The
Christchurch Civic Creche Case |
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Don Brash's ability to
transform a controversy into a cause lies at the heart of the National
Party's electoral recovery. Except that the singular form -
"controversy" - is misleading because the most impressive aspect of
the Brash-led campaign has been his success at blending a multitude of
controversies into one very popular cause: The Battle Against Political
Correctness. Most people trace the
dramatic recovery of Brash's National Party back to his Orewa speech of 27
January 2004. But this was by no
means the beginning of the PC battle. Brash's "Nationhood" speech
did not occur in a vacuum, but in an environment of mass hostility towards
all aspects of political correctness. That environment was
not an accident. It had been carefully nurtured by everyone from radio
talkback hosts like Paul Holmes and Leighton Smith to the hard-working
ideologues at the Business Roundtable and the Maxim Institute. Why did the phenomenon
later known as "political correctness" make Brash's call-to-arms
against its influence so compelling? There is often a lot to be learned from
the insults politicians hurl at their enemies. One of the most
frequent charges levelled against Helen Clark's government is that it is
driven by an agenda dating back to the 1970s. The charge is false but
it does point us in the right direction. The social reform
movements of the 1970s gave rise to the notion that some forms of human
behaviour could be described as politically correct, while others were best
forsaken as "politically incorrect" or "unsound." What
were these behaviours? Essentially, they involved various forms of prejudice
and discrimination. In the 1950s and '60s, for example, it was not unheard of
for landlords to erect signs saying "No Dogs or Maoris" outside
their accommodation. As a youngster, I
recall being told in some North Island towns Maori children were not allowed
to sit upstairs at the cinema. By the 1970s, such
blatant forms of discrimination were becoming increasingly unacceptable,
especially to young people. Growing up, they had
been moved by the stories coming out of the American south as blacks and
whites together fought to end segregation. When the white South
African government demanded Maori be excluded from All Black touring sides
or, failing that, be designated "honorary whites," they realised,
even in Godzone, there was a fight to be waged against racism. Now-familiar names like
Syd Jackson, Pita Sharples, Atareta Poananga and Hone Harawira reacquainted
Pakeha New Zealanders with the injustices of their nation's colonial past and
began to demand redress for the wrongs done to their people. The long-neglected
Treaty of Waitangi acquired a new salience and was recognised as a document
of historical significance. Maori weren't the only
group in New Zealand society to feel the sting of discrimination. Women, too,
found themselves shut out of the key locations of power and influence. At this historical
remove, it seems preposterous that there were professions, and bars, women
couldn't enter, jobs they couldn't do, and pay rates they could never aspire
to - purely because of their gender. It wasn't just a matter
of closed doors. A woman brave enough to press rape charges against her
attacker found herself being assaulted all over again by his lawyer when the
case came to court. Bloody marital disputes
were dismissed by the police as "only a domestic" and the battered
victims tossed back into the ring for another few rounds with their slugger. Unwanted pregnancies
could be terminated - for a price. If you were poor, or
lacked the right connections, that price could be high. Abortion was illegal
in New Zealand until 1978 and for those forced to seek out criminal
abortionists on the back streets of our larger cities, there was the
certainty of pain, the probability of infection and the real possibility of
death. The Domestic Purposes
Benefit, pioneered by Sir Keith Holyoake's National government and enacted by
the Kirk Labour government, was one of the great achievements of the 1970s. Now, at last, women and
children could escape from the brutal prisons so many of their homes had
become. Combined with the contraceptive pill and abortion law reform, the DPB
constituted a powerful symbol of female liberation. It would be another 10
years before gay New Zealanders were liberated from the oppressive legal
environment in which they had been required to live. The "blackmailer's
charter," as the law against homosexuality was accurately described, was
repealed only in 1986 by Fran Wilde's Private Member's Bill. It would be wrong to
suppose the political impulse to redress the worst aspects of racial, gender
and sexual discrimination was restricted to those on the left of the
political spectrum. On such "social
issues" there was often a large measure of bipartisan agreement. The National Party
established the office of the Race Relations Conciliator and, later, the
Human Rights Commission. Labour and National
were similarly active in signing up New Zealand to the growing body of
international law on human rights. But agreement at the
summit of the political system did not mean there was agreement at the base.
Anti-discrimination legislation was often enacted over the objections of a
clear majority of the population. This was clearly the
case with the Homosexual Law Reform Bill: 800,000 signatures - the largest
tally in New Zealand history - were collected on a petition calling for
homosexual acts to remain illegal. New Zealanders have
long evinced a powerful predilection for treating marginalised minorities
harshly. The Chinese know just
how harshly, as do the mentally and physically disabled. Too many New Zealand
churches have preached a form of Christianity fiercely hostile to the
slightest manifestation of sensual delight, condemning their congregations to
a perpetual struggle against their own most powerful desires. That so many surrender
to temptation merely serves to intensify their self-loathing. The novelist Ronald
Hugh Morrieson is not the only New Zealand artist to have observed the
grotesque fashion in which many Kiwis project their own inner failings onto
the most vulnerable members of the community. Our political leaders
have never been slow to take advantage of these aspects of our national
character. Politicians of both the left and the right have ruthlessly
exploited our anti-intellectualism, our authoritarianism, and our deep-seated
prejudices against all kinds of minorities. As Bobby Kennedy is
once said to have remarked: "Democracy is like a good sausage. It tastes
great but you don't really want to know what goes into it." The tragedy
and the triumph of Don Brash is that he is both the victim and the slayer in
this drama. As the son of one of
New Zealand's most liberal Christian preachers, and no mean student of the
nation's moral history himself, Brash knows only too well how steep is the
slope that decent New Zealanders must climb to achieve anything worthwhile in
politics. His brave gesture
towards Peter Ellis shows where his moral sensibilities would guide him,
given the chance. But they will not be
given the chance - not if Murray McCully and Richard Long can help it. They
are old hands at this political game and they know the number of votes
available for decency is strictly limited. They are not alone. The
whole conservative movement, whose walls the progressives so successfully
assaulted in the 1970s and '80s, has slowly mustered its scattered forces and
is itching to go on the offensive. It cannot rally New
Zealand in the name of rehabilitating all forms of racial, gender and sexual
discrimination - its true agenda - but it can get people marching against
"Political Correctness Gone Mad." And, for that one chance to get
his hands on the economic levers, Don Brash has been willing to put himself
at the head of the column. That is Brash's
tragedy. Brash's triumph has
been to make Helen Clark do the same. How much nobler it would have been for
the labour movement she leads to make its own glorious cause out of the
controversies Brash has exploited - to remind us all why social change was so
necessary in the 1970s, and how proud it was to fight prejudice and
discrimination then, and now. To retreat before evil
is to endow it with a strength it does not deserve and should not be given. If Labour loses this election
it will be only because it was too gutless to win. |