WAATEA NEWS COLUMN – New Plymouth, Old Hate – how to really change the flag
The story of Andrew Judd standing down from the New Plymouth Mayoralty re-election because of the virulent hill billy bigotry thrown at him and his family for seeking Maori representation on the Local Council should make us all pause.
Being spat at, Nazi dressed protestors and being abused in public are as ugly as it gets. When real power is threatened, white privilege gets violent.
The simple truth is that there are large pockets of our fellow citizens whose identity is so fragile they perceive sharing power with the indigenous culture as discrimination.
The challenge is to explain to people that this is the ‘New Zealand way’. That it is a solution that makes us stronger.That we discuss and bring people with our plans rather than simply stamp force on decisions makes the decisions themselves better.
If we want to live the Treaty in NZ, then we have to be conscious of it. You reach out to all members of the community and the first one on that list are the indigenous peoples. You also reach out to women’s rights activists, migrant communities, the LGBT community, the unions, the churches and business. You bring people together through genuine collaboration rather than from a position of unbalanced power protected by angry and ugly emotion.
Ultimately however there comes a moment when that recognition of power imbalance demands a structural response from Government because the New Plymouths in NZ won’t change without the Government spelling out its obligations to both Treaty Partners.
I believe we need an upper chamber to our single chamber Parliament. NZers don’t appreciate how incredibly powerful our version of the Westminster system is. With one chamber a Government can pass law with just one vote, hardly a recipe for inclusive decision making.
I believe we should have an upper chamber that is split 50%-50% between Maori and Pakeha and this Upper Chamber has the ability to force legislation that falls under Treaty challenges back to the lower chamber.
With such a powerful realignment of the relationship, all NZers could feel confident in stepping towards a Republic by severing ties to the UK. The Upper Chamber would elect the President and we could call for a new flag design then.
The old hate in New Plymouth will only completely go when we realign the power dynamics between Maori and Pakeha. Only then can we step forward with pride at the ‘New Zealand way’ rather than fear collaboration.
First Published Waatea News
Andrew Judd not standing again has nothing to do with the Maori ward issue.
In 2013 Andrew Judd was elected with a landslide majority (over 16,000 votes, huge for the provincial city) because the people of NP could not stand the thought of another 3 years of Harry Duynhoven and because he campaigned to ‘bring back integrity to local government’. And he surely sucked in a lot of people via his National Party-sponsored campaign (which we found out about afterwards).
Within a few days of taking office (and long before there was any mention of Maori wards) Andrew Judd began betraying practically everyone who had voted for him, doing multiple U-turns on practically everything he had said during his campaign; he quickly demonstrated he had no integrity and was just another corrupt liar promoting corporate business-as-usual.
It may suit certain people with particular political agendas to present Judd as a misunderstood ‘hero’ but we know better, and the nickname Judas is likely to stick with him for the rest of his days.
The Maori ward issue was/is just a smoke screen, of course.
While what you say may be true, and I have no reason not to believe you, and Judd may very well have let a lot of people down. But this does not mean that he might not have been right about Maori representation. One of the problems here is that the issue was raised not in a liberal, left leaning electorate. The response he encountered is entirely typical of Taranaki’s history, even allowing for the obvious personal vitriol. But is it something that councils up and down the country should be talking about?