Club Politique by Che Tibby

The curious thing about belonging to a place is the way in which it grants everybody a different amount of political power.

In the last Metics, we talked about this idea of 'governmental belonging'. This idea revolves around the notion that even though you might feel like you belong to a country, something intangible can prevent you from ever having your political opinions even listened to, let along be listened to.

There's a difference between 'homely belonging', being at home somewhere, and this 'governmental belonging'.

To illustrate, here's a brief example from Australia.

Pauline Hanson, to any outside observer, is consummately Australian. She has the accent, the attitude, and the audience. When Hanson started her political career, there were a lot of people to whom her opinions spoke, and of course the rest is history.

But interestingly, there was another group of people, also of Australian pedigree, who stated very loudly that Hanson did not speak for them. From the perspective of this blog, they were actively denying Hanson any governmental belonging. Which is difficult to understand, because Hanson is soooo obviously Australian (although that's not to suggest that her views are indicative of Australian-ness).

There are plenty of examples of this type of behaviour among members of any nation. People routinely deny each other political legitimacy, it's normal behaviour. A little petty, but routine.

But if you accept that this behaviour is normal, then you might want to ask what purpose it serves. Why deny someone political legitimacy, while concurrently accepting their claim to nationality?

To make a long story short, there are fairly strong arguments that establishing this type of contrast is useful for building a little fence around those who 'naturally' govern, and those who do not. Hanson was an upstart, or was commonly seen as one. Someone well-spoken and of good heritage, such as Alexander Downer Junior, is not.

The difference between homely and governmental belonging runs deeper than snobbery though. For starters, it runs contrary to immigrants participating in governance, even if they possess impeccable breeding and a spanking good education. This is of course what I was driving at in Metics Seven.

The fascinating thing about governmental belonging it that it contains a good set of markers of what an 'authentic' national is like. So, if you'd like to understand at least some (but never all) of the essence of what it is to be a New Zealander, then it's a good idea to start by taking a look at what at who it's representatives are.

There's the chance of course that a critic of this idea could say 'oh, you mean representative politics'. But that's not entirely what I'm driving at. Members of Parliament wouldn't be there if they were culturally alien, that's a given. And the aim to have as broad a cross-section of the population in parliament is in everyone's interests.

But the fact that some MPs are mostly identified by their difference is once again fairly telling of who is, and who is not, governing 'naturally'. The label 'Asian MP' for example. In this example 'Asian' quite obviously means 'abnormal'. Being Asian is enough to make that persons term in government as out of the ordinary.

Now, I'm not raising this point because of a desire to root out non-PC speech, or to twist the ears of anyone who draws distinctions out of someone being 'Asian'. The point is more that using this label reminds us that 'Asian' is not (yet) a normal category of New Zealander.

And that's very interesting for the study of nationality, because it shows us that a nation has at least one more ingredient that 'population'. Or to put it another way, 'nationality' does not automatically equal either citizenship or residence in country. It can, but this isn't a given.

What complicates this situation even more is that although some people are unable to secure enough belonging to allow them to govern, they nonetheless participate as citizens.

Tricky. Very tricky.

A very good and interesting speech by Bill English the other day. Not so much because it said anything new, nor because of the timing, but because it represents a particular line of thought about the way New Zealand's history will unfold in the future.

It's interesting the way history does that. It doesn't fall into a line along which we all walk. There's no one out there writing our future in a big book we collect somewhere along the way. Nope, instead, history kind of rises up to the front of us whenever we put a foot forward, whether that be into a stumble or not.

So while there's a number of niggly differences between what Brash and English have said over the past couple of years, they share a particular vision of what it is to be a New Zealander.

That vision is of a New Zealand based on unity, and not necessarily sameness, but probably sameness, or at least some kind of obscure filial bond brought about through time and inevitable mingling of all our waters.

Or some kind of romantic bullshit like that.

But seriously, I accept that this vision of our future is valid. There is nothing to say that, with the relentless inevitability of time, the ethnic divisions thought to plague New Zealand will fade from memory. New Zealand could well become one ethnic grouping, a new Anglo-Polynesian people.

There's a tricky thing about projecting into the future though. Something I noticed from those days of hitchhiking. The future is that point on the knifes edge of the horizon, the place you'll forever walk to in anticipation of what it'll be like when you're there. And between that place you'll want to be and the place you are now, there are a thousand steps to be made, a hundred crazy little events to get in your way, a million thoughts that will pass through your mind in the meantime.

The battle is to get to the place you anticipate, and to still be the person you thought you were when you left. And no matter how long the journey, how simple the path, how determined you are, change always get there before you do.

So how hard it will be to get an entire nation somewhere?

The probability is that the nation this vision currently holds in sight will not be what is desired. Sure, we could insist that everyone falls into line with whatever is fashionable today, but that idea is so twentieth century it's laughable. Instead, if we turn over the development of the New Zealand nation to 'the people' then it could possibly go anywhere.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not predicting we all become frightened of a Simpsonesque angry mob. Instead, I'm trying to point out that there is no way in hell we can control the development of an idealised nation in today's liberal environment. Even if we agreed on some heavy 'social engineering', the exact opposite of what Brash and English want to advocate, that point on the horizon will still not become what we want it to.

And what does that mean for our collective future? It means we can only point out a place we'd all like to be, and meander in that direction.

In my humble estimation there's a bigger difficulty though. And that's the content of what it means to be a New Zealander.

Currently, much as English points out, or as Jim Traue put a little more eloquently, what it is to be a New Zealander is very much defined by the experience of being a colonial people living in a far-flung corner of an Empire. All those ancestors of the mind are the legacy of a culture brought with us from another time and place, a similar but different context transplanted to our new home.

And then you have the other half of the recipe, Māori.

So let's continue with the argument that we're turning into a single nation. What this means is that Māori culture will be assimilated up into the majority, and become part of the fabric of New Zealand nationality. Being a New Zealand will mean experiencing a melange identity, woven from the threads of a number of cultures all brought to this one place.

There's a slight flaw in that idea though. If the cultures blend comprehensively, Māori culture won't disappear. Instead, it will in all likelihood be the feature of our culture that distinguishes us from the old, colonial past. If we do change, we will no longer be so definitively Anglo. We will be increasingly Polynesian as our point of distinction in the world.

And you know what that leads me to suspect? It's just a whisper you know. A little voice way back in my thoughts, just kind of sitting there minding its own business, occasionally making a large enough movement for me to notice.

And you know what it's saying?

Māori are assimilating us.

You know what I want to be when I grow up?

Sober.

If there's one thing I seem to have done waaay too much of since coming home to Wellington is sinking [alcohol]. Not that I'm complaining mind you, actually going out and having a laugh is better than being so pov I can't afford to do anything but sit in a bean-bag scratching my belly.

And yes, I can confirm that I'm definitely a laugh-a-lot drunk. None of this surly, moody behaviour for this old bloke. Nope, you've got to put away a few beers, loose some inhibitions, badly shake your booty on the dance floor, sing too loudly to 'Come on Eileen', and wake up in the morning with a half-eaten kebab obscuring the clock radio.

Ah, the simple things.

After that intro, I'd better mention that borderline alcoholism is not the reason I've been so quiet lately. Nor have I bought myself a new game for the Xbox. I haven't been so afraid of Keith's pending reply to the Political Fisticuffs that's keeping me nervous.

Nope, it's been plain old-fashioned hard yakka keeping my fingers away from the keyboard. And I'm sure when Keith quits the second job he's had to take on to pay that legal bill, he'll be back for more debate.

Mind you, sleeping till 4pm on Saturday's is making it difficult to get enough time to write to you all, but like I say, sobriety is rapidly making itself known as a viable lifestyle alternative. Hangovers have just become so damned hard to handle...

I just don't bounce back from boozing like I did as a sprightly 20-something. As it is, I've moved into this new place and it's made of aluminium. Seriously. I saw a few of these places being built over in Oz, and I've been curious to live in one.

But take my word for it, if you get a chance to live in an aluminium-framed house? Don't. I'll be wrapped up in to shelter myself from the world, and the flatmates will be walking around upstairs a good four hours before I'm even able to form sentences. Thing is, wooden houses creak. Aluminium houses rattle. And there's almost no sound insulation. It's just, plain, weird.

So there I am, trying to not let little sounds echo interminably round my seemingly cavernous cranium, and the others in the house are walking around upstairs, listening to CDs, talking, and usual stuff. And it's like they're in the room with me.

Misery.

Anyway... Hard yakka. One of the reasons for the most recent celebration was me finally handing in the final version of the thesis for marking.

Does it seem like this thesis system never, ever ends? Well, imagine being in the middle of it.

As it was I moved back to NZL because life would not happen while I ironed out the final creases in the writing. The thing was pretty much written way back in April, when I ex'd my ex-pat status. But, as seems to be the case, there were still a hundred hoops to jump through before I could finally submit.

Once the supervisors had asked me to make a number of small changes to formatting, chapter orientation, terminology, spelling, blah blah blah, I sent the final versions to two separate copy editors.

Then, once the copy editors got their changes back to me I made a number more changes, usually by sitting up till midnight typing.

Then, once all those changes were input. I ran over the entire thing looking for mistakes that the other four people had missed. And there were still a few there. Things like missed full stops in headings, or the wrong kind of apostrophe.

You know, stuff that makes for great blogging...

Then, by Friday at approximately noon I collected the three bound copies and sent them back to Melbourne.

By four thirty pm? Two pints down, big night starting up.

A good feeling really. Not only do I now have to do nothing but wait for two or three months till no doubt more changes are brought back, but I have washed my hands of the entire process for long enough to enjoy my first Christmas in eight years where I don't have 'theeeeeesiiiiiissss' mumbling in the back of my mind.

Pesky damn guilt.

Not sure what I'm going to do with all my spare time!

Might have to get a hobby.

I think the main thing I need Keith to clarify is how he gets the Māori seats providing 150% representation? I know that with tactical voting in the Māori electorates, or what is also called 'split voting', giving your candidate vote to one party and your party vote to another, resulted in two extra MPs, but that isn't sufficient reason to assume that this is because it happened in the Māori electorates.

As his reader pointed out, the overhang can happen in any electorate, the fact that it happened in the Māori electorates just kind of shows, to my mind, that voters either listened to someone who told them how to make their vote count for both the Māori Party and it's allies, or they're just savvier that we're assuming.

After all, this is exactly what did happen in Epsom (Rodney Hide), Ohariu-Belmont (Peter Dunne), and Wigram (Jim Anderton). In every one of these electorates, the voters split their vote in favour of someone other than the candidate. Even more interestingly, the combined Labour/National party votes in these electorates exceeded the candidate vote by at least two thirds in every instance. Even in Tauranga, where Peters garnered 13,131 personal votes, the combined Labour/National party vote is 5.5 times larger than the party vote for NZ First (24,871 vs. 4,481 votes).

Now, despite having recently taken up a salary, in let's say a 'prominent financial institution', my statistics skills are at best imperfect, so Keith (or readers) feel free to correct my number crunching here. That also means you, MGTG.

You see, I'm attempting to give Keith a tap right where it hurts, in the spreadsheet.

What I'm doing is avoiding the argument that the Māori electorates are come kind of 'specially designated' area for Maori, instead illustrating that the four seats are deserved, and that the system is indeed the issue, regardless of who the seats are populated by.

For reference's sake the seven Māori electorates are: Te Tai Tonga, Waiariki, Ikaroa, Te Tai Hauauru, Tainui, Tamaki Makaurau, and Te Tai Tokerau

The assumption I made is this. If vote splitting is the issue, then what would have happened if you couldn't split your vote. If you had no choice but to cast your vote for the same party and candidate that is, but party proportionality is kept.

The next premise is that the Māori Party won all four candidate races in a stand-up fight, as did Hide in Epsom.

This would mean that every vote for the Māori Party candidates in the seven Māori electorates would have gone to the Māori Party proportionality in Parliament, and to clarify matters, the same for Labour, National and NZ First. This assumes of course that the latter two stood candidates in any of the Māori seats, which they did not.

As it is, and ignoring that there are still specials to be counted, 118,308 ballots were cast in the Māori electorates. Of the party votes:
55,137 votes Labour.
40,488 votes Māori Party.
7,051 votes NZ First.
4,234 votes National.
11,398 votes others (Destiny, Legalise Cannabis, Green etc.).

In fact, and as a point of interest, the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party's nationwide party vote is 4,609. Higher than National rated in all seven Māori seats. Likewise, the NZ First Party votes in the seven Māori seats total more than Peters received in Tauranga itself.

Of those 40,488 Māori party votes, 31,657 were actually cast in the Māori electorates, leaving 8,831 elsewhere (which for the purpose of this exercise we will have to assume were cast for Māori Party candidates in non-Māori electorates).

In the Māori electorates, of the total ballots cast, 53,702 recorded votes for Māori Party candidates.

Assuming that every vote for a Māori Party candidate, in a Māori electorate, had not been split, the Party's total vote would have been 62,533 votes (8,831 plus the 53,702 now non-split candidate votes).

Interestingly, 62,533 votes out of a total of 2,052,813 ballots cast equals 3.05% of the raw total vote. Or, 3.65 seats, which rounds up to, you guessed it, 4 seats.

As it is though, vote splitting in the Māori electorates seems to have contributed to the party votes of several other parties. The Māori Party itself didn't actually benefit, unless you consider that it provided votes for it's 'allies'.

Of the total ballots cast in the seven Māori electorates, parties ended up with the following percentages of their nationwide party votes:
71.2% Māori Party.
6.6% Labour Party.
5.9% NZ First Party.
0.005% National Party.

On the other hand though, of the total ballots cast in Wigram, Ohariu-Belmont and Epsom, of their nationwide party votes the same parties secured:
5.2% National Party.
3.7% Labour Party.
2.5% NZ First Party.
0.008% Māori Party.

What this means is that seven electorates have MPs not of the Labour or National Parties. But, they contributed the following amounts to the totals of other parties:
10.3% Labour Party.
8.4% NZ First Party.
5.205% National Party.

As it is, vote splitting increased the raw totals of all three of these parties.

But just taking into account the vote splitting in the three non-Māori Party 'other' electorates, NZ First would have dropped to 5.66% of the raw total ballot were these three electorates not to split votes (the raw total is the amount before 'wasted' votes on minor parties that don't reach 5% are discarded)
Labour? Drop to 39.05% of raw total (currently at 40.74%).
National? Drop to 37.39% of raw total (currently at 39.63%).

The permutations go on, and on.

But, it's getting very late, I've had a drink or two, and math isn't my strong point.

Regardless! What these numbers seem to indicate is that race doesn't appear to have been the primary issue in the Māori electorates. Even the National Party's vote was only 300 votes less than 2002 (4,554 party votes), despite the 'mainstream' campaign. Instead, it was simple MMP cunning that influenced the way voters in the Māori electorates behaved.

In other words, playing by the rules.

So, yes, the Māori electorates allowed the Māori Party to focus their campaign in seven of the electorate seats. But, the end result is exactly the same, and it was vote splitting across the entire country that contributed to the two extra seat-warmers in Parliament.

If anything, it merely reinforces the impression that some electorates have 'natural' constituencies. This red-blue kerfuffle is just a return to normality for example. The provinces have always been National Party stalwarts, and 2002 was actually an exception.

Keith, don't you sit up too late taking this to pieces.

It’s not often you’ll get to see a spat between PA bloggers. So keep waiting. I’d merely like to provide a few clarifications for Keith about the Māori seats, and how they are not fundamentally anti-democratic.

How our system works is pretty complicated, and it’s taken me a big chunk of lunch and afterwork time, and the elections.org website, to get the details straight, but basically it goes like this.

The biggest gerrymander in our system is the guarantee that the South Island automatically receives 16 electorate seats in the House of Representatives, 15 general and 1 Māori. To work out how many seats the North Island gets, including any specifically Māori seats, the South Island electoral population is divided by 16, and a number arrived at. The electoral population is the total number of people registered on the General roll.

[thanks to Brent up at the Salient office at Salient Design for pointing out the above mistake. also, as the population of the North Island grows, the number of Electorate seats, both Māori and General, increases, with a corresponding decline in List seats]

That number, currently approximately 54,000, is used to measure how many seats the North Island gets. This means that the electoral populations of the both the Māori and General rolls are divided to make sure that approximately 54,000 people are in each electorate. For a reason I couldn’t work out, Māori seats currently only have 53,000 people each though. Still, no big.

What this means is that every electorate in the country, including the Māori electorates have essentially the same number of voters each. But, and there’s always a but, for reasons unknown, Māori do not turn out to vote in large numbers despite enrolling. Consequently, MPs from Māori electorates often get into the House on fewer numbers. This can’t be blamed on electoral boundaries though, it’s purely a product of low turn-out. And that can happen in any electorate in the country.

And, it doesn’t effect the Party vote, because votes in Māori electorates carry exactly the same weight as votes in General electorates when determining the proportion of List MPs. Less turn out just means less party votes in those electorates.

So to turn to Keith’s blog. The tactical splitting of votes between local candidates and non-local Parties isn’t a product of the Māori electorates. Conceivably, any electorate can deliver exactly the same result. If four seats, any four seats, returned a Green MP for example, but the persons returning that MP tactically voted for Labour, then we would also get an overhang.

If anything, because of the low turn out in the Māori electorates, there are possibly fewer MPs than there could have been in the overhang.

The next point is that the Māori electorates do not represent a racial gerrymander. Although the requirement for enrolment is that a person claim at least some Māori ancestry, it isn’t policed. If Keith wanted to enrol as a Māori, he could.

Also, ‘Māori electorate’ doesn’t equate to ‘ethnically Māori candidate’. The convention is that they do, but this is no-where written in stone. Māori of a number of different political persuasions stand in the Māori seats, but it wouldn’t stop me from doing so, big cracker that I am.

I think I know what’s really getting Keith’s goat. The fundamental assertion I disagree with is that New Zealand is a unitary political community. Māori have acted as a distinct political community, a subaltern counterpublic as Nancy Fraser would term it, for generations. Michael King, James Belich, Kayleen Hazlehurst, David Pearson and others have argued that, and the Māori seats partially reflect it.

But, paradoxically, Māori are also an integral part of the majority political community!

It’s a very tricky one.

The mistake he’s made is to assume that a separate Māori political community, one that’s been around since pre-1840, doesn’t also engage with broader New Zealand society. Which it does. Furthermore, although the Māori seats preference the election of Māori, these persons then head to Wellington, and conduct business with all the other MPs, from both Electorates and List.

In other words, there is no separatism. The Māori Party MPs have absolutely no option but to engage and transact with the remainder of New Zealand. And that process in itself means that Māori electorate MPs, who have been Labour, NZ First and Māori Party, then interact with like-minded MPs in our MMP environment.

Having said that though, the Māori electorates are traditionally left-leaning. But that hasn’t Māori seats returning non-Labour candidates under MMP. What this in itself indicates is that the Māori seats do not represent a voting bloc, but instead concentrate Māori voters somewhere of their own choosing (again, enrolment is voluntary, if a person wants be on the General roll, they can be), and which you have to assume are more likely to return someone who shares their values.

It was good to see him getting fired up about something though. He’s normally so damned calm and collected...