upton-on-line
8th November 2001
In this issue
… what one prominent Australian politician, retiring Victorian State
MP, Mark Birrell has to say about the state of the Trans-Tasman
relationship, some fresh headaches for the nuclear industry and
some seriously sensible commentary on Maori Knowledge from Tahu Potiki.
A verdict from across the ditch
Mark Birrell shares more than the odd thing with upton-on-line:
he was born on the same day of the same year (7.2.58, for the astrologers
among you), entered Parliament (the Victorian Upper House or Legislative
Council) in the same year (1981) and decided to retire within the same
12 month period (technically beating u-o-l’s time in the House by one
year). And he is a Tory to boot (they prefer the euphemistic liberal
across the Tasman).
Faced with such terrifying symmetries, it is scarcely surprising that
upton-on-line shares a few prejudices with him. But his comments in
a recent e-mail on the state of the Trans-Tasman relationship brought
upton-on-line up with a start. Here’s what Mark had to say (and has
recklessly consented to have reproduced in this risky publication):
"The Ansett saga has been a complete public relations disaster
for Air New Zealand (think of how badly a poorly managed corporation
can be perceived by the masses and double it!) and has thereby soured
the broader Aussie view of N.Z. I have never witnessed an event
that so measurably caused Australians to be negative towards your
country, which is both unfair and regrettable. There has been some
useful public debate but not a lot; fortunately the debate is cooling
off.
This whole issue shows the need for an on-going forum to promote/defend
and advance the relationship between the two countries; something
like the old Australia/NZ Foundation. This is so much more relevant
now. Can we progress this? What do you think of the idea of creating
a 'forum' or 'dialogue' group of some sort, which holds a major
annual gathering (alternating from one country to the other) and
other events, possibly funded by business and governments? Any other
ideas?"
Does this ring any bells with readers? Tucked away at the end of an
over-long issue much earlier this year upton-on-line had this to say:
Talking to people rather than about them
New Zealanders and Australians assume that they are so culturally
fluent that they can take each other for granted. Hence the obligatory
Aussie and Kiwi jokes that are scattered randomly through speeches
by visiting politicians, sports heroes and business people. Familiarity
breeds contempt and we are very familiar and therefore very contemptuous.
The truth may be, however, that the one-liners paper over a serious
awkwardness that has grown not narrowed over the years. Australia
is a big country that has to be taken seriously. We are, well …
in another league shall we say.
But that shouldn’t prevent a serious engagement. In fact, from
New Zealand’s point of view, it makes it even more imperative. Yet
in upton-on-line’s time as a Parliamentarian, he had far more extensive
contact with North American, Asian and European politicians, writers
and business people than he did with Australians. It was assumed
that Australia was a place you went on sporting missions or winter
holidays and that all that inherited fluency would take care of
itself.
Well it doesn’t. There is no substitute for an intensive, disciplined
exchange of views. We should take a look at how some other countries
do it. For 51 years, British and German leaders, commentators and
academics have been meeting at the annual Königswinter Conference.
It was established as part of the post-war reconstruction effort
but has become a familiar and valued opportunity to make and maintain
connections at an informal and personal level. The result is a wealth
of Anglo-German networks that can be called on when there are problems
in formal settings. But more importantly, there is a higher level
of intuitive understanding about how the two countries are likely
to react than there would be if everyone just watched television
news or read the official press statements.
Our Prime Minister meets her Australian counterpart twice a year,
a regular consultation that is valuable because it is not driven
by any particular negotiating framework. But the way we conduct
our bi-lateral relations, it is entirely possible for a New Zealand
Prime Minister to reach the office having virtually no prior connections
or contacts in Australia. The same applies a fortiori with respect
to MPs and rafts of other people who, through academia or the media,
influence our external attitudes.
It is time that we made a twenty-year investment in building up
a generation of New Zealanders whose fluency with Australia extends
beyond good-natured insults and cut-price weekends in Sydney.
At the time, this little diatribe elicited not a single comment. But
Birrell’s verdict emboldens upton-on-line to raise it again. Seriously,
how can the two nations hope to maintain a close working relationship
when they assume knowledge of each other's interests and hang-ups that
simply isn’t borne out by the facts.
We have always tended to feel a bit awkward about confessing the need
to get a better understanding of people we thought we knew so well we
could simply trade one-liners in after dinner speeches. It was easy
to set up Asia 2000 to take all those Asian cultures and marketplaces
seriously. It was respectable to admit our cultural ignorance and lack
of intimacy. But with Australia, somehow, it’s not done to pretend we
could be anything other than outrageously familiar.
Well we’re not, and the gaps are likely to widen. We are now hold distinctly
different geo-political views on security issues. Our approaches to
resolving the grievances of indigenous peoples are light years removed
(as indeed are the historical facts and the contemporary political realities
surrounding their resolution). Our economic performances are diverging
and the critical mass of human capital we can attract and maintain is
also very different.
In short, a little, isolated (possibly sub-critical) nation (New Zealand)
has to be extremely well-informed about the only country of any size
and cultural resonance in the neighbourhood. As a large, internationally
serious player, Australia has much less reason to understand its eastern
outlier. But if the scale of New Zealand’s emerging problems and its
trajectory makes us a less predictable quantity, Australia could find
itself absorbing more and more of New Zealand’s problems through the
sheer flow of people across its border. So it may be timely for Australia
to beef up its understanding of what could come its way.
Who needs to be talking?
Birrell is right to see governments and business as potential funders
of a Foundation or Königswinter type of mechanism. But the exchange
of people and views has to be far wider than those elites. Media, academic,
scientific and cultural spheres need to be engaged. (Upton-on-line has
long advocated that one of our few remaining wealthy citizens should,
rather than gifting yet another round of tennis courts or sports stadiums,
seek to entice The Australian
to publish a New Zealand edition to relieve the abysmal media ignorance
in which New Zealand wallows…It would do wonders for public debate in
NZ and if the back-wash was a slightly better level of coverage about
NZ in Oz, so much the better). Whatever the case, such a process/institution
needs to be run by a hard-nosed but intelligent group who really do
live, think and play in both countries.
Question to upton-on-line readers: does such an initiative merit
thinking about? If so, would you lend your name to trying to make it
happen?
Send your responses to: uptononline@noos.fr
Just when there appeared to be a break in the clouds
With the Bush Administration’s decision to stand aside from Kyoto and
conduct, instead, an aggressive review of energy policy, it looked for
a while as though the nuclear energy sector had been given a new lease
of life. After achieving virtual pariah status in the wake of Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl, it suddenly looked as though a comeback was
on the cards. True, the Germans were committed to progressively dismantling
their nuclear sector. But the British were leaning towards maintaining
nuclear as the supplier of roughly one fifth of the nation’s electricity.
And the French were acutely aware that every time they boarded a TGV,
they weren’t just shifting emissions from car exhausts to power station
chimneys: they were actually reducing them given Frances overwhelming
reliance on nuclear power. True, there were long-term waste disposal
problems – but were they worse than gently sautéeing in rising
greenhouse gas levels? Were the Greens right to oppose an energy source
that, whatever its waste disposal problems, did at least offer a way
out of rising CO2 emissions.
September 11th looks to have seeded a whole new cloudbank
for an industry that must have been feeling quite hopeful. The French
reported, two weeks ago, that they have installed surface to air missiles
around their nuclear waste reprocessing facility at La Hague. The prospects
of a 767 on a suicide mission deciding to target such a facility do
not, apparently, bear thinking about. The waste at that site amounts
in total to the equivalent of 70 reactor cores and includes 55 tonnes
of powdered plutonium. A government study has estimated that a direct
hit by an errant airliner would involve the dispersion of radioactive
material on a scale 67 times larger than Chernobyl. The missiles suddenly
seem long overdue.
But what of the rest of the country – La Hague is one of four nuclear
waste collection sites, not to mention 21 reactors and a military nuclear
facility. None, it appears, have been constructed to withstand more
than a hit by a light aeroplane. The same goes for other sites around
the world. In other words, whatever their long-term waste management
legacies, they present an immediate risk in the light of the new style
terrorism that appears to have been launched.
If the nuclear industry has always struggled to prove that it can exist
on a commercial basis without special subsidies, how will it ever be
able to shoulder the costs of paying for the sort of sophisticated military
protection that appears to be needed? More fundamentally, public concerns
will once again be raised to a fever pitch: does it make sense to build
dependence on energy sources that involve such heavy concentrations
of risk that they require sophisticated military protection?
An overdue dose of sanity
Upton-on-line does not often refer readers to the NZ Herald
for insights but Colin James’ weekly column ranks as an exception.
This week’s column drew attention to an exceptionally frank Maori commentary
on science, traditional knowledge and the cultural debate as we wade
through it day by day in New Zealand. It was given by Tahu Potiki
who is shortly to take up the chair of the Ngai Tahu Development Corporation
and showed a refreshing willingness to talk about being Maori without
laying claim to a veil of obscurantism that leads one to conclude that
Maori and Pakeha inhabit different universes. Or as James puts it, that
it’s possible to assert bi-cultural respect without needing to resort
to separatism.
James’ commentary (always too short on account of the Herald’s
absurd column limits) can be found at www.nzherald.co.nz
(look for the Dialogue pages of November 7th’s edition) or,
from Friday 9th November, on his own website, www.colinjames.co.nz
In the meantime, here is the full text of what Potiki had to say on
the subject. Let’s hope other minds in Maoridom can engage in this sort
of candour:
"I hold here in my hand a piece of Pounamu or greenstone-jade.
There are a number of Maori traditions about the origins of Pounamu
Including fanciful tales of taniwhas and dusky maidens. Like all other
matter in the universe, traditional Maori knowledge accounted for
Pounamu through genealogical origins, or whakapapa. Creation, mankind,
flora and fauna were all explained through complex inter-relationships
that were spawned by a myriad of gods. This stone was supposedly descended
from Takaroa or the sea god and was often mistaken for a fish, he
ika, he pounamu, he Ika, he pounamu. A number of stories are
told of jade hunters seeing fish in the waters of certain rivers and
as they grasp the slippery tail it turns to a prized piece of greenstone.
"Modern knowledge tells us that in fact this stone is a type
of nephrite and was formed as a result of extraordinary heat and enormous
pressure. There is a large vein of mother rock in the Southern Alps
and boulders are worn off and find their way into rivers and tributaries
along the West Coast of the South island and are then subsequently
"discovered," or collected, to be worked into tools and
jewellery. The geological theory is acceptable knowledge, as, we understand
it.
"As a society ‘we choose the theory whIch best holds its own
in competition with other theories; the one which by natural selection,
proves itself the fittest to survive’, becomes acceptable knowledge.
Other theories can be disproved. Matauranga Maori, or Maori knowledge,
has failed because it does not stand up to critical analysis. As my
colleague puts it Maori knowledge is dead.
"When Maori were exposed to Western systems of knowledge the
whakapapa system could not include the new. There were some early
attempts to add new genealogical lines to the existing whakapapa but
the rate of influx so challenged the Maori world-view that further
expansion became futile. There is no modern, credible, discipline
that continues to expand an understanding of the universe based on
genealogical descent lines. So as we consider the knowledge society
it simply must be in the context of modern global knowledge that has
survived critical or practical analysis.
"The recent Maori caucus decision to reject the science of genetic
engineering is of concern. Based on a set of traditional principles
of the sanctity of human existence we will reject involvement in cutting
edge scientific research. The unknown implications of genetic modification
have spurned an ostrich syndrome within Maoridom equivalent to that
of the Pope as he counseled Galileo to stop discussing the position
of the Earth within the universe. The sacred principle of God’s creation
should no longer refute common sense, and ignore modernity, because
of an irrational fear of Frankenstein’s unseen monster.
"This is not to say that Matauranga Maori is not important
or integral to Maori communities. Countries, identities and systems
of government find their origin in knowledge systems that have long
since been disproved. The realisation that the earth is part of an
ever-expanding universe on the fringes of one of a myriad of galaxies
did not stop people from going to church. Sunday sport and T.V. stopped
people from going to church and they are the same things that will
stop people participating in Maori ritual. The perpetuation of tradition,
ritual and Ianguage will remain central to Maori and iwi development
as this is the cement of identity. Japanese society can, and does,
engage at the forefront of technology whilst talking Japanese, practicing
Shinto religion and holding fast to traditional values. Why can’t
Maori?
"For Maori one has to ask whether an iwi can evolve in an organlsational
sense and still commit to old beliefs and traditions as a rational
knowledge system. The future lies in accepting the death of the past.
The relevance of whakapapa is in communal solidarity, kinship and
identity but these traditions cannot be seen as truth or as an excuse
not to engage with the rest of the world in seeking out new knowledge.
"There is no evil or malice in this revelation. Colonisation
cannot be blamed for the devaluing of Matauranga Maori. The mere interaction
with other cultures and knowledge systems left no rational defence
for Maori knowledge. (This does not let colonisation off the hook
as there is plenty more we can blame it for). But it was the simple
overwhelming challenge to a Maori world-view that collapsed Maori
knowledge. Nothing else.
"As devastating as it was, the arrival of the Pakeha did one
thing; it showed our ancestors that there was a world beyond these
shores and that if we do not actively engage with the rest of the
world then Maori, or Ngäi Tahu, will simply become an artifact.
"Therefore participation in the knowledge society means global,
Western knowledge. And participation in the knowledge society for
Maori is tantamount to participation in general society."
A final snippet
It’s funny the images advertising agencies dig up for their clients.
In a major French daily, the other day, upton-on-line spied a very familiar
picture of Pohutu Geyser in full eruption. A geyser’s a geyser
you might think. To most people, maybe, but not to a geyser freak like
upton-on-line. But what was all the spouting about? Who knows, but apparently
Pohutu’s wet, steamy, silica-laden discharge has something in common
with the sort of service you can expect from KPMG (at least in
France). At least that’s the firm that has chosen Pohutu as it’s subliminal
symbol.
Perhaps someone should tell one of the two competing Arawa sub-tribes.
They could perhaps repeat the recent victory over Lego’s misappropriation
of tohunga and whenua. And as a famous taonga which
people have long paid to see, pictures of Pohutu have got to be worth
more than a couple of nouns (even Maori ones). On the other hand, perhaps
KPMG’s advertisers have already paid cold hard cash to exploit Pohutu
on behalf of assorted erupting financial consultancies and accounting
firms. In which case we can sleep easy in the knowledge that even taonga
have an internationally realiseable price!
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