By Michael Laws
Of the the outstanding phenomena of New Zealand this past generation has been the loss of our homogeneous culture.
Liberals will argue this is a good thing – that our homogeneous culture was essentially a white monoculture and that it actively discriminated against anything that was not it. And, to an extent, they would be right.
But like all social revolutions, there has been a great deal of damage on our way to this different, multi-dimensional and multicultural New Zealand. One is a loss of any accepted national identity. We are now many New Zealands, and not just one.
Something of that new reality will be played out at Waitangi tomorrow. Like most Kiwis, I will ignore the festivities and fuss because I deem the day irrelevant.
I feel no empathy for an event that commemorates the historical relationship between Maori and this distant beast known as The Crown. I'm very pleased for Maori but what about the rest of us?
So has Anzac Day become New Zealand's de-facto national day?
It commemorates our unity, not our ethnic differences. Anzac Day extols sacrifice, rather than any insular selfishness.
Certainly, many white New Zealanders are unsettled by the Maori cultural renaissance of the past 30 years, but they are unsettled by any change. The world has evolved at a rate that makes them uncomfortable. The tide of Asian migrants and the rapid rise of Chinese corporates hardly mollifies their mood.
Which is why this past week has been such a test for so many politicians, policy-makers and media commentators. There is an abiding uneasiness within the body politic about the sale of the Crafar farms, James Cameron's similar purchase, the threatened fracturing of the National-Maori Party alliance, and the place of the treaty in future legislation.
These things have been highlighted by a Statistics New Zealand release this week that our ethnicity ratios have created two distinct New Zealands – Auckland and everywhere else.
I would actually argue that there are more than two, that the South Island is its own culture and its own country, as are the East Coast and rural Northland, although these are potentially alienated welfare regions with little prospect of being anything else. They are their own culture and it is neither Maori nor Pakeha.
We are now all becoming ultra-aware of these sub-national trends. As we holiday in other parts of the country, we accept that the currency, McDonald's and the beer are the same, but, gee, that's it, and that trend is accelerating, not diminishing.
Auckland is certainly distinct. Maori are in such a significant minority that they are almost invisible. By 2021, just half of Auckland will be Pakeha, and nearly 30 per cent will be Asian. Pacific Islanders easily beat Maori as the next most numerous indigenous group.
Yet nowhere else will this occur. The so-called Asian invasion has been all about Auckland. The rest of New Zealand will be divided between dominant Pakeha and Maori groupings of varying proportions.
According to one Chinese community leader, this may also activate something of an intellectual gap between Auckland and the rest of New Zealand. He promotes Asian immigration as an answer to the country's brain drain, and he is right. Without immigration, this country would not have a public health sector.
Obviously, though, there are good Asians and bad Asians. The nativist response to the sale of the Crafar farms to Chinese corporate Shanghai Pingxu proved that.
Prime Minister John Key was right when he declaimed most of the public and political opposition to racism.
Had the poorly managed farms been snapped up by United States or German interests, the resultant clamour would have been a whimper.
By contrast, Kiwis seemed quite delighted when Hollywood director Cameron snapped up a couple of plum Wairarapa properties. Oh, how cool, we cooed. The local mayor and Federated Farmers positively beamed. The idea of giant blue aliens strolling down town is probably better than the usual Featherston ferals.
But the Chinese aren't like Cameron and they aren't like us. The don't look, dress, speak or drink like us, and they are rich, bright and driven – attributes that are so distinctly un-Kiwi these days.
This is why they will continue to buy New Zealand assets when such purchases make sense. They have the cash, and they didn't steal it, inherit it or win it. They earned it. They work hard, learn as much they can and do whatever works, which is why we need them more than they need us.
Sunday Star Times, 5th February 2012
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