Quo Vadis New Zealand?

Speech to a Parliamentary Seminar entitled "Has New Zealand Come of Age?"

What sort of a nation state are we in the process of becoming? I have, in a number of recent articles and speeches, remarked that there is no model for New Zealand; that there is no other developed nation in our situation - geographically, economically, politically or culturally. Small, rich countries trying to sort out a post-colonial heritage miles from anywhere just don't exist - except here.

The New Zealand predicament is that we are increasingly a lone example of the small nation-state.

The 20th century small nation state could be characterised as a Wilsonian rethink of the classic Westphalian state model. President Woodrow Wilson believed that World Peace would be guaranteed if "evil" empires - like those in Germany, Austria, Russia and Turkey - were obliterated.

It was out of their ashes that the small nation appeared to reach its apogee, as the metric unit of a new international order. At the Versailles Conference in 1919 which presided over the empires' demise, the representatives of a myriad of small nations suddenly thronged the corridors of Versailles, formerly a palatial theatre exclusively for one-to-one great power rivalries. New Zealand (in the ample form of Bill Massey) rubbed shoulders with Poles, Georgians, Finns, Czechs and Arabs.

President Wilson's ardent hope was that a global architecture at only the very highest level, the League of Nations, would manage the potential for conflict.

Wilson attempted to provide the emergent nations with an international order and context to underwrite their security and sovereignty. The United Nations, WTO, World Bank and other institutions carry on this vision today. He was however trying to regulate two complementary processes of nation forming that had been going on during the First World War, creating dozens of new actors on the international stage. On the one hand the collapse of the Central Powers and of Russia resulted in national groups exercising self-determination.

On the other hand, the British Dominions, of which New Zealand was one, were insisting on equality with Britain in return for their war efforts. As militant imperialists, I'm sure our political classes didn't see themselves as being subject to an American President's re-ordering of the world. But whether we appreciated it or not, we were set off down the Wilsonian road and - a generation later - came to grasp the idea as though it were our own.

However, throughout the modern era, other states in our own league have either entered into federations (USA, Canada and Australia) or have joined groupings like the EU and Mercosur. In fact the EU seems to have given fresh life to nationalities within the major nations of Europe - Corsicans, Scots, Welsh, Catalans and Basques now all enjoy regional autonomy without having to shoulder the full burden of sovereignty.

The Mercosur Common Market is a most significant grouping. Four South American states that had remained jealously apart from one another since independence from Spain and Portugal 180 years ago (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay) are now forming the EU of the Southern Hemisphere. Chile too is joining their orbit. If even they can smooth over their differences and start an integration process extending beyond free trade, you could wonder what future is there for us?

Ten years ago Russia's empire broke up for the second time in the 20th century and now we're seeing the newly released vassals clamouring to join NATO or the EU. They doubtless hope that the EU or NATO will be surer guarantors of their independence than the League of Nations ever was.

New Zealand, by contrast, has been steadily gaining in independence - and isolation.
From the very beginning we have been a stand-out. The view at Westminster from the 1860s onward was that the colonies should be prepared for eventual independence and that federation into viable units was an appropriate intermediate step. This was the prevailing wisdom learned in Canada.

Canada had, of course, one stand-out - Newfoundland. Newfoundland refused to join Canada in 1867, lost an unprecedented proportion of its male combat-age population at Gallipoli and the Somme, went bankrupt in the World Depression and had to be governed by a commission. It joined Canada in 1948. New Zealand was Australia's Newfoundland (although we have, to date, avoided her fate).

We started the century thinking of ourselves as a self-sufficient outpost of a great metropolitan power and passed up the opportunity of federation with the Australian states. Manning Clark's account in his History of Australia of New Zealand's refusal at the 1890 Federation Conference is cynical but worth repeating:

"…… one of those maddening New Zealanders, Captain William Russell, explained why his countrymen would not be prepared to be members of a government in which they had such an unimportant part. They had had to carve out homes in a wilderness by a practice of self-denial to which Australians were strangers. In doing so they had developed a distinct national type, different from Australians. In addition to the struggle against the forces of nature, they had had to subdue a proud, indomitable and courageous race of aborigines, the Maoris. They were not prepared to hand over native administration to an Australian parliament that cared nothing and knew nothing about native administration or the traditions of the past. For the minds of the New Zealanders nourished a great delusion about past and present relations between Pakeha and the Maori. New Zealanders also doubted whether Australians could contribute to their defence. Finally, New Zealanders, being primary producers of mutton and butter, were dependent on free trade, and as such suspicious of members of any union which would probably introduce protection."

Independence as a 'Dominion' in our own right - (a sort of halfway house between imperial territory and the Wilsonian nation state) - meant independent access to London so we could compete against the Australians.

The Second World War bolstered a new round of enthusiasm for trans-Atlantic allegiances but they were crumbling by the 1960s. Engagement on trade may have been a counter for disengagement on security but the trend is one that increasingly emphasises our solitariness.

Let's consider, then, the fixed and then the variable points of our own nationhood.

The unalterable elements of New Zealand's nationhood are perhaps the following:

• The Treaty of Waitangi. We have our own distinctive historical baggage. Despite our ambivalent feelings about it at times, we just can't throw it overboard. These are things that help make us, "us" for better or worse. We are in the midst of a relationship that is being constantly negotiated and even renegotiated
  
  
• We practise the Westminster system of government and the common law. New Zealand is in fact the oldest uninterrupted democracy in the Southern Hemisphere, indeed in the entire Pacific apart from the United States. It is surely a considerable achievement that we have never compromised on this and that we did in fact improve on this heritage by pioneering the world's first genuine universal suffrage for all adult citizens
  
  
• We are an English-speaking nation with an adequate education system. We are therefore able to participate (you would think) at a high civilisational level. The problem with this is that we have taken to learning other languages with reluctance and a singular lack of fervour. We also suffer from the notion, propounded by various cultural High Priests, that we must avoid the twin ogres of "Eurocentrism", and American global culture and instead nurse a distinctively "New Zealandness" in a culturally predator free wild-life sanctuary. (Too much Proust and too many McDonalds outlets apparently impede Jane Campions and Peter Jacksons from developing
  
  
• Our closest neighbour is Australia. When the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, we were actually a sub-colony of New South Wales, the Governor was the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, and Hobson was only his Lieutenant-Governor. Sydney has always been the great metropolis, the great world city of the South Pacific. And as many corporate headquarters are relocating to Sydney, we are seeing the reassertion of a global hierarchy of cities that we have denied, or only grudgingly admitted for 212 years now. If it is any consolation, Queensland has a far greater loss of population to Sydney than Auckland and New Zealand have. There's only room for one world class city in such a sparsely populated part of the globe.

The key variables of our situation are immigration, education, the success or otherwise of the on-going APEC process, and the applications of the Treaty of Waitangi to problems of modernity and globalisation. Since the balance of this speech focuses on the last of these, I shall deal with the first three only briefly.

We may need to reconsider whether we really do wish to have just 4.4 million people later this century as our maximum. The problem is that mass immigration can only be sustained if there are the jobs to place immigrants into, and jobs for born New Zealand citizens as well. There's also their ecological footprint to consider.

Should we consider the possibilities of dual hemisphere living? We have a mild climate and plenty of space. Is there any reason why a growth industry in Heartland New Zealand can't be care of the aged from other nations experiencing the impending demographic bulge? Family structures become flexible in any modern metropolitan environment, and there would certainly be many jobs in care-giving and in the maintenance of colonies for retired Japanese and other foreigners.

I can't say this really appeals to me. But the fact is that we've been very good at using the savings of these people during their working lifetimes to support our lifestyle. If we're not prepared to create enough wealth of our own, perhaps we will have to help them spend their savings on us in their retirement!

Our education system can't just be as good as anyone else's. We have to compete just that much harder to survive in the world on account of our smallness. Being an Australian or an American is easier than being a New Zealander in many respects. Scale and critical mass mean those larger societies can carry higher levels of inefficiency and dysfunction. We have to work that much harder to stay in business. We have to create the same culture in learning that we have in Sport.

Then there is the APEC process. We could remain a Wilsonian nation-state for the foreseeable future if APEC's Bogor agenda succeeded - or even a robust CER-AFTA. But that must remain in doubt. If the Treaty of Waitangi has become (as Singaporean reaction seems to indicate) a source of off-shore nervousness we could count ourselves out. Alternatively, a reversion to an inward-looking regionalism in Asia could see us excluded. Either way, we would be very isolated. We are not part of Asia. We are not the Britain of the South Pacific (as our parents and grandparents were taught to believe). We are definitely not Australians. We have no option but to exploit the hazards and opportunities of this transversal zone with the burdens and trappings of sovereignty.

What then are the prospects for a Wilsonian state in our situation ?

The co-ordinates are simple - independent or dependent, prosperous or wretched. Various states lie in different positions in between these cardinal points.

Hawaii is the classic instance of a non-sovereign state that has prospered through its association with a great power, the United States. (Hawaii could once have been a competitor after a century of independence under its native monarchy if American traders hadn't launched a George Speight type coup in 1893 and overthrown the legitimate government).

Independent yet wretched states are unfortunately a growing clan - Haiti, and Albania for example. Many are ruled over by kleptocracies.

Nations that are non-sovereign and wretched are territories in rebellion all over the world. East Timor until very recently was an obvious and close to home example.

One category remains hard to fill - the small unassociated classic nation state such as was prevalent after WWI, that happens to be truly prosperous.

The blissful Swiss qualify. Switzerland has survived because of its centrality and aloofness in the midst of a warring continent. Switzerland is actually a confederation of Andorras, little micro-states, straddling the mountain passes. But Switzerland - surrounded by 300 million of the richest people on earth provides no parallel.

(We should also note that the Quebec electorate - which could have set itself up as a similarly sovereign enclave - has had two opportunities in the past 24 years to take up the fearful prize and has yet refrained from doing so.)

A case can be made that New Zealand is the only small Wilsonian nation-state to maintain its prosperity, stability and independence beyond the interwar period of isolationism and geopolitical naivety that established the model. We are a 'Northern' country deep in the 'South' with the tides of Pacific post-colonialism washing through one of the oldest truly representative democracies in the world.

The interesting question is whether our future trajectory will keep us in that orbit or whether we are an Atlantis, perched on the brink of catastrophe. The extent to which we seek to apply the Treaty of Waitangi to our future national existence will, to my mind, determine where we end up. There are many variables over which we, as a small and insignificant nation, have no control. Of those that we do, this is by far the most important.

Because, one of New Zealand's problems is that some New Zealanders consider that they are an indigenous nation (or nations) that has to distinguish and separate itself from a colonial power, which is none other than the New Zealand Government itself. Some Maori nationalists therefore consider themselves as the second variety. They consider that they are leading an indigenous national movement.

Other New Zealanders feel that there has been a gradual and indisputable devolution from the former colonial power to a mature and self-confident nation-state over almost 100 years - from the proclamation of representative government in 1853 to be exact, until we availed ourselves of the Statute of Westminster in 1948, and on to the present day.

Pakeha nationalism and an emergent Mäori nationalism, are proving to be an uncomfortable match especially when post-colonial theory and ill-informed Pakeha reaction inflame what should surely be temperate and respectful discussion.

So on that basis, our mixed origins might prevent us from obtaining a clear common vision of who we are all meant to be as a nation. One of the hallmarks of the Wilsonian nation state is self-determination. To pull it off, self-determination requires an ability to define the national self.

Yet Point 5 of Wilson's Fourteen Points expressly stated (with respect to colonised peoples) that the "interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined". So the Wilsonian model catches us on the horns of a dilemma. Self-determination and ethnic self-determination of a colonised people can contradict each other. And we are seeing this all throughout the post-Cold War world.

Can we determine who we are ? A hair-line fracture runs through the edifice of our nationhood from its birth if national 'self' is defined in purely ethnic terms. Seismicity of an ethnic variety is as much an immutable part of our human environment as the grinding plates are a part of our geology. Because it is genuinely hard to create a common New Zealand nationhood, it appears almost fatally easier to define a Mäori nation in contradistinction.

Wilsonianism is powerless to define and manage internal relations between ethnic groups within one nation especially. President Wilson, it is worth remembering, lived a very long time ago. He never watched TV or even spoke on radio. He never even flew in a plane. The standard theories he had access to as a Princeton History Professor had no way of viewing indigenous tribal societies as `nations'.

Wilson wasn't interested in abstractly correct ethnic assignments. He wanted minimally workable units of nations, corresponding to the Westphalian model, in which there was an unmistakable political, demographic and linguistic dominance on the part of one main ethnic group. Any smaller ethnic groups were considered unviable and just had to lump it regardless or whether they were indigenous or not.

He wasn't interested in Kurds, Chechens, Ruthenians, Saami, Slovaks or even Irish and Arabs per se. He was worried about states containing other states' people - Germans in Czechoslovakia for example, but not the Ruthenians and other stateless minorities. His aims were geopolitical - to keep the world safe from another major conflict - between states, not within them.

In short, the self-determining Wilsonian nation state has its limitations. But even as those limitations become more apparent its ghost keeps reappearing at the sub-national level.

How might this account assist our understanding of New Zealand's future? There is no way of knowing what the future may hold. But sketching scenarios can help assemble the fixed and variable points of our national existence that I have outlined in ways that can provide the compass bearings for a debate. I have prepared three.

The first scenario assumes that we recognise the real difficulties of trying to go it entirely alone in a world filled with increasingly complex multi-lateralism, regionalism, sub-regionalism and interconnectedness. Rather than simply choose to deny geopolitical gravity, we would seek a form of nationhood that is open to external association. The obvious way forward here would be to operate as something like Australia's outrigger.

Now being an outrigger doesn't mean becoming a dependency. There are other outriggers - Canada vis a vis the United States is a conspicuous example - that have maintained their identity but been open to association and integration with their neighbours.

Outriggers can also provide balance and perspective to otherwise complacent or off-balance centres of gravity. For instance, we can truly offer Canberra balancing perspectives. Australians have come belatedly to developing a dialogue and reconciliation process with their indigenous people. From living together as New Zealanders, we have considerable experience, "nous" and tact at living in such relationships, over six generations in fact of success and failure on both sides, and considerable joint achievement. The record of this is inscribed in our social fabric, our public institutions and increasingly in our genes.

That experience should be valuable to Australia in its engagement with the Melanesian and Papuan regions - throughout the so-called Arc of Instability, as indeed our facilitation of peace negotiations on Bougainville proved.

Importantly, this way of seeing our future is not dependent on us entering into a closer political association with Australia (which I personally believe to be impractical). But I will take this opportunity to suggest that if New Zealand did ever wish to surrender its sovereignty to enter into closer association with Australia, mere statehood wouldn't be enough to reflect our long period of independence and Treaty of Waitangi relationships. Nothing less than a Quebec relationship, a Charlotteville accord, would do. (That is probably the reason why Australians are generally so coolly dismissive of any proposal that we federate with them. Indeed, the very mention of Quebec would probably be enough to put paid to the prospect should anyone seriously promote it!)

In this scenario we would be aiming for a sense of nationhood that was open to easy cultural and political fluency with the world at large and, in particular, the only serious nation in our immediate region. We would be relaxed about acknowledging Sydney as 'our' world class city (it is already head office for much of corporate New Zealand) and would place high value on the unique relationship we have with Australia when it comes to the free movement of labour between our economies.

This sort of approach to nationhood would want to celebrate its unique and special elements but would be confident enough about the resilience of them not to insist that the world has to engage solely on our terms. In other words, it would mean an acceptance that we need the world far more than it needs us and that only by being open to externally-driven change can we remain fully connected.

• To pull this scenario off we would need to:
  Accept that the only 'nation' we're going to be able to build is the one we've got, and that to be viable in the future a nation like ours has to have a sense of shared enterprise
  
  
• See ourselves as world citizens in a South Pacific setting with both Maori and non-Maori acknowledging that neither has the 'clout' to make it independently on the world stage. New Zealand remains, in many respects, 'sub-critical'. There is less point breaking ourselves up on the 'sub-atomic' level of ethnic identity than there would be for some other nations
  
  
• Close the material gaps between Maori and European populations in a way that extinguishes the 'reparations' mentality that has invaded post-colonial discourse and convinces Maori that being open to the world - and to cultural change - is the path to a secure future
  
  
• Accept the Treaty of Waitangi as a founding document of New Zealand but make modest claims about its ability to interpret the way in which our terms of political association will lie in the future.

The second scenario holds on to the unitary state we have but sees us becoming increasingly absorbed by a sense of national separateness. In this scenario, our self-absorption would be focused on attempts to acculturate our political institutions to reflect a bi-cultural heritage.

To make this model work, we would have to become the Belgium of the Pacific. Scrupulous bilingualism would have to be observed in every aspect of public life in case the nation just blows apart. The Governor-General, (like King Albert II), and other public figures would find themselves making statements alternately in Maori and English to give absolute parity to each. A unitary state would be maintained but a litigious and vigilant spirit would infect all policy debate. On-going seismicity would ensue - this would be a faultline that, like the plate margin on which we live, would never be at rest. A veto button would exist over everything and as the world responded to each fast moving re-shuffling of the deck, we would be constantly trying to divine how the treaty should be reinterpreted to validate our course forward.

In the binary solar-system of this scenario, the indigenous Treaty Partner would resemble a dense neutron star, stripping gas and energy from its companion star, the "Crown", until the two masses implode in a final supernova. The complicated laws of physics that would hold all this together for an aeon or two would be none other than the Treaty of Waitangi.

The problem with all this is that New Zealand would be denied an open-ended and flexible future as a nation. By insisting on the immutability of our bi-cultural heritage we would ensure that we are destined to wrestle alone with the issue of our identity (although with no guarantee that we will reach a shared understanding). Instead of exploring our "hybridity", as the more inspired portions of the "Heart of Nation" report expressed it, we would be doomed to perpetual "difference" and "otherness" to one another on the legal, constitutional and socio-cultural planes. Our future would be one of constant constraint, of peering into our past, as our competitors sail by. Our energies would never be unleashed. Our self-absorption at preventing ourselves from going "nova" would become overwhelming. All this would occur to the detriment of our relations with the outside world. Australia, our linkage point with the resonating currents of world culture, would find us impenetrable and self-absorbed.

The third scenario is the most radical. It rejects the possibility of the unitary state we have created and would attempt a rather modern post-colonial collage of overlapping states. In fact it is the kind of state that would only be attempted if the second scenario had failed. Professor Winiata has given us one possible glimpse of this world. He proposes a constitutional settlement involving two co-ordinate legislatures with a Treaty House to sort out disputes between them.

This constitutional scenario would turn New Zealand into a country with divided sovereignty. Now, how are we to do that within the New Zealand scale of things? What would sovereignty sharing mean for schooling, policing, the judicial system, the whole gamut of core sovereign activities the New Zealand Government undertakes? Mäori and Pakeha, after all, inhabit the length and breadth of this land. There is no particular concentration of Mäori that would make a viable territory unless you want to carve out little Liechtensteins, Nuies, Naurus and San Marinos the length and breadth of the country. (The only alternative is Professor Raj Vasil's bizarre proposal at this year's constitutional conference for four radically different provinces in federal association).

Many Mäori identify as Mäori in the classic sense of identification through whakapapa and enrolment on the Mäori Electoral roll. In fact Mäori leaders insist that their definition of Maori is that they are persons with whakapapa. Yet many others, perhaps up to a third, neither affiliate nor enrol. Are we then to assist in conscripting a constituency for the autonomous Mäori authorities? For when intellectuals and activists fail to rouse the people on whose behalf they are agitating, conscription tends to be the response and a new process of colonisation begins. If that is so, we would be confronting the Wilsonian State in an exclusively ethnic form.

The problem is that Moana Jackson and others who share his sentiments define Mäori in terms of a nation (or nations) and demand some constitutional expression of that. They are classic nationalists. And a dialogue with them is very difficult since they have hermetically sealed their thought processes and arguments. Any attempt to break the tautological circle, results in one's self-identification as a latter-day colonialist. Only from within the world of a genealogically defined nation can one talk about the terms of co-existence. Those who can summon no such identity - the colons - are forever colonists.

For Jackson and his adherents, the only state they would want to achieve, would be one for Mäori and themselves. The nation-state of New Zealand is just a white colonial power. "New Zealand" is something like "Czechoslovakia" or "Canada", a mere convenience or inconvenience depending on whether Mäori are accorded equal sovereignty or not. And Czechoslovakia has broken up, while Canada is constantly on parole.

Even the Treaty undergoes extensive reinterpretation in the Jackson analysis. Article II acknowledges rangatiratanga and Article 71 of the New Zealand Constitution Act (1852) allowed for that by permitting a form of runanga self-government. However that isn't good enough. Subordination of Article II to Article I of the Treaty implies that Maori are a "sub-people" according to Jackson.

Those who share his view apparently have no concern that budget votes and government agencies would have to be divided on ethnic grounds. Presumably the income any Mäori administration received from its tax-base would be insufficient; so once again, the Crown would have to subsidise them, under a Versailles-type reparations regime. Mäori who did not wish to be included in the tribal nations might well prove as elusive as ever when it came to closing the gaps.

There would be a Mäori WINZ and a Pakeha WINZ. There would have to be separate Mäori Police, Justice and Courts systems if sovereignty were to be divided. And between these two systems, a mediating set of institutions would have to occupy the ethnic fault line between "you" and "me". There would be no sense of "us".

New Zealand would become one of the most over-governed and over-regulated nations on Earth. We would become the social laboratory for an experiment the rest of the world would take warning from. Foreign investment and immigration would simply dry up. It would all be too difficult and too fractious to cope with.

Co-ordinate decision-making would exist throughout the "Condominium of New Zealand". Separate Pakeha and Mäori sovereign authorities would have to agree on any foreign policy situation. They might agree on East Timor but they might very well disagree on Zimbabwe for example.

Yet genetic convergence is fast developing in New Zealand. One can imagine most New Zealanders being able to identify both Mäori and Pakeha genes in their make-up by 2100.

Why then separate what will have to be brought back together? Or does Jackson intend Mäori sovereignty to grow like an epiphyte or a parasite on the rotting old tree of the Crown? Why does he not envisage a new hybrid identity emerging of 21st century New Zealand? Even the recent Heart of the Nation report courageously embraced that concept.

These scenarios will be recognisable to those who monitor the unguarded daily conversations of New Zealanders. It would not surprise anyone here to learn that, if forced to choose, I would favour the first scenario. That is an uninteresting observation. The more important point to make is that in each case, it is how we wish to define ourselves as a nation that determines the sort of debates we will set up. The prominence and constitutional leverage we give to the Treaty of Waitangi will be the outward sign of how the debate is finally concluded.

That will be decided by the people of this country, in due course. I would just make the following observations (in no particular order):

• A treaty that is rejected by over 60% of the population and relied on by the balance (who nonetheless consider it to have been fraudulently disregarded) can scarcely be regarded as a point of national unity (making a scenario two outcome unlikely)
  
  
• An increasingly disgruntled population that finds no sense of reassurance in our constitutional arrangements is likely to seek solutions in nostalgic and populist politics that widens divisions and polarises attitudes
  
  
• A treaty that seeks to re-evaluate the basis on which we relate to the world will be a major source of uncertainty for inward migration and investment on which we rely to replenish our narrow and insular skill base
  
  
• No-one with skills is condemned to live here forever - those with internationally competitive skills can emigrate (and already are) to Australia and further afield
  
  
• Australia will only remain a safety valve for social and economic failure in New Zealand (by maintaining uniquely privileged free movement of labour between the two countries) as long as New Zealand looks reasonably viable. The more separated and complicated we become, the less reason Australia has to maintain open borders with us
  
  
• A country that is pre-occupied with endlessly debating the distribution of power and resources is likely to be a country that is less well placed to create new wealth and less likely to be able to make a confident contribution to regional and global affairs.

My short summary is that there are real limits to the extent to which New Zealanders can indulge their post-colonial grievances and any national identity crisis that is believed to plague us. The gap between our living standards and those of other developed countries continues to widen. If that is not to continue we have to be more competitive and adaptive than we have ever been. We also have to be open to change and external influences. If we are too long absorbed by a quest for a new sense of national identity and constitutional reconstruction we may find that the nation we're trying to grow may have become a desiccated shell for having been too long on the potting shed bench.