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The National Government’s ‘Middle Way’

From the turn of the decade onwards, an increasing stress in Crown–Maori relations on what seemed most achievable – compensation for past injustice – may have misled many pakeha over the ultimate aspirations of the tangata whenua. Maori observers and commentators, however, noted (and would continue to note) that ‘reconciling Aotearoa with New Zealand’ had required more than Treaty-based compensation. It needed to seriously address Maori aspirations for constitutional or other arrangements to embed rangatiratanga and, relatedly, partnership with the Crown. A Maori leader, soon to be Race Relations Conciliator, sought in his manifesto for the 1990 commemoration ‘a majority Pakeha … acceptance of the Treaty covenants’ between the two partners. Sizeable portions of pakeha society had been influenced by the Maori Renaissance, but support for Maori had tended to focus on removing socio-economic disadvantage and supporting their cultural assertions – and for some, ‘righting past wrongs’ through providing compensation. In ‘the pakeha world’, it was mostly Crown and left-of-centre circles which were au fait with the language of autonomy, self-determination and even nationhood which permeated most Maori statements on the Treaty.

Insofar as there was any movement of opinion in ‘mainstream’ society in the later 1980s, moreover, it seemed to be one of intermittent backlash against Crown efforts to address Maori grievances, and the National opposition had pitched its appeal to such sentiments. Much political mileage was gained when one of its prominent MPs, Winston Peters, advocated (despite being of Maori lineage) repealing recognition of Treaty principles in legislation and scaling down the Waitangi Tribunal. Traditionally inclined to ‘play the race card’ and with a general election approaching, in 1990 the National Party began actively promoting a message of ‘one nation, one law’. Any state assistance to Maori was to be based on ‘need and not race’.

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When National was elected into office that October, the prospects of retaining most of Labour’s concessions to rangatiratanga looked far from promising. A number of the new ministers abhorred any form of officially-franchised ‘separatism’ as both socially divisive and inconsistent with the realities of everyday life. They wanted Maori to ‘participate equally in the newly created competitive environment’, without any kind of special relationship with the Crown. The new government sought to extend the anti-welfarism and laissez-faire political agendas of its Labour predecessor, and layered its anti-Treaty populism into such plans. There was, accordingly, soon to be a considerable degree of official resiling from ‘biculturalism’, and even a return to some of the assimilationist-tinged policies of the past.

In particular, the new Minister of Maori Affairs, Peters, made it a priority to repeal the Runanga Iwi Act, removing any concept that iwi were officially-franchised partners of the Crown. The sizeable degree of devolution under the RIA, in his view, was seriously flawed in theory. It was also seen to be defective in practice: runanga were said to be nowhere near to a position to manage sizeable state assets and functions. The Runanga Iwi Act Repeal Act was passed in May 1991. Even Maori who had considered the RIA to be of only limited use (or almost none at all) opposed its repeal on the grounds that the new government’s agenda was so clearly anti-autonomist. It was a re-run of the abolition of the DMA – few Maori particularly liked it, but it was better than nothing and could well be improved through structural and conceptual reform. The RIA was viewed, then, as having a number of useful qualities and potentialities as well as flaws. Some of the former opponents of its mandating processes, in fact, came to believe that many later problems relating to Maori representation, which were often to delay reparational negotiations and settlements, may have been avoided had the RIA been retained or reformed.

Despite the abolition of officialised runanga, moreover, the government refused to re-establish an operational equivalent to the old DMA to ensure provision of services that were no longer to be devolved to ‘runanga iwi’. National’s emphasis was to be on ‘mainstreaming’ service delivery to Maori. Essentially, there were to be no Maori-specific operational structures responsible for Maori issues or well-being, except for those which were not able to be dispensed with for legal or political reasons – such as the Maori Land Court, the Maori Trustee and the Waitangi Tribunal. Each government department would deal with Maori just the same as if they were pakeha, although there would be monitoring and policy advice from the now small ‘Maori bureaucracy’ to make sure that Maori were not disadvantaged through any kind of institutional racism. In the new political climate, any moves towards Maori autonomy would seemingly have to develop both outside of Crown structures and without major assistance from the state – except insofarpage 249 as the future possibility of reparations held out hope for developing tribal and other resource bases.¹

But the new government of Jim Bolger could not avoid the fact that it was working within post-assimilation social parameters, whatever its stress on ‘one nation’. It was clearly a dubious proposition that mainstreaming could, at least quickly, address the many issues faced within Maoridom, both socio-economic and those pertaining to other matters such as public order in urban spaces. Placing greater emphasis on contracting out service-delivery tasks to private organisations, already firmly on National’s minimal-state agenda, might work better for both Crown and Maori interests: as with Tu Tangata and subsequent arrangements, iwi or similar organisations could become, as much as any other organisation, providers on behalf of the state. Whatever the case, it was clear that simplistic election slogans were no basis for planning the next steps in Crown– Maori relations, and Maori cooperation would be needed in their formulation and implementation. In January 1991, with all these factors in mind, Peters established a Ministerial Planning Group to make recommendations on the future of Maori policy. Its report, Ka Awatea, ‘was designed to steer a course between devolution to iwi and complete mainstreaming of service delivery to Maori through the general government system’.

The report had mixed messages. In its interventionist mode, it proposed replacing Manatu Maori and the Iwi Transition Agency with a Ministry of Maori Development, which would play a ‘significant role in the proactive development of Maori policy’. The new ministry would focus particularly on education, health, training and economic resource management, addressing the large statistical gulf between Maori and pakeha in such crucial matters. Ka Awatea envisaged various interventionist measures to deal with Maori socio-economic disadvantage, and recommended that the government ‘retain resources and the means of delivering those resources, in order to be able to directly target areas of concern’ within Maoridom.

In its hands-off mode, the report confirmed mainstreaming, but put greater emphasis on the contracting out of programme delivery. Both socio-economic development and provision of welfarist services would be organised around the private sector rather than around Crown franchising of iwi. Though iwi which chose to form legal corporate entities would be encouraged to participate in tendering processes, contracted service delivery would no longer be posited upon a systematised incorporation of tribal authorities into the state system.

The Ministerial Planning Group had given consideration to the Treaty of Waitangi, however, and its report reflected a general belief in a distinct place in New Zealand society for Maori culture. In some interpretations, at least, it recognised Maori aspirations for rangatiratanga. It equated a ‘right to self development’ for iwi with the ‘right of self determination’ guaranteed underpage 250 the United Nations’ Draft Declaration of Principles of Indigenous Rights. It proposed that Article Two of the Treaty be met by enabling Maori to ‘retain and control their resources and manage these in whatever manner they choose’.

One of Ka Awatea’s authors was later to assert that the report called for state support ‘to assist the Maori goal of self-determination’. It allegedly offered something better than Labour’s runanga iwi ‘self-management’ package, given that the provisions of the RIA had fallen far short of the ‘handing over of resources, with no strings attached’. Seeking a way of meeting Maori wishes that accommodated National’s mainstreaming agenda, integrationist impulses, anti-welfarism and right-wing socio-economic policies, the authors had supposedly come up with a ‘middle way’ form of rangatiratanga. The state would continue to assign service-delivery functions, via tendering processes, to iwi and other Maori organisations, but in such a way that there would be no constitutional or even quasi-constitutional implications: Maori bodies of many varieties would tender to provide services on contract to the Crown, just as would non-Maori private providers. The special expertise of Maori organisations, however, might sometimes give them an edge in the capacity to secure the contracts.²

In his influence upon, and endorsement of, the report, it appeared that the new minister had been listening to Maori voices, whatever his (and his colleagues’) pre-election statements. Ka Awatea’s concern with reducing economic disparities was generally welcomed, while its call for ‘Treaty based policy to fulfil protection of te tino rangatiratanga’ ensured that Maori opposition to the National government’s Maori policies was more muted than predicted. However, critics argued that while the report acknowledged Maori rights to rangatiratanga, the strategies set out did ‘not facilitate its achievement’. Its endorsement of mainstreaming, moreover, and its equation of iwi with private companies, did not make it popular with many advocates of rangatiratanga. But nor was it fully approved by other ministers. Its emphasis on state intervention, in particular, ill fitted their free-market and anti-welfare policies, although they did support Ka Awatea’s focus on private enterprise and its recommendations that iwi needed to empower themselves independently of ‘hand-out’ resourcing by the state.