Dame Anne Salmond: In praise of the middle ground

Expert opinion from University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau

In New Zealand, a small country in the heart of the Pacific, questions of economic and ecological survival loom large. Global forces including climate change and collapsing ecosystems, pandemics, shifting markets, identity politics and geo-political conflicts have local impacts that seem at once catastrophic and out of control.

Faced with these challenges, our leaders often seem adrift, grasping at strategies that are both ideological and self-defeating – tax cuts, a ‘small’ state and ‘free’ markets that are supposed to deliver personal liberty, but in fact generate collapsing infrastructure, precarious employment and financial insecurity for all but small elites: or top-down, ‘managerial’ bureaucracies that are supposed to deliver social services, but sometimes seem self-serving instead.

Voters are also confused and conflicted, looking for clear-cut choices (left vs right; Māori vs Pākehā) or someone to blame (biased media or business lobbyists, ‘woke’ intellectuals or neo-liberal think tanks, take your pick).

In a complex world, though, such simplicities lack conviction for all but the most ideologically minded. Most New Zealanders find themselves in a sceptical middle ground, mistrusting the fanatics and looking for leadership that avoids the extremes.

MMP was supposed to deliver this kind of outcome, a balance of powers that thwarts political excesses. When a global pandemic delivered the last Labour government an absolute majority, however, they exceeded their mandate on a range of ideological issues, flirting with a racially ‘split state’, building centralised, top-down bureaucracies in health, water services and technical education, and almost fatally undermining local governance in the process.

Not surprisingly, in the recent election, they were roundly defeated. Again, however, it is questionable whether MMP is working to deliver a balance of forces that empowers the middle ground. 

In the past month, the new coalition Government has laid out a 100-day manifesto that also exceeds its mandate on a range of ideological issues – flirting with climate denial and a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi, for example, while decentralising health, water services and polytechnic education and repealing environmental legislation without providing workable alternatives and making cuts to public services to provide tax cuts that will almost certainly leave most Kiwi families worse off overall.

In the process of building a coalition under MMP, those at the political margins won concessions unwarranted by their level of electoral support, and this poses a risk to democracy in New Zealand. It also places the new Prime Minister, a relatively inexperienced politician, in a difficult position. If his Government is to endure, they must deliver positive outcomes to Kiwi families, communities and landscapes in fact, not in ideological fiction.

In the US, it is now commonplace to talk about ‘post-neoliberalism’, although given New Zealand’s distance from metropolitan centres, that message of philosophical demise may not yet have landed on our shores. At the same time, no clear ‘left-wing’ doctrine has emerged as a credible alternative.

For New Zealand, a small, intimate society, this may be a good thing. Rather than lurching from left to right, from one political extreme to another, our most successful governments have been practical and adaptive, not ideologically driven, trying to find out what works best for Kiwi individuals, families, communities and businesses. 

Unlike ‘tit for tat’ politics, this kind of grounded, empirical approach is more likely to use scarce resources wisely. It also has the advantage of building on core values rooted in this nation’s history. In this last place of any size on earth to be found and settled by human beings, our ancestors had to be innovative and successful to survive.

When the ancestors of Māori arrived in Aotearoa, they found plants, animals, climate and landscapes very different from those in their tropical homelands. In a very short time, perhaps just 800 years, they’d invented new agricultural, building and seafaring technologies, a new language and new ways of thinking, based on ancestral precedents but adapted to new challenges and conditions.

According to the origin stories, these first settlers were driven from their homelands or went exploring to see what was across the horizon. Often their home societies were relatively hierarchical, and some left to make new lives for themselves and their families.

Much the same is true of the settlers who arrived from Europe some 600 years later. They also came from homelands with plants, animals, climates and landscapes very different from those in New Zealand, and had to adapt in ways based on ancestral precedents, but in response to new challenges and conditions.

When it became clear that the new arrivals were increasing in numbers, the rangatira of the various kin groups signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi, an agreement with Queen Victoria that gave the Queen kāwanatanga, the right to govern; while promising the hapū the tino rangatiratanga, absolute chieftainship of their lands and ancestral treasures; and ngā tāngata māori (indigenous persons) absolute equality with the incoming settlers – a classic balance of powers.

Like the ancestors of Māori, the new arrivals from Europe had often been driven from their homelands (the Irish and Highland Scots, for example) or sought to escape social hierarchies to make new lives for themselves and their families. This led to violent clashes over land and different ways of living, but also flurries of invention and co-adaptation as increasingly diverse whakapapa lines (from the Pacific, Asia and elsewhere) entangled.

Black and white histories, left and right polarities and self-interested elites who seek to create new feudal hierarchies do not sit well with these legacies from our distant and more recent past. A focus on delivering a successful, egalitarian society and what works best for diverse individuals, families, communities and landscapes would be salutary, and welcome.

As a New Year’s resolution for a new Prime Minister, it would be great to see evidence of good outcomes the key driver for policy in New Zealand. Most Kiwis want a peaceful, creative and prosperous country; flourishing waterways and landscapes, and infrastructure and institutions that work well, not radical disparities of wealth and power, divisive posturing and populist rhetoric.

A polarised Parliament in which ‘the government’ and ‘opposition’ are at each other’s throats may not be the best way to realise these aspirations. As Sir Peter Gluckman has recently suggested, citizens’ assemblies, in which a representative range of New Zealanders explore key issues and arrive at recommendations by consensus – rather like debates on marae – might be more effective in dealing with difficult challenges.

The more the new Government reaches across social, economic, and philosophical divides in search of good ways forward, the better. They need to be inclusive, and govern for all New Zealanders. As they say, Nā tou rourou, nā taku rourou, ka ora ai te iwi – with your food basket and mine, the people will thrive.