Muldoon's race to the top

Muldoon has nearly completed his determined attempt to stride to the top of the country. As though motivated by a massive inferiority complex, he has pushed, plotted, and waged his clever publicity campaign in the relentless pursuit of power. Now he is Leader of the Opposition he has only one ambition left—the Prime Ministership.

With the publication of his autobiography and his currently incessant self-exposure, it is timely for New Zealanders to look closely at Muldoon.

For years he has been a national hero for a large group of people. They range from frustrated tittle men to frustrated millionaires, from incoherent would-be bosses to entrapped housewives, from latent racists to out-and-out bigots of all forms.

Can we afford to have such a man as Muldoon in any position of influence, let alone the Prime Ministership? This week Salient takes a brief look at some of Muldoon's printable views on race, as a particularly pertinent example of views that are an ugly threat to human rights in the country.

In his book The Rise and Fall of a Young Turk, Muldoon gives some insights into his make-up. On page 31 he says:

"To point up the menace of communist subversion, real though it is, is to invite the catchcry of "redbaiter" or "smear tactics". Anyone who speaks out against the anti-South African campaign is a "racist".

What a gross exaggeration it is to say 'Anyone who speaks out against the anti-South Africa campaign is a "racist".' Muldoon has little or no evidence for this attempt to devalue the word 'racist'. He is trying to divert attention from the central issue, inventing a smokescreen about words.

On page 52 Muldoon makes his most lurid statements:

"As far as our Pacific Island immigrants are concerned there is no doubt that the majority are good workers and lawabiding citizens. For those who resort to violence, usually as a result of their inability to handle liquor, I would have one penalty for all but the most exceptional cases—send them home. This would be the best deterrent, and if the law had to be altered so be it. For the young Maori lout convicted of an offence involving violence a similar prohibition from living in the city would, I believe, be an effective deterrent penalty.'

Note that the immigrants are workers first and citizens second. According to Muldoon they resort to violence because they can't handle liquor. How blind he is! Why doesn't he ask what makes them (and large numbers of white workers who Muldoon obviously places in a different category) take to excessive indulgence in liquor in the first place? Muldoon prefers not to look at the causes of alienation and violence, he seeks a society which brutally represses crime rather than removes its causes.

His remarks about Maori 'louts' are ironic in a ghastly way. After the Pakeha land-owning class and its successive governments had driven Maoris from their land, leaving them with only three or four million acres out of an original 66 million, now a Pakeha leader wants to send them back to their (virtually non-existent) land. This particular line is reminiscent of the South African homelands policy which has resulted in gross inequality for the blacks. Cities belong to Maoris as much as Pakehas, and getting rid of the Maoris won't solve industrial exploitation, housing squalor, inadequate community facilities, and all the other problems that make cities irresistible nightmares for so many people, young and old, brown and white.

On page 184 Muldoon quotes with obvious approval a politician who 'had no time for the maudlin fawning on everything Maori that became the constant preoccupation of the Labour Government." Again no evidence, just unsubstantiable smear tactics. It is a commendable facet of the Labour Party, perhaps because they have Maori working class members, that they have recognised that Maoris are discriminated against and suffer accordingly socially, educationally, in health, housing etc. The results of all this can be seen in the courts, the prisons, in death rates, in dead-end jobs, in all of which Maoris are over-represented. If anything, they need to become a constant preoccupation of government, if only to rectify the wrongs done them. Calling this 'maudlin fawning' is inconsiderate, negative and blind.

Students who saw Muldoon in action at this university recently were impressed by his skilful evasion of questions about racial problems and race equality. If there weren't so many stirrers there wouldn't be so many problems, evaded Muldoon time and again. But stirrers have to have something to stir. Muldoon, and there's plenty of problems to stir on that won't go away if you ignore them. For instance, the statistics from the 1973 New Zealand Yearbook and the article on the lack of Maori participation in the education system (both reprinted in Salient, July 3) need more satisfactory answers than what Muldoon is in effect saying: "Sit down and shut up."

If Muldoon gets in as Prime Minister in 1975 we can look forward to history repeating itself as the Maori racial minority becomes openly as well as institutionally persecuted like the Jews were in Germany of the thirties.

It is doubtful that the few remotely progressive elements in the National Party have sufficient inclination or guts to depose the man they irresponsibly let rise to the top.

Voters have a duty to keep racism out of politics and keep National out of office. People seeing through Muldoon's bigoted beliefs have a duty to expose them, and to fight for a society in which inequalities are solved in multi-cultural, democratic ways, rather than suppressed by National-style reaction.

—Roger Steele