On April 21, the report of the government-commissioned Whanau Ora taskforce was made public.  The key idea of Whanau Ora (“Well-being”) is the establishment of a one-stop- shop approach to the problems of individuals and families in relation to problems of health, education and the justice system.  Funds are to be diverted from existing stage agencies into a new Whanau Ora Trust which would contract out work to service providers to deal with the problems on a whanau basis.  In other words, where an individual family member had health, education or justice system problems, the individual would be viewed as part of their whanau and the whole whanau would be engaged in finding solutions.  This is seen as “empowering” both whanau and individual Maori.

Although Whanau Ora was originally conceived by its Maori Party architects as a programme for Maori, there is now agreement that all “families in need” will have access to the services provided through the programme.

Much is being made of the potential for Whanau Ora by the Maori Party and a layer of Maori community activists, as well as by members of the National Party government.  According to Te Runanga o Ngati Whatua chair Naida Glavish, for instance, Whanau Ora is “one of the most significant milestones in the history of Maori in this country since the signing of the Treaty.”  National deputy prime minister and finance minister Bill English thinks it has the potential to provide the government with “better value for money” and that its principles “ask the right questions and look for some hard answers”.  English joined Maori Party co-leader and proposed Whanau Ora minister Tariana Turia at Te Puni Kokiri in the public launch of the taskforce report.

At present, there is very little in the way of specific detail.  What is clear, however, is the overall social, economic and political position of Maori today.  This position, however, is rather more complex than it is often treated as by the left.  Much left discourse on Maori oppression repeats things that were true thirty and more years ago, but simply doesn’t analyse the changes that have taken place both in the operations of capitalism in this country and the position of Maori within those operations.

CHANGES FOR THE BETTER Statistics for Maori have improved since the shift from socially and economically rural agriculture to an urban working class existence, following World War Two.  Maori life expectancy increased dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, and has continued to do so – life expectancy for Maori women is now 75.1 years (an increase of almost 20 years since the early 1950s) and for Maori men, 70.4 years (an increase of about 16 years since the early 1950s).  Maori average weekly income has risen from $486 in 1998 to $722 in 2008 and Maori average weekly income for 15-24 year olds is now higher than for pakeha of the same age ($506 compared to $464), although this also reflects the proportionately higher number of young pakeha in tertiary education.  Nevertheless, the numbers of Maori in tertiary education have also risen substantially.  The number of Maori who are now in small business and self-employed has been growing at a faster rate than any other ethnic group.  In the period from 2001 to 2006, for instance, Maori self-employed grew by 20%, compared to 8.8% for non-Maori.  Compared to employed Maori, there is also a greater percentage of self-employed Maori in the $50,000 and over income bracket.  The shift into higher income brackets in those same years for self-employed Maori (13%) is higher than for self-employed non-Maori (10%).

Maori have also been moving up the job ladder.  Between 2003 and 2008 there was an almost 26% increase in the number of Maori in high-skilled occupations and a 33% increase in the number of Maori in skilled occupations, while the numbers in low-skilled and semi-skilled occupations scarcely changed.  Almost two in five Maori are now in skilled and high-skilled occupations.  The number and scope of Maori employers has also being growing noticeably.  Between 2001 and 2005/6, the number of Maori employers rose by 1536 or 28%, while across the population as a whole the increase was only 10%.  In terms of entrepreneurial activity Maori (17.7%) were surpassed globally in the 2001-2005 period by just two countries.  Maori women have the world’s third highest rate of entrepreneurialism.   In 2001, Maori-owned commercial assets were $8.9 billion; in 2005/6 they amounted to $16.5 billion.

The 2003 Maori Economic Development Report noted that the Maori economy is more profitable than the New Zealand economy overall and its rate of growth has generally exceed the rate of growth of the total economy since the end of the 1980s.  Maori are net lenders to the rest of New Zealand and also pay a bit more in tax than they receive in benefits.

Most of this is very different from even the period of the long economic boom after WW2.   During that time Maori, although their incomes and health statistics improved substantially, were still concentrated in the manual workforce and there was little in the way of a Maori middle class, let alone a Maori capitalist layer.

These changes of the past 20-25 years are linked to a new discourse about Maori advancement.  Whereas even twenty or thirty years ago discourse on Maori advancement, let alone liberation, was either anti-capitalist or involved some kind critique of aspects of capitalism, the discourse on Maori advancement today is dominated by ideas of entrepreneurship and Maori capitalism.  Indeed, according to a recent report Te Puni Kokiri commissioned from the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research, there is now “a Maori edge” – “it’s cool to be Maori” and so Maori business making and selling things that can be presented as “authentically” Maori have a competitive advantage in the market place.  Instead of the success of pakeha business leading to a trickle-down effect for Maori, the argument is now that Maori business will create a flow-on effect for the wider NZ economy.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE While the kind of figures cited above certainly reflect important trends in the position of Maori in this country in the twenty-first century, they only form part of the picture.  The other part of the picture is that Maori, on average, remain worse off than pakeha.  Maori average hourly wage rates have grown more slowly than average wage rates in general – for instance, Maori average hourly wages rose from $14.33 in June 2002 to $17.58 in June 2007, but economy-wide hourly wages increased from $16.71 to $21.41.  As of June 2009, Maori were three times more likely to be unemployed than pakeha.  Maori life expectancy, despite a substantial increase is still 5-10 years behind pakeha life expectancy and maori are still incarcerated at far higher rates than pakeha, making up a vastly disproportionate number of the prison population.  The fact that Maori are a lot more likely to be doing time for dishonesty offences such as burglary and car conversion than pakeha indicates the youthfulness of the Maori population, that it remains disproportionately working class and that judges are more likely to lock up young working class people, especially brown-skinned ones, than middle class crooks, especially white ones.

Moreover, while there is now a substantial Maori middle class and a Maori capitalist layer at the other end of the pyramid of Maori capitalism is an impoverished and alienated section of Maori.  Many of the newly-impoverished and alienated  Maori are in families which were once sustained by often relatively good-paying jobs in the meat works, transport and the timber industry.  Whole communities of Maori (and pakeha) workers were created around these jobs.  There was social cohesion, people saw themselves as part of a community of workers and helped each other out in times of economic stress, stuck together during industrial disputes, helped each other with DIY projects and so on.  The economic reforms of the fourth Labour and National governments destroyed many of these jobs and communities.  They took away not only the incomes from those jobs, but also the social solidarity that existed in those communities.

THE SOLUTIONS OF OUR RULERS Ever since then one of the key policy concerns of the state and the ruling class has been how to manage the anti-social consequences of those economic reforms.  It’s not that they care about the people themselves; but they do care about the fallout when it results in increases in crime and general social problems.  The state and the ruling class are smart enough to know that police truncheons, while certainly used on working class youth (especially brown-skinned working class youth) are by themselves woefully inadequate.  Much more sophisticated mechanisms of control are needed.  The main ones revolve around using upwardly-mobile Maori to manage the Maori  so-called “underclass” (ie the most downtrodden section of  working class Maori who have been dispossessed of jobs, economic independence, a sense of community and working class social solidarity and have partly disintegrated personally and collectively under such circumstances, resulting in increases in anti-social activity against fellow working class people and any forms of activity which make the middle and upper classes nervous).  The state, however, also doesn’t want to spend too much money managing the so-called under-class which has been created by the operations of the very social system the state defends.

These factors, along with the state’s desire to help the development of Maori capitalism,  shape state policy towards those at the bottom of the socio-economic heap.   It’s within this context that Whanau Ora comes into existence.  It’s essentially about managing the damage done by the very socio-economic system which the leadership of the Maori Party have embraced and wish to help run.  And enriching Maori service providers in the process .

Class divisions have become more pronounced among Maori and the more pronounced they have become the more middle and upper class Maori have been attempted to put their own interests forward as those of Maori in general, obliterating Maori working class voices in the process.  Because the core problem is not “colonisation” and the loss of Maoritanga, but the perfectly normal operations of a capitalist system long past its best-by date, neither Whanau Ora nor any other approach within the confines of the existing system  is going to be able to turn the situation of the most desperate working class familiesaround.

SOLUTIONS OF HOPE This, however, doesn’t mean things are hopeless.  In 1979 a radical, socialist-inclined movement called the New Jewel Movement took power, via a revolution, in the small Caribbean country of Grenada.  The country had been run by a corrupt dictatorial regime and anti-social activity on the part of the oppressed was quite widespread.  Within a year, inter-personal violence (assault, murder), robbery and other anti-social activity had almost disappeared.  The reason was that the revolutionary process united people and created social solidarity and hope in place of the war of all against all which is a typical feature of capitalist society.

Only forms of action which challenge the system, unite people in struggle and therefore create genuine forms of social solidarity and real hope, can turn around the problems facing the most distressed working class areas in the country and the people most broken-down by the oppressive and divisive nature of capitalism.

One thing the election and the days since have confirmed is the inability of many on the left to make a sober analysis based on reality and, in particular, the way in which bourgeois politics is related to the economy and how bourgeois politics is centrally concerned with the maintenance of conditions such as social stability which are necessary to the operations of the market. Instead much of the left has cried wolf about the new government, seeing it as a re-run of the 1984-1993 period of ‘new right’ dominance.

For instance, the headline on the Socialist Aotearoa blog is “RESISTING THE NAT-ACT JUNTA- What is to be done?” Does the author of that piece really believe that we are about to be ruled by a “junta”? Are they unable to distinguish between bourgeois democracy and military dictatorship? If they are able to make the distinction why use terminology that bears no relation to the reality and simply misleads and misorients people?

Although, in the context of a worsening economic situation, there would certainly have to be attacks on the working class, Key is not creating a junta of any kind. In fact, he appears to not even be creating a National-ACT coalition but opting for Clark’s own strategy – a minority government with ministers out of cabinet from what he sees as both the ‘left’ (Maori Party) and ‘right’ (ACT) and support on confidence and supply. The temptation for the Maori Party to go for this will likely be pretty substantial, as Key and co. well know. This was apparent before the election – and was reiterated by Key on Saturday night, by Matthew Hooton on ‘Eye to Eye’ on Sunday morning, by Key again on TV on Sunday night and Monday night. In fact, Key even wants to talk with the Greens. (Since this was written on Monday 11 November, things have moved along further with the Maori Party.)

The Maori Party is going to be as much involved in Key’s government as Act – no surprise to us, of course, but probably quite a shock to the left groups who have illusions in what the Maori Party represents in real political terms, a thoroughly exaggerated idea of the ‘threat’ represented by ACT and who fail to appreciate that the modern National Party is not the party of rural reactionaries and upper crust racists and hasn’t been for a long time.

What National does in terms of economic policy will be overwhelmingly conditioned by how much of an economic downturn there is. They’re not going to attack the working class because they have some ideological fixation with making workers poor (they don’t have such a fixation and, in fact, the Nats never really have had such a fixation) and least of all are they going to try some pitbull job on the working class just because Roger Douglas might want them to.

The attacks of the 1984-93 period were the reflection that NZ capitalism was up shit creek without a paddle. The capitalists had absolutely no alternative. That’s not the situation at present and it remains to be seen how deeply the woes in the financial and banking sector in other countries will hit NZ. Because the NZ economy depends on exports, and to some extent easy foreign money, it could be hit quite hard – on the other hand, the decline of the NZ dollar (which is a product of these woes) is good news for exporters because it makes NZ products cheaper in export markets than those of their rivals.

Unless they’re really in a huge crisis, the capitalists prefer not to make big attacks on the working class. Especially when they’re blessed with social stability and a tame-pet union leadership like the CTU brass. Why screw that up unless the economic situation is so totally dire that you have to?

One of the things that a large part of the far left has in common with the market rules ideologues is that neither really understand that the market is just a thing and can’t organise the preconditions for its own existence and continuance. The operation of the market depends, for one thing, on social stability yet the operations of the market undermine social stability by trying to commodify everything and individualise society.

Any smart capitalists – and any good Marxist – understands that capital, because it’s a thing, requires conscious human planning and organisation to maintain social stability and manage society so that the market itself can operate successfully and deliver maximum profitability to the capitalists. In the First World, the capitalists are prepared to pay for stability too. And, generally, they’d rather pay a bit for it than have a big scrap with the working class. This only changes when there is a really serious economic crisis – ie a real crisis across the whole of the economy, not just problems in the finance sector.

It’s interesting that, every time you see him, Key has a big smile on his face. He’s in a very strong position because he has options and is not beholden to Act, let alone to Douglas. He’s perfectly prepared to make concessions to the Maori Party – because, despite the rubbish from a lot of the left that the Nats are some kind of dinosaur backwoods racists, the Nats these days (ie in terms of who they are) are essentially an urban-liberal petty-bourgeois party like Labour. The Nats have more actual capitalists in their ranks, and are a bourgeois party in the sense that that is the class interest they defend, but in terms of personnel and ideas they’re an urban-liberal petty-bourgeois party.

A few of them like Lockwood Smith have bits and pieces of racist ideas, just like a chunk of Labour MPs do, but few of them are dyed-in-the-wool racists and none of them want to impoverish Maori, suppress Maori cultural rights etc. What they actually want is to wed Maori cultural rights to the market as much as possible. Since there’s nothing radical about Maori cultural rights in the context of 21st century New Zealand – there may have been at some point in the past, there just ain’t today – this is a project in which the Nats and the Maori Party can happily marry.

What the Maori Party represents politically (the views of upwardly mobile Maori middle class and burgeoning Maori entrepreneurs) is more significant than what they represent sociologically (a large chunk of Maori workers as well), so the Maori Party will likely be way more interested in winning more contracts and control for (essentially private) Maori service providers in the health and education sectors and stuff like that is where they and National meet ideologically. That will likely trump any pressure from within the party and its support base by Maori workers around class demands such as the protection of union rights, increases in the minimum wage and so on.

Also, when you take in what support the Maori Party has among Maori, they’re actually not in an especially strong situation. The party vote for the Maori Party was only a little above 2 percent. Maori are nearly 15 percent of the population. Taking into account that proportionately there are more Maori under 18, that still means that only about one in six Maori gave their party vote to the Maori Party. In all the Maori seats Labour won the party vote. So the Maori Party hasn’t achieved what NZ First achieved in the Maori seats in 1996 – a clean sweep of the seats plus the largest share of the party vote. This position of the Maori Party may mean they will want to buttress up their party vote for 2011 by being seen to deliver in the one or two areas they could deliver – separate services for Maori and some cultural rights stuff.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is no class-based opposition in the Maori Party. There’s no force within the party that will call the likes of Turia, Sharples and Flavell to account. And, while NZ First lost all the Maori seats back to Labour in 1999 because of its coalition with National, the situation today is quite different. National was widely hated in 1996 when Winston did his deal with Bolger, people had voted NZ First to get the Nats out and were very angry about Winston First coalescing with National, and the ideological differences (and personal differences) between Winston First and the Nats were probably greater than the differences between Key/National and Turia, Sharples, Flavell and co. Unlike 1996, National isn’t widely hated today – in fact quite the opposite – and there wasn’t a massive groundswell of Maori voting for the Maori Party to keep National out the way people in 1996 voted for Winston to get the Nats out.

Although it’s possible that a Maori Party deal with National could make them dog tucker like NZ First, it’s important to keep in mind that 2008 is not 1996. The Maori Party may well only be dog tucker if the Nats are forced by an economic crisis to attack the working class and the Maori Party stays wedded to the Nats in that kind of situation. But in the absence of much conflict, and in the absence of a deep recession, the Maori Party could deliver on Maori-provided services, some more cultural identity stuff and so on, and keep one-sixth of the Maori electorate happy and win 3-4 Maori seats again in 2011.

All this has completely failed to register with a lot of the left, which prefers over-the-top scenarios to the more mundane reality. These over-the-top scenarios are used to whip people up into the next round of mindless activism and prevent any sober assessment of the fiascos produced by the last round of mindless activism.

In this article political science lecturer and blogger Bryce Edwards argues that this view fails to understand the political nature of both parties. These two nationalist parties have much more in common than most realise:

Despite the illusions of many on the left, repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act would be a right-wing law change, which is why National and Act could be comfortable with it. (The fact that it would also involve the Maori Party and the Greens says much about their ideological confusion and centrism).

Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed Act was progressive in terms of nationalising the beaches so that they could continue to be used by all.

Those arguing for its repeal – including the Maori Party, Act, and the Greens – are essentially falling into line with a right-wing approach to property rights, in fact private-business property rights. In this sense it was always rather inconsistent – but highly pragmatic – of the National Party to support Labour’s F&S Act in the first place.

Could the Maori Party survive putting National into power?

The Maori Party MPs have already made much of their willingness to go with whatever major party offers them the best policy concessions for Maori.

As recently as Waitangi Day, Maori Party MPs were talking up their own relevance by proclaiming that they will hold the balance after this year’s election. Obviously a strategy that involves holding the balance of power logically requires that the party be genuinely willing to negotiate with both Labour and National.

Tariana Turia even agreed in 2005 to support a Don Brash-led National Government if they could amass enough votes in Parliament.

Of course, it’s more likely that the Maori Party will go onto the cross benches after the 2008 election. From here it could give National or Labour support to govern, in return for some major policy concessions on Maori issues. The repeal of the F&S Act would clearly be a major victory for the Maori Party, and most of the party’s supporters would regard this as a considerable policy win.

They would also accept that Labour would never give them such a deal. So the Maori Party might well have a relationship with the governing National Party without actively being a coalition partner – much like the relationship the Greens have with the current Labour Government.

Already the stage is being set for such a possibility. John Key has even said that if National-friendly Maori voters don’t want to vote for National in the Maori seats, he would like them to vote for the Maori Party. That’s quite an endorsement.

Maori Party left-wing?

The major point of all of this is that the Maori Party is not necessarily left-wing. Clearly, the Maori Party is actually a centrist party with leftish and rightish factions. Turia in fact supports doing a deal favouring National; Sharples is in favour of a deal with Labour; Te Ururoa Flavell’s position is unclear;and Hone Harawira is in favour of a more neutral cross-bench position. With new conservative MPs like Derek Fox being elected later this year, the balance could easily be tipped to the right.

It also has to be realised that the Maori Party has more antagonism towards Labour than it does towards National. While National is viewed by most political Maori as being traditionally distant from Maori concerns, the Labour Party’s many betrayals of Maori are taken more seriously. Like the Alliance before it, the Maori Party was born out of an immense sense of hurt and betrayal by Labour, and this gives the party much more reason to reach out to alternative power bases.

Essentially, the Maori Party could play a distinctly conservative role in politics. Far from being dangerous radicals, as some in the media and politics were initially inclined to describe Turia and colleagues, most of the Maori Party have proved extremely conservative and amenable to incorporation into the elite. Turia has been a guest speaker at an Act Party conference. She has even described the Maori Party views on welfare as being similar to Act’s. She has also said that “this so-called welfare state has not done us any favours”.

Turia justifies a possible coalition with National with the statement that if you look at the history of the National Party, their free-market, private-enterprise philosophy has actually allowed Maori people to participate and take back some control. Kohanga reo, kura kaupapa, wananga, Maori health providers and Maori social service providers were Maori initiatives, but all came out under National governments.

Nationalism

Although the Maori Party’s nationalism is specifically a Maori nationalism, it is a nationalism nonetheless – and it’s increasingly based on a cross-class basis, especially since there is now a clear Maori middle class and Maori capitalists (which didn’t really exist 50 years ago).

The Maori Party has consciously decided to be a party for all Maori, rather than for those who are poor or struggling. It has therefore decided not to be a left-wing party of the working class.

Co-leader Pita Shaples has clearly stated that “our philosophies cater to the rich, the poor, to everyone”. And he’s been positive about the business backing the party has received.

This ethnic-oriented cross-class politics means that the party is often drawn towards policies with a reactionary or conservative flavour.

Attempting to incorporate a broad range of class support means that the party leadership has a hard job coming up with policies that appeal across the board. One strategy is to adopt a nationalism that can appeal to Maori across the spectrum. Hence Turia has railed against immigration and foreign investment. She has recently said that there are too many whites coming to New Zealand and, absurdly, that successive governments have used immigration against Maori to stop the “browning of New Zealand”.

Other conservative parts of the Maori Party’s programme have included voting against the Civil Union Bill giving greater rights to same-sex couples; voting to raise the drinking age; expressing support for private prisons (to be run by Maori entrepreneurs who are culturally sensitive); and supporting the introduction of work-for-the-dole.

Sharples is even prone to whipping up anti-gang feeling. In 2006 he said he wanted to look at all gang insignia being banned, and he threatened to name and shame gangs and their members.

As Herald political commentator John Armstrong has argued, there’s actually many areas where the interests of the Maori and National parties intersect: “welfare reform, iwi-based delivery of social services, reviewing the treaty settlement process, and promoting Maori business enterprise”.

The Maori Party has even stated that it might be in favour of the partial privatisation of public assets – if it involves a shift of ownership to iwi corporations, according to Sharples.

Just how reactionary someone like Tariana Turia can be is exposed by her orientation to the foreign fishing crews that work for iwi-owned local fisheries. When a report showed that some of these workers are being paid as little as $195 a month in New Zealand, Turia was adamantly opposed to a plan to raise the hourly pay rates of foreign fishing crews to $12.75.

Race relations similarities

National under Key and English is much more liberal and centrist on Maori issues. The party is now continuing the changes begun by Bill English in the early 2000s of modernising and making the party seem less white.

As evidence that those changes are deeper than superficial, consider the rehabilitation of Hekia Parata, the 2002 National Party Wellington Central candidate. After Don Brash’s race relations speech at Orewa in 2004, though, Parata said she was “ashamed” to belong to the National Party, and that the policy was “the antithesis of everything I’ve worked for professionally and personally”. She was nowhere to be seen in the 2005 elections but is once again contributing to the National Party and is talked about as a possible strong candidate for 2008.

Although initially critical of Treaty politics, since 1990 National has actually adopted the liberal Treaty model of race relations in this country.

A political consensus developed in mainstream politics when National adopted Labour’s Treaty and biculturalism politics and spent nine years in government as enthusiastic advocates of Treaty settlements and race-based politics. In fact National probably wrote more Treaty of Waitangi references into law than Labour ever did.

None of this is an argument to say that the Maori Party will in fact do a deal with National, but merely that such a scenario is much more possible than many on the left

acknowledge. After the 2008 general election it will probably make most sense if the Maori Party sit rather independently on the cross benches. Such a position will very correctly convey exactly where the party stands on the political spectrum – right in the middle, with enough pragmatism to ensure that absolutely anything is possible.

Bryce Edwards writes a political blog at www.liberation.org.nz.