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We are
all fellow citizens, and we should share without favour T
HE MATAITAI business has certainly polarised opinion, and
not just in Moeraki. In Dunedin, Dr Mike Hilton, of the University
of Otago, has taken exception to my view of the matter. I
am grateful to him for his willingness to debate, and for
the pretext to consider somewhat further what I believe to
be a thoroughly bad idea.
The key
element of Dr Hilton's position is that Maori "did not
give away their rights to fisheries when they signed the Treaty
of Waitangi". Prior to the treaty, they had "total
rights", which, Dr Hilton claims, have now been unjustly
lost. This is an interesting argument, much favoured by lawyers,
which maintains that everything on New Zealand soil and off
its coasts and within its seas was, and still remains, the
property of the Maori people - unless they deliberately sold
or otherwise signed away any part of it. It is an interesting
argument because, if Dr Hilton and his allies are correct,
we are in a very much worse situation than most of us suspect.
Not only do all the fish in the seas belong to a minority
of the population, but so also does the native wildlife -
all of it - as well as the lakes and rivers, and anything
living in them. None of these things were "given away",
or sold by Maori, and so, logically, if Dr Hilton is right,
pakeha have no rights to them whatever. Extremists might even
argue that the air itself, though vital to us all, is legal
only in Maori lungs, a taonga they never surrendered.
There
are large holes in this argument - aside from its essential
absurdity. The first is a total failure to recognise any difference
between personal possessions - which in nearly all societies
may quite acceptably be individually owned - and the wider
category of a nation's resources, which are held by its inhabitants
in common.
The air
is one such commons: it belongs to everyone and no-one. So
are the public lands, the National Parks, State Forests, beaches,
rivers, and lakes, together with the wild animals and plants
that live on this common estate. The sea and its fish are
a commons too, although here the situation is complicated
by the enormous number and value of the fish, far more than
required to satisfy each forager's personal need. A surplus
therefore is available, which the Government has allocated
to commercial use, subject to sustainability.
But it
is important to note that the essential element of a commons
is still maintained: anyone may take a generous quantity of
fish for his or her own use, as a basic entitlement of citizenship.
Why, then, should one category of citizen get more?
A second
problem with Dr Hilton's position is that it seeks to fix
things forever at a specific historical date, in this case
1840. Nothing thereafter is supposed to change, despite the
obvious fact that everything has in fact changed completely.
Maori, for instance, are no longer the people they were in
1840. They have intermarried extensively with pakeha and now,
for the most part, live in a way that is common to all.
Most members
of the Moeraki runanga, as it happens, no longer live at Moeraki.
Many of them live in Christchurch, and yet Dr Hilton sees
nothing odd about allocating these absentees a greater ration
of fish than to pakeha people who actually do live, and fish,
at Moeraki. His justification for this, he says, is that Maori
have been "progressively isolated" by a series of
laws from their sources of traditional seafood.
But this
is not true. No Maori has been legally debarred from his share
of the common larder. Far from it. Maori, through various
racially-biased mechanisms (of which mataitai are one), have
greater access and a larger share than any other citizen.
This is precisely the problem.
Dr Hilton
attempts to make mileage out of a presumed cultural need for
Maori to provide visiting friends with quantities of seafood:
"The mana or prestige of a hapu or iwi is undermined
if traditional foods, particularly seafood, cannot be shared
with guests." Why this situation should be any different
with pakeha, who also traditionally eat seafood, is not explained.
Hospitality, as Dr Hilton seems to forget, is common to all
our cultures. The whole idea of different rights for different
people is anathema to democracy and the provision of extra
rights on the basis of race is a working definition of racism.
Dr Hilton, it would seem, is willing to overlook this as long
as the level of racial preference is small: "a modest
compensation"; "small, very localised seafood resources".
But racism, no matter how minor, is racism nonetheless, and
big racisms are far more likely to take hold and grow where
small ones are officially sanctioned.
Dr Hilton,
of course, denies that mataitai are racist. He insists that
I "can no more argue the establishment [of mataitai]
is racist than [I] can claim the ongoing settlement process
is racist". Yet, in the very next line, Dr Hilton can
advise that "of course mataitai are intended to grant
special rights to Maori". I have no doubt at all that
Dr Hilton's motives are pure. But it seems to me that he is
badly confused as to what constitutes racial justice. With
the best will in the world, he would open the way to an iniquitous
system that will fester for generations.
There
is no need for this. We are neighbours. We fish. And if we
are decent people, we will share the pot without favour.
....Dave Witherow is a Dunedin armchair philosopher
and environmentalist
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