Anne Salmond: Arrogance laced with ignorance

Comment: After a talk I gave recently, a member of the audience, concerned about the coalition Government’s high-handed dismissal of evidence and its avoidance of public scrutiny on many issues, described their style of governance as ‘arrogance combined with ignorance.’
Its difficult to disagree. I have tried, for instance, and failed to imagine a situation in Germany or France in which a person who couldn’t speak or read German and French would be allowed to lead a national debate on the key principles of an important historic constitutional document written in German or French.  They would be dismissed as idiotic, or crazy.
Yet this is exactly what is happening with Te Tiriti o Waitangi in New Zealand. 
The Act party’s rewriting of Te Tiriti takes fundamental liberties with the text, arising from a lack of knowledge of te reo and tikanga in 1840, and a strong ideological agenda – arrogance combined with ignorance, unfortunately.
We do need a national debate about Te Tiriti, but one grounded on robust evidence about the document itself, and its historical context.
Indeed, this Government is getting its advice on Te Tiriti from some very strange places. Witness, for instance, the extraordinary video featuring Lord Hannan, a Tory Lord and one of the authors of Brexit, sponsored by the Taxpayers Union to lecture members of the new coalition cabinet about how to handle the debate over Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
The only expertise he had to offer was on how to manipulate voters, which does not inspire confidence. 
Worse, a lot of money is being spent on misinformation and disinformation in newspaper supplements, booklets in letter boxes, books and on-line.  It adds up to an attempt to provoke anger, ill will and division among New Zealanders over Te Tiriti, adding irresponsibility to arrogance and ignorance.
In the case of many policies advanced by the minor parties in the coalition Government– the Treaty Principles bill, gun control legislation and tax breaks for tobacco companies, for instance – the links between politicians, lobby groups and their legislative ambitions are clear.
To take another case in point, the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill promoted by New Zealand First removes the ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration. This was rushed through a select committee, with only four days for submissions and two days for public hearings. 
This legislation puts New Zealand exports at risk by breaching free trade agreements, and taxpayers at risk of being landed with the costs of environmental devastation and abandoned drill sites, with no benefits; as well as increases in carbon emissions.
Perhaps the only point of this bill is to take New Zealand out of that list of countries which is serious about tackling climate change, a key ambition of fossil fuel companies.
Then there is the fast-track bill, which initially tried to put three ministers, two from National and one from New Zealand First, in charge of authorising a secret list of 149 major projects without the select committee seeing it, or environmental scrutiny, or allowing communities to have a say.
These initiatives add up to a blitzkrieg on democracy in New Zealand; a shift towards unfettered extractive economics that serves particular interests while offering a dire future for young people and many communities; and the deployment of tactics to gain power by inflaming social division. No wonder so many young people are leaving the country.
While the coalition Government promised its ‘decisions would be based on data and evidence,’ they are acting with such haste and hubris that there is no opportunity for evidence to be gathered and weighed in the balance.
This short-term, extractive approach puts at risk almost all New Zealand’s competitive advantages – richly diverse ecosystems that allow for resilience in adapting to rapidly changing climatic conditions; productive soils, clean waterways and abundant oceanic resources; and our social strengths –  a sound, stable democracy that fosters good relations among diverse communities; freedom from corruption; and a reputation as a good global citizen.
It also flies in the face of pathways that optimise our chances of survival in a dangerous, fragile world. These were outlined in Our Planet Our Future, the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit, in which the world’s best scientists, scholars and thinkers outlined the risks currently confronting the human species – the kind of approach that the coalition Government promised it would be taking.
Unlike our Government, the participants in the forum had the courage, intelligence and integrity to examine the facts, and look for pathways to hope in a world in which 10 of the 13 planetary boundaries, and many of the tipping points for safe human habitation of the earth have already been breached. 
Everything that the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit suggests – urgently abandoning fossil fuels for alternative energy sources; nature-based solutions that protect and restore natural forests, waterways and the ocean; radically reducing inequality; fighting misinformation and strengthening democracy and social cohesion – goes in the opposite direction to where this coalition Government is taking New Zealand.
A paper that sums up the Summit findings concludes, “Building resilient societies, ecosystems, and ultimately the health of the entire Earth system hinges on supporting, restoring and regenerating diversity in inter-twined social and ecological dimensions. Diversity builds insurance and keeps systems resilient to changing circumstances.”
At the same time, the forum warns against ‘strategies that support efficiency and effectiveness for short term gain at the expense of redundancy and diversity,’ which pretty much captures the current Government’s approach.
The 2023 Nobel Prize Summit Truth, Trust and Hope, which addressed the dangers of misinformation, warns that “power and money are using the existing information ecosystem to manipulate the cellular level of democracy.’ This is happening in New Zealand at present over the Treaty Principles Bill.
‘Without facts, you cannot have truth. Without truth, you cannot have trust,’ they add, something the coalition Government should remember. They conclude, ‘Silence is complicity,’ reminding each citizen to speak up and protect others against ignorance and hatred.
We must try to safeguard the future for our children and grandchidren. Communities of different kinds might come together and do scenario planning, examining the different pathways ahead and their likely outcomes over 10, 20 and 50 years, in citizens’ assemblies, for example, and make informed choices.
Take another look at that chart of planetary boundaries above, based on the best data available, and ask who might have the best ideas about how to navigate these existential crises  – a galaxy of Nobel Prize winners, with their commitment to humanity and the evidence; or our current Cabinet?
Some cabinet ministers seem to think they know more than the world’s best thinkers. But how likely is that?