The big multicultural question

There are moments when its easy to understand why people despise the liberal Left.

Hearing the National Distribution Union secretary, Laila Harre, smugly informing Radio New Zealand's Kathryn Ryan that there is "no organised political movement" backing the views of NZ First's Peter Brown, I thought to myself: this is one of those moments.

Ms Harre's comments contributed a final rhetorical cherry to the lavish confection of abuse whipped up in response to Mr Brown's comments on Asian immigration.

The Greens' Keith Locke cast the first stone by labelling Mr Brown's comments "white supremacist" – an accusation so loaded with negative connotations (burning crosses, bombed churches, homicidal rednecks in battered pick-ups) that those who followed Mr Locke felt obliged to escalate the stridency of their condemnation or risk appearing pusillanimous.

Nowhere was this rhetorical inflation more evident than in Campbell Live's tongue-in-cheek sketch of Friday, April 4, which came perilously close to equating those who backed Mr Brown's views with the Nazi persecutors of the Jews.

It was only after five days of more-or-less-continuous public stoning, that Ms Harre seized her chance to rub the noses of Mr Brown's supporters in their own political impotence. With this final, metaphorical, kick in the groin, New Zealand's liberal leftists celebrated the triumph of their multicultural ideology over the disorganised and ineptly expressed views of the New Zealand people.

And, of course, over NZ First.

How Winston Peters must chafe under the burden of his ministerial responsibilities. And how frustrated he must be that his lieutenants repeatedly fail to meet the challenge of articulating the hopes and fears of their fellow citizens.

Surely, the time for relinquishing his foreign affairs job is at hand? Much more delay and the task of raising NZ First's support above the critical 5 per cent threshold will be beyond even Mr Peters' prodigious political powers.

Because it is important that the NZ First leader prove Ms Harre wrong, by demonstrating that there is, indeed, an "organised political movement" ready and willing to ask the perfectly legitimate political questions: "What sort of society is New Zealand becoming?" And, "Are New Zealanders ready to embrace that sort of society?"

Since the military defeat of the Maori tribes in the 1860s, the New Zealand State has quite consciously facilitated its population by colonists from the British Isles. As a result, the New Zealand of today presents an economy, a society, and a culture which reflects, overwhelmingly, its Anglo-Celtic heritage. New Zealand's institutions are infused with the Classical and Judaeo- Christian values of a European civilisation which stretches back nearly 3000 years. And the primary cultural affinities of the overwhelming majority of New Zealand citizens are with the other English-speaking peoples of Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.

To state these facts is not to indulge in "white supremacy"; it is merely to describe reality.

But any description of New Zealand's cultural and ethnic reality would not be complete if it failed to include the role of the Maori in shaping its character.

In 1900, few Pakeha New Zealanders expected the indigenous people of these islands to survive. Over the past 108 years, however, the Maori population has steadily increased, along with its economic, political and cultural importance.

The Pakeha response to this resurgence has not always been pretty. Only in the past 20 years has New Zealand's dominant culture been willing to concede even a little space to its indigenous host. As a rather reluctant bicultural nation, New Zealand remains a work-in-progress.

How realistic is it, therefore, to suddenly expect New Zealand to embrace the idea of multiculturalism? Especially a multiculturalism which involves coming to terms with immigrant populations measured not in the current 1-5 per cent range, but in numbers representing 15-20 per cent of the total population?

It took 108 years for Maori to approach that proportion of the New Zealand population and meeting the accompanying cultural and political challenges has not been easy.

Is it, therefore, remotely reasonable to ask this nation to accommodate an equivalent demographic expansion, not over a century, but in two short decades? An expansion, moreover, which is grounded in neither the indigenous, nor the colonial, heritage of New Zealand, but in traditions alien to both.

The liberal Left owes us answers, not insults.