Hidden in Prime Time

But did it really address the issue?

Saturday night on TVNZ One appears to now be a wasteland for worthy stuff while those who still watch linear television can soak up the live sport like the NPC quarter finals or the Bathurst Top Ten shootout.

The worthy stuff last night (October 11) was a government funded show called I’m Not Racist But …. It was a combination of in the field interviews, or rather quick take vox pops, and studio discussions with a revolving panel - some of whom made a fleeting appearance (the conservative free speech advocate white guy) and some who dominated pretty much every segment (the Maori human rights advocate and the Maori Te Tiriti advocate).

The show was produced by Bailey Mackey’s Pango Productions and fronted by a couple of the country’s leading Maori broadcasters Stacey Morrison and Tamati Rimene-Sproat, all of it funded by Te Mangai Paho, the taxpayer funded Maori production agency.

I watched the show from start to finish (confession - not in the scheduled time slot at 8.05pm but on TVNZ+ after the rugby) and frankly wondered what the heck it was trying to prove or solve.

Sproat started things off by taking an “Implicit Association Test,” something developed at Harvard which he says tells you if you’re a racist or not, consciously or not. Apparently Mr Sproat is prone to think Maori are superior to whiteys and therefore he’s racist. I think that was supposed to be a joke.

Ms Morrison also told us early on that there would be quite a lot of te reo use in the show and if “that bothers you, well it’s little bit ironic.. I’m not racist, but .. that makes it the perfect show for you.”

I thought that was distinctly unfair and arrogant. Yes, there was liberal use of te reo in the show, most of it without any translation for the 96 percent of us who don’t speak or understand the language.

Not understanding nor wishing to understand te reo is not racist. I don’t understand French or Russian or Mandarin either. I do not harbour racist thoughts towards people from countries where those languages are spoken. Just why annoyance with the liberal sprinkling of te reo in mainstream broadcasts in this country is regarded as racist is something I can’t comprehend.

The show tried to define just what a racist is, using a United Nations definition. While slightly long winded it’s essentially what the Cambridge Dictionary says: “someone who believes that their race makes them better, more intelligent, more moral, etc. than people of other races and who does or says unfair or harmful things as a result.”

So ideally you’d like a show that sets out to talk about racism to come up with a few examples of modern day racism. That’s where it fell down. The nearest it came to the scenarios I wanted to see exposed was when Te Wehi Wright, described as a “Te Tiriti Advocate” but actually a lawyer for the Maori consultancy firm Te Amokura, suggested that an example of the systemic racism we have in this country is that most of our medical facilities don’t have someone on staff who speaks te reo Maori.

If that’s as bad as it gets then surely we don’t have that much of a problem. While having a te reo speaker on the staff of any organisation might be a useful addition, every entity in this country can survive perfectly well using English. Is it really racist to suggest that just because the uptake of te reo continues to be slower than advocates would wish for, we have a systemically racist society? Learning a second language beyond your school years is a voluntary activity. Most people just don’t want to. That is not racism. It’s making choices.

Tina Ngata, described as a “Human Rights Advocate,” raised the issue of whether or not sovereignty or government of the country was ceded under the Treaty of Waitangi. She maintains that the Treaty of Waitangi did not give the British Crown the right to establish a government over “all of Aotearoa.” Just what alternative system might be put in place and the practicalities of how it would work was not discussed.

The considerable upsides of colonisation - parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, European education and health concepts and technology development - were of course never mentioned.

The modern version of Treaty history is a vexed issue which is pointless arguing over. Positions are so entrenched that unless the government makes a definitive statement on the matter, one way or the other, arguments will continue to rage for time immemorial. The Treaty Principles Bill might have been a starting point in that discussion but activists didn’t want to consider the possibility that all New Zealanders, whatever their ethnicity or time living here, should have absolute equality of opportunity with no special privileges extended to any one group.

Is it racist to say that? Is it racist to say that we are all equal before the law? Is it racist to say that some groups should not have arrangements different to the rest of us? Like appointed members to local councils or poorer academic achievement before entry to medical school or special tax status for iwi entities whereby multi-million dollar profits are taxed at a minuscule level considerably below the nation’s 28 percent company tax rate.

This is the attitude that Hobson’s Pledge bring to discussions on racism. Would a representative of that organisation have been appropriate for a show such as this? I couldn’t think of any group more appropriate. But of course there was no sign of anyone like that.

The show was not lacking pakeha faces. They featured prominently in the often pointless vox pop sections and four of the seven panellists in studio discussion were European although some of their statements were eyebrow raising.

“Lawyer and campaigner” Max Harris said we are in a society “deeply marked by racism” and that there has been “neglect and active damage done to te reo Maori.” I’d have loved to hear expanded narrative about both those claims.

One section of the show featured a couple of late middle aged blokes, one obviously Maori with appropriate moko engraved on his face, the other presented as a pakeha with, shall we say, a slightly sunburnt neck. The Maori guy made a claim, without evidence, that Maori are denied access to medical treatment because of their last names. When challenged by his pakeha nemesis, the claim was repeated as “those are facts.” There were none presented. And, as an aside, would Stacey Morrison, daughter of a pakeha mother and a Maori father, ever be denied access to any medical treatment because of her last name?

Claims like that don’t help the credibility of a TV show trying to discuss a serious topic.

There was an unusual contribution from right wing lawyer and writer Liam Hehir who talked of the farm he grew up on being in his family for five generations since the 1870s. It’s been sold in recent years and Hehir says he feels a great sense of loss because of that and that helps him understand how Maori felt when they lost their land to Europeans. How much Maori land was confiscated and how much was sold remains a contentious topic to this day. But we’re trying. We’ve had a process in place for nearly fifty years called the Waitangi Tribunal to make up for activities of the past.

As the show wound up, Te Wehi Wright made the bold statement that “we are racist” but didn’t actually say why or give examples of racism in action. “Treaty Educator ” Kristy Fong talked of “Matike Mai” as “a vision forward.” This is the Maori initiative led by Auckland Professor Margaret Mutu which is advocating constitutional change for the country leading to a loss of fully representative democracy. Only a committed Marxist would call that a “vision forward”?

Tina Ngata insists that racism is “factual, not an opinion” and that aspects of it “are not up for debate.” I just wish she would have explained what those aspects are. But she believes that if we face up to the issue we can have “a just Aotearoa where everybody gets a fair shot.”

The show was essentially one sided and needed some much stronger pushback than what was on offer from the panelists. Some respectful comments on the matter from the likes of Eliot Ikilei of Hobson’s Pledge or Alfred Ngaro of Family First would have helped balance the ledger.

Worst of all this show consistently made big statements but failed to follow-up with evidence. It wasn’t especially entertaining or informative. It’s probably just as well that TVNZ hid it in a prime time wasteland.