland, Otago and Canterbury would inevitably inflame racial resentments, then he couldn’t have been more wrong. These devout, hard-working and uncomplaining immigrants have won the affection and respect of Pakeha farmers across the south. (Not least because the subsequent arrival of their young families has rescued more than one rural primary school from closure!)

What these new immigrants have provoked, however, are rueful Pakeha comparisons with the Maori workers of yesteryear. As the cheap farm labourers of the twentieth century, Maori were similarly prized for their easy-going attitudes and generally uncomplaining acceptance of low wages and poor conditions. If those indigenous workers harboured any misgivings about toiling to enrich the Pakeha “owners” of their ancestors’ lands, then they wisely kept them to themselves.

How times have changed! How New Zealand’s settler culture chafes at the fact that Maori are no longer content to be the “hewers of wood and the drawers of water” for their “superior” Pakeha masters. How unfair that the Treaty of Waitangi – long dismissed as “a simple nullity” – continues to nibble away relentlessly at the “settled” property rights underpinning the political economy of the New Zealand State.

The great virtue of Filipino farm workers is that they do not claim to own the land they’re working on!

Here, perhaps, is the explanation for Winston Peters sudden switch from the issue of “out-of-control immigration” to the even more inflammatory issue of Maori “separatism” and “special treatment”. Perhaps his endless perambulations through the provinces have reconnected him with the inconvenient truth that at the core of this country’s history lies the involuntary transfer of its land – the foundation of all its subsequent wealth – from the indigenous Maori people to the British colonisers who conquered them. It is an historical truth which New Zealand’s settler society has worked tirelessly to obscure – and of which it is mortally afraid.

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Just how terrified provincial (and, it must also be said, suburban) New Zealand has become of Maori political and economic assertiveness is revealed in the following comments – all of which were posted on the far-right Centre for Political Research’s website:

“Let’s put this way: Less than 200 years ago, Maori were cannibals. They were savages, and they have not had time to evolve.”

“The Maori culture is the reason for all the problems in NZ.”

“Maori have far too many children, trusting that the taxpayer will bring them up.”

“When will we admit the Maori just deny the fact [that] they are the cause of most of the problems.”

“There is an urgent need to drain the Maori Swamp in this country.” 

“Maori are only a small percentage of the population of New Zealand. So why should the rest of New Zealanders be subjected to tribal voodooism?”

If this is a reflection of the sort of extreme anti-Maori prejudice abroad in provincial New Zealand, then Winston Peters decision to re-direct his fire away from “cheap foreign labour”, and towards the Maori Seats and Maori “separatism” is readily explained. To his astonishment, he discovered that Southland and mid-Canterbury cockies are embracing the virtues of multiculturalism. For a few moments he must have been flummoxed. Then the penny will have dropped. Better multiculturalism than bi-culturalism!

Conservative voters in the regions are much more willing to tolerate foreigners prepared to work their land for low wages, than they are indigenous New Zealanders preparing to reclaim their patrimony. As Bill English noted of National’s and NZ First sudden shifts: “the policy direction is going to be driven by the strength of the economy”.

There was no need for him to add: “and in the interests of the people who control it.”

15 COMMENTS

  1. Hmmm As a teacher I observed more overt racism from Pakeha students than from Maori. Maybe only because they felt freer to be direct with me? I somehow doubt it.
    Well argued – good insight, Chris.

    • Chris,

      https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/episodes/s2017-e19

      When Winston was interviewed by Corin Dann Q+A Last week 16th July 2017 Winston clearly put out has Party’s plan of how to combat the skill shortage in the horticulture and Farming sector Chris!

      Will you review this policy and then reflect on the good points please as his policy makes a lot of sense and he said it was planned after serious input from those primary sectors.

      Cheers,

      • Hi Cleangreen

        I would have thought that Bill English and Paula Bennett not only support the demands of “rural conservative voters” but also the demands of the Corporate Businesses who call all the economic shots throughout urban New Zealand. Food; Rents; Energy; Housing; Education; Health; Assets – for instance.

        Farmers have built up over many decades a strong attitude of paying very low wages to any staff whom they employ.

        Bill English and Paula Bennett heartily support that.

        Copying the Farmers, urban Employers have established viciously low wage rates, on the grounds they have to support their share holders and their own egos.

        The modern New Zealand public has gotten a bit shy of trying to buy houses on low wages. Indeed shy of renting houses on very low incomes.

        So, our dear Farmers and our brilliant corporates have decided to force our compliant Billy and Paula, to bring slave labour into our nation. People such as Orchardists rob these people blind.

        That does not bother immoral operators such as Billy and Paula. they live on the absolute fat of the land. Lying and denying this that and the other.

        They thrill to the poverty they have thrown New Zealand job seekers into. They suck up to the Business men and women who seek foreign slaves.

        Whatever the farmers and the corporates decide, whatever English and Bennett force on us, Kiwis will will never accept slavery.

        They will not accept poverty; they will not accept insult and belittlement. They will rise up against the Farmers and the Corporations and the Parliament.

        We will Defend our Freeland.

        • so true that is exactly what will happen. Except it will be the urban poor which are building up against the landed gentry land owners and corporate high flyers. I think we will see these sorts becoming gated soon as inequality and poverty increase.

        • @ OBSERVER TOKOROA … concur wholeheartedly with your comment. Well put and thank you for throwing the spotlight on NZ’s despicable and shameful practice of using imported slave labour. It’s a disgrace.

          As such, we Kiwis have the moral duty of voting in favour of a change of government in September. Let’s make sure we do it!

  2. New Zealand is still a British Colony of sorts it seems:

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/95034823/british-foreign-secretary-boris-johnson-pays-tribute-to-uknz-bond-likens-hongi-to-headbutt

    “Johnson, in the country for a whirlwind visit, began his tour by being welcomed onto Takahanga Marae in Kaikoura on Monday morning.

    “Thank you for teaching me the hongi, which I think is a beautiful form of introduction … though it might be misinterpreted in a pub in Glasgow,” Johnson said.

    “I also have to say that this is the most mind-numbingly beautiful country that I have ever seen,” he added.

    He said he could see why New Zealand attracted tourists came to the town.

    Johnson also said he supported easy migration between Commonwealth countries and the United Kingdom post-Brexit.”

    So close are the ties again, or still now, perhaps.

    And re the past, reflect on this, when we talk about the need for cheap migrants from countries such as the poor Philippines:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_of_Fiji

    “He also banned the exploitation of Fijians as labourers, and following the failure of the cotton-growing enterprise in the early 1870s, Gordon decided in 1878 to import indentured labourers from India to work on the sugarcane fields that had taken the place of the cotton plantations. The 463 Indians arrived on 14 May 1879 – the first of some 61,000 that were to come before the scheme ended in 1916. The plan involved bringing the Indian workers to Fiji on a five-year contract, after which they could return to India at their own expense..”

    And this example of getting cheap labour:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Indians

    “British acquisition of Penang, Melaka, and Singapore – the Straits Settlements from 1786 to 1824 started a steady inflow of Indian labour. This consisted of traders, policemen, plantation labourers and colonial soldiers (see sepoys). Apart from this there was also substantial migration of Indians to work in the British colonial government, due to their general good command of the English language.”
    (From ‘The Second Wave …’)

    The British also had this history:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain

    So while actual slavery is no longer allowed, cheap labour is popular in the former colonies, same as in the modern day post colonial territories, that have a British history.

    New Zealand of the modern day is simply continuing its once British tradition, now calling it ‘immigration’, for economic ends of course.

  3. They reckon the aristocrats in NZ are more English than the English after all the English Elite sent their 2nd and 3rd sons out here to settle on Maori Land with the eldest sons staying in England to carry on the lineage.

  4. They reckon the aristocrats in NZ are more English than the English after all the English Elite sent their 2nd and 3rd sons out here to settle on Maori Land with the eldest sons staying in England to carry on the lineage.

  5. Good piece Chris. There is a long history in NZ agriculture of Maori union organisation in shearing and farming ; the Maori Land Worker was one of the first union mags in NZ ; In the late 1980s when Farm Workers tried to organise into an award through the NZ Workers Union it was met with huge opposition from farmers ; farmers set the dogs on union organisers and threatened them with guns ; farm workers were thrown out of their farm cottages if they showed the slightest interest in union organising. and of course a National Government smashed those efforts in the 1990s along with forestry, horticulture, viticulture and other work on the land. So if 30 years later, workers are saying nah, The question is how this changes ; Labour’s fair pay agreements have the potential to change this landscape. It will take massive organising change, but we could do it if we have the will. Meantime, those Filipino workers ; love them ; should be organised ; watch out for them ; they understand collective action.

  6. Those comments from a far-right Centre for Political Research’s website are vile. It is nauseating to know that such attitudes still exist in our supposed egalitarian nation.

  7. Also I have noticed a Moari Aristocracy out there that likes to partake in the public trough. Has absolutely no qualms of stopping.

  8. Interesting analysis. I took the National Party U-Turn on immigration as an attempt to wrestle media attention back towards a fight about immigration and away from social security and Metiria Turei. They want to fight the election on their preferred ground.

    One quibble with your post. You say in part “…from the indigenous Māori people to the British colonisers who conquered them.”

    I don’t think you can say Māori were conquered.

    And I believe this is now the conclusion of mainstream historians, that the settlement of New Zealand and actions of the Crown led directly to the Land Wars but these were not conclusive across the whole of Aotearoa – more an uneasy stalement, that Māori ultimately resisted the military invasion and and only succumbed partially to the economic and cultural imperialism that followed.

    I’m not saying it wasn’t horrific or anything, but I think it’s a popular myth that Māori were conquered and it feeds a lot of the anti-Māori rhetoric.

    • “I don’t think you can say Māori were conquered.”

      Haha, perhaps conquered in stealth, more like stabbed in the back, after having been talked into a fraudulent treaty, designed along the lines of a crafty modern day corporate insurance policy, which offers stuff all cover, due to endless exclusion clauses?!

      The land was taken, they were turned into landless serfs, and when they tried to fight back, they were shot by the thousands, even by their own, some of whom were bought with favours, by the colonial settlers and their administrators.

  9. Why couldn’t they have just pulled the immigration policy promise after the election, that’s what National does best.

  10. You can bloody well bet the farm (Maori or Pakeha farm) that unless the larger 3 Opposition Party’s can come together in agreement of a common platform based on sound Policy that the Status Quo will proceed with the grand plan of Commodify, Exploit, Slash n` Burn, then shit in whats left of any Egalitarian Society we “thought” might have existed in NZ…

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