The new Ministry for Ethnic Communities must dump the baggage of previous bureaucracies; it must move away from pleasing a few, to serving everyone.
I didn’t think I would be writing publicly on this again so soon. I am still reeling from the feeling of writing the first time. As I was writing last time, I was hopeful. I was naïve. I was writing prior to the release of the report of the Royal Commission Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques.
I knew it would not provide the much needed closure, but I also wasn’t expecting it would leave a gaping wound – that no one is accountable. That no one is guaranteed safety from a similar attack in the future.
Very quickly our government of the day accepted all 43 recommendations, bar one “in principle”. As always our very earnest Prime Minister fronted New Zealanders and assured us her government was committed to the much needed change.
March 15 2019 didn’t just happen to the Muslim community. It didn’t just happen to those who can be classified as “ethnic”. That attack was on all of us. So any work we do as a result of those attacks, if we truly do not want a repeat of it, requires participation, engagement, critical analysis and debate from all of us.
There was some toing and froing on recommendations based on chapter 2 of the report – finding that our intelligence organisations were not at fault, just very poorly resourced. This recommendation for a new Intelligence Service is the one accepted “in principle”, and time will tell if the government has seriously taken on board the recommendations.
As if the heavy weight of the picture this report’s outcome painted wasn’t enough, a day later Security Intelligence Service director-general Rebecca Kitteridge made a public statement that she didn’t believe that the Muslim community was targeted by her agency. I first became familiar with Kitteridge back in 2015 when she claimed young Muslim women from New Zealand were traveling to Iraq or Syria to become “jihadi brides”. Of course no apology was received for having created this false image about young Muslim women.
In fact, Chris Finlayson, who was Minister in charge of SIS (and who by the way does not believe Trump is racist), didn’t even think the general public, let alone the Muslim community, needed to know where these women were leaving from to get to Syria or Iraq.
All this context is to say, Kitteridge will get to keep her job even after the grave faux pas made past and present. I say this knowing a few public servants of colour who have been pushed out of their public service roles for much lesser transgressions.
The system needs a massive rehaul, and we need a democracy where leaders are conscious of their biases, and aren’t protecting each other over advancing the interests of the public they serve. My call to action is not that Kitteridge no longer have a job, but that we truly take on the spirit of the report’s recommendations and create the “new” agencies the Royal Commission suggests rather than merely veneering over the old.
I must say, I was quite relieved to read the report’s finding on improving social cohesion in Aotearoa New Zealand. The report covered issues of government leadership and direction, singling out the Office of Ethnic Communities, the government’s principal advisor on ethnic diversity in New Zealand.
The Office of Ethnic Communities’ biggest challenge is gaining mana in wider government to really be the principal advisor on ethnic diversity. This does not just require more resources, it requires leadership, strategy and niche expertise to enable this agenda in all of government.
But even that relief was not long-lived. The day the report was released, I also received a statement from the Office of Ethnic Communities that raised alarm bells for me, as it should for all of us.
The government had already decided it was going to “upgrade” the agency, which was “repeatedly recognised as underperforming”. The message denotes a carry-over of the old into the new – veneering over the old. Only a year earlier, in the aftermath of the attack, this very government had decided to park the idea of a better-resourced Ministry for Ethnic Communities for the foreseeable future.
At this point it is important to disclose that I have done two stints at the Office of Ethnic Communities. One in my younger days when it was called the “Office of Ethnic Affairs” and one very recently in a senior public service role that I left just prior to the Christchurch Terror Attacks. I feel this prolonged and experience at the Office gives me some expertise, if my professional expertise continues to be unrecognised here, to comment on why we all must care, carefully pay attention to, and participate in any developments related to such a Ministry. That is, Recommendation 30.
Those who advocated for the establishment of the Office wanted representation. In the passionate pursuit of such representation we might have lost our way, and instead will leave the future generations with yet another unaccountable bureaucracy if it doesn’t have strong leadership, clear vision, purpose, agenda and a strategy developed with the input of all New Zealanders.
You see, March 15 2019 didn’t just happen to the Muslim community. It didn’t just happen to those who can be classified as “ethnic”. That attack was on all of us. So any work we do as a result of those attacks, if we truly do not want a repeat of it, requires participation, engagement, critical analysis and debate from all of us.
The Office’s biggest challenge is not its under-resourcing. In fact, in the last year alone the Office has doubled in size, has been granted a larger amount of funding to distribute, and we have yet to see results. In fact I believe “under-resourcing” is a politically correct, diplomatic ruse – when the reality is far worse.
The Office’s biggest challenge is gaining mana in wider government to really be the principal advisor on ethnic diversity. This does not just require more resources, it requires leadership, strategy and niche expertise to enable this agenda in all of government.
Those who advocated for the establishment of the Office wanted representation. In the passionate pursuit of such representation we might have lost our way, and instead will leave the future generations with yet another unaccountable bureaucracy if it doesn’t have strong leadership, clear vision, purpose, agenda and a strategy developed with the input of all New Zealanders.
Social cohesion is not just about how ethnic people settled here can feel they belong. For social cohesion to be achieved Māori, Pasifika and Pakeha need to be fully participating in meeting this agenda halfway.
So given the decision is made, here is the silver lining of how its course can still be changed. I hope the Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities Minister consults thoroughly. That a Ministry is anchored by legislation for it to truly be effective, that the old baggage of the Office is left behind, and people are hired not based on the colour of their skin but their soft and technical skills around diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism.
This new Ministry will need a robust framework of operation, and please let’s move away from pleasing a few to serving all.
In fact, to advance social cohesion in our country, it might be more prudent to financially invest in the actually poorly-resourced third sector. At least that way those who do so much of the social cohesion work can be funded to do so, and also hold the system to account.
