Treaty fever is approaching its crisis — so, perhaps a cup of cold water and bed rest to cool the heated parts and bring the world back into focus.
Hikoi, haka and hysteria from all sides of the debate don’t really help, but such is our thraldom to post-romantic values that "being passionate" about something almost automatically justifies whatever it is beyond argument.
In some spheres this might not matter too much, but in politics it surely does. I have no doubt, for example, that most members of the incoming American administration are as passionate, even sincere, about what they believe as anyone could imagine, but they do scare the hell out of those who don’t share the love for its cult-like character.
Passion and even sincerity on their own are never enough — necessary but insufficient elements in the process of keeping a diverse population harmonious and reasonably contented with their lives. That, I hope, is what politics is for.
And while passion in performance can be extremely satisfying for the performer and those attuned to the performance, it can be self-defeating. It’s really quite astonishing that in all the noise around David Seymour’s Bill he is getting publicity worth more than even his wealthiest political benefactor might be willing to pay and that the creators of this publicity seem unaware of it. Act New Zealand is never likely to be a major political force, but its hard core can only get harder and more permanent as it sees aggression where others might see something else and so feels more secure in its view with each performance.
I should make it quite clear that the dustbin of history is where this Bill belongs, not merely because it is "divisive" (the government’s health policies, for example, seem no less so) but because it is such an obvious cynical move to establish a particularly narrow and barren philosophy as the foundation of the country’s constitution. It is inadequate and self-serving.
However, the divide that has opened up doesn’t point to a solution and silly, irresponsible comments like that of an ex-prime minister, that the Act party is "inviting civil war", only invite the righteous to take up arms.
Similarly, comments from a hikoi spokesman defending parliamentary haka performances by asserting that Parliament only exists because the chiefs in 1840 allowed it to, are equally unhelpful. They imply what to me is an insidious distinction between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, the latter, the bulk of the population, allowed to be here on sufferance.
Treaty or not, colonisation was going to happen. How far the Treaty has been able to dull its sharpest edges is a matter of conjecture.
Neither, I think, is it helpful to evoke the "covenant" or resort to facile biblical parallels. The Treaty of Waitangi is a political document, whatever sense of sanctity it might have had for those who signed it. If its principles are religiously rigid and unable to be debated in a manner that reflects the interests of the whole community and the evolution of the body politic, then we are condemned to "division" for the foreseeable future.
In a no doubt futile attempt to be constructive I will repeat a refrain. The division that plagues us has at its extremes two political entities, Act and Te Pati Maori. Neither is ever going to be a major political force and their current antics are only possible because between them lies a wide political vacuum.
National and Labour are both effectively leaderless: the former has a leader who appears quite out of his depth and the leader of the latter, while much more articulate, seems bereft of ideas and incapable of actually doing anything.
It is more necessary than ever that the Maori caucuses of the two major parties take the lead and between them develop a modus operandi that can express the principles of the Treaty in a manner that the whole population can accept and understand.
Exactly what this might look like, I don’t know, but until somebody tries, the division that is so loudly lamented at the moment is not going to go away.
■Harry Love was the chairman of the Labour Castle St branch 1987-88, and the New Labour parliamentary candidate for St Kilda in the 1990 election.
