Diane Revoluta

The Myth of Inspiring Women

The origins of the marathon come from the Greek legend of Pheidippides. The story goes that Pheidippides ran 26 miles (or 42.2km, hence the oddly precise distance when measured in kilometres) from the town of Marathon to Athens to proclaim the defeat of the Persians. Upon arrival, he dropped dead from exhaustion and the marathon distance was born. I know “hey, this killed a dude so let’s make it a regular event” isn’t great logic (although, see also: archery, javelin, shot put, boxing and probably most sports that came out of Ancient Greece) but, even today in an age of gel shots and cushioned socks, it speaks to the enormity of the physical and mental challenge.

Recently I ran my first marathon, in the wake of which I have experienced a number of states. Some of these were expected: hunger – wow, I was so hungry; the inevitable metamorphosis into a more-prune-than-human state after hours of blissfully soaking in every possible repository of hot water; a few days avoiding all inclines and gently lowering myself down stairs as if my limbs were that of a tin soldier; and an extended period of tiredness I still cannot shake. I expected, to some extent, all of those states. What I did not expect was to feel a lingering sense of uneasiness; a niggling sprain of the mind triggered every time someone said “oh well done, you must be so proud”. I knew if this had killed an Ancient Greek and yet I was just hungry and tired, I should feel a sense of accomplishment. And yet, I didn’t.

I feel lots of things. Basically, this sums me up. I feel things after thinking about things too much and analysing things until I feel like I could map their genetic make-up in my sleep. A marathon was something about which I expected I would feel proud. My discomfort, probed and prodded by people congratulating me and inquiring as to my tired muscles and sore shins, stems from this question that I keep coming back to: why do I run? What made me run 42.2km and the countless kilometres in training? Why do women like me – young, professional women who try and do one million other things – run? When I run a marathon and try to outwardly appear as that misnomer of a woman who juggles All Of The Things, am I simply playing the very game I purport to reject? Have I built myself up as someone who, by projecting this image of doing All Of The Things, fosters self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy in other women? And the perennial question insofar as my brain musings, am I a bad feminist for all of these sins against the sisterhood?

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Recently I was asked to speak at an event for young women as an “inspiring woman”. The purpose of the event was to “empower girls to be an active member in the community… to achieve things they would not necessarily think they could”. I was asked to discuss “what I had done so far and how I had been able to get there at such a young age”. At first, I was flattered. It’s quite nice having your ego stroked by a stranger. Then my mind turned to how I felt about being classed as “inspiring”. I realised that being inspiring means having achieved a few milestones that can be nicely summarised or rattled off in a 50-word blurb. It means having a scattering of letters after your name, the more the merrier. It’s a box ticking exercise of what it supposedly means to be successful as a young woman in 2013. It took me back to the high school arms race: who could pack the most badges onto the lapel of their blazer; who could have their name read out in assembly the most; who was, in retrospect, the entirely fucked up notion of a prefect (which, ever so ironically, Word suggests I change to “perfect”). I had been that 17-year-old and I thought I had left her far behind. 

I couldn’t make the event, so there was never any decision as to whether or not I would speak. I think I would have and I think I would have gone along and tried to make a case for why we are looking for inspiring women in all the wrong places. Why doing things like marathons and law degrees don’t make you inspiring. They might make you employed and fit, and they might be things you value – god knows society does – but in no way should they be seen as some kind of formula for respect. I would want to tell those girls how, actually, as of late I have been a pretty terrible daughter and sister, struggling with the non-existent relationship with most of her immediate family. I would want to tell them how often exercising as much as you do in the lead up to a marathon is borderline disordered behaviour and probably worth a trip to a therapist rather than a self-congratulatory status update. How I have an ever-growing pile of parking tickets. How I am unsure of how I fit into the social justice space that I spend a lot of my time occupying as I am someone doing pretty damn well out of the existing structural inequality in our society, and is it really possible to lead change when essentially you seek to benefit from maintaining status quo? How with all of this Doing Inspiring Things lately, I’ve been the most tiresome, difficult and flat out unpleasant person to those closest to me. Right now, I feel like the most inspiring woman to me would be one who was kind and generous in spirit and time. How actually an inspiring woman is just a decent human being.

Because here’s the thing: lately I’ve been feeling really hollow. When I think of being hollow, I always have this image of this majestic but decrepit old tree being slowly eaten from the inside. A tree that’s hanging in there but, really, is just a few ant bites away from collapsing entirely. I feel like soon those ants are going to get in, have a little gnaw, and the whole facade will crumble away. I feel like the endless platforms from which we shape and project our identity have left me feeling flat, left me feeling false, and like I’m not actually that person in that instagram or in that status update.

Which brings me back to my marathon. “My marathon” – like it’s a child, or a first step or some other kind of life-defining feat. When I look at the reasons behind why I would run a marathon, and when I undertake that excruciating exercise of extracting the true reason why I did this, I come up empty in terms of inspiration. For me, a marathon was an exercise of pride, of perfectionism, and, if I’m going the whole-hog with the honesty, an exercise of self-loathing. For many women, the marathon has evolved from a mode of relaying victory at war to a declaration of victory in a more insidious war: the war against the self.

After the run, many people said many nice things to me. I projected an image of easy, breezy, just-ran-a-marathon-now-time-for-brunch Di. Part of me reasoned “hey, it’s OK to feel proud about this, if you post it on Facebook it might be a nice change from the stream of cute dog pictures and articles about social and criminal justice”. I wanted to let people know because their response would perhaps make it seem more worthy, more of an achievement. Maybe it would make me feel proud.

I feel so happy for every person who undertakes a marathon and does feel proud. But seeking affirmation as a means to feel proud, that is where the hollowness breeds. We should seek to achieve in a way that make us feel good about ourselves, do the things we truly value – not the things we feel like other people will deem valuable and worthy of acknowledgement. I’m ignoring the complex interplay between what we value and what we’re told to value, and sometimes the former is so obscured by the latter it’s difficult to see what’s us and what’s just a sum of the world in which we live, but for me there was no sense of pride in running a marathon. My reasons were tied up in projecting an image of someone who has it all, someone proclaiming victory in the race to be a perfect woman.  

Being able to run a long way or contribute time to a cause says nothing about how inspiring you are: it simply says a lot about where your priorities lie. I want young girls to have role models, but so often we shape our role models around problematic and unattainable ideas of what it means to be a woman. Those young girls don’t need to hear from a bunch of women who have achieved success in the normative sense of the word. They basically live inside a billboard for that picture of success every single day: success looks thin, rich and powerful, and accessorised by a sprinkling of adorable children.

Holding up this image of a successful woman feels like setting a generation of young girls up to fail. Prioritise family? Well, get off the corporate ladder. Building your career? Uh oh, is that the Bad Mother Brigade I hear coming after you? Care about how you look, you’re shallow; don’t care about how you look, you’re letting yourself go. Be strong-minded, but don’t be a bitch; eat well, but not too well; get eight hours sleep, but you better believe you’re the one picking up that crying baby.

Why do we seek inspiration in a way that ignores the fact that there is no one ideal?  Why do we hold on to this notion that there is some kind of hierarchy of success out there to which young women should aspire? I’m going to make an assumption that not one woman on that panel would have been a woman who had spent the last ten years raising a family. Not raising a family AND. “Just” raising a family. Because that wouldn’t be enough: raising a family is a side-project, something you’re expected to do on top of your career and your pro bono work and your camellias and your marathon and your Wednesday night date night with your beloved husband. 

I don’t subscribe to this myth that there are inspiring women, and by default “just women”; and I feel a far greater sense of accomplishment to be able to finally project an image that doesn’t leave this gaping sense of hollowness than I get from running any distance.

black cab: the great yellow invisible

Saving Gen-Y but not from what we need saving

During one of my many stints as a nanny, I remember one morning my ten-year-old warning me that I “probably shouldn’t eat toast for breakfast”. Why, I asked, hoping desperately it would be because there was some delicious breakfast cereal hiding in the cupboard that only a fool would turn down for toast, or because she knew the bread had been left out the previous night and there was a high chance it would now be dripping in puppy slobber. Of course, it wasn’t for better options or hygiene that I was been warned of the evils of toast: it was because of Carbs – the most insidious and decision-dictating organic compound known to man. Or, at least, woman. The thought of this beautiful, bubbly little being, whose favourite activities included creating detailed lesson plans to teach me Swedish and discussing the nuances of Hannah Montana, being even aware of what a “carb” was – much less that She Should Not Be Eating Carbs – was terrifying. At age ten, this girl was poised at the precipice of a lifelong unhealthy relationship with food – one that would inevitably be shared by her peers and normalised by the world around her.  

I know I had it pretty lucky on the body image front growing up. I was raised in a rural community where your body shape was less important than whether you could drive a quad bike (I couldn’t) or whether your parents let you hold the lambs during docking (mine didn’t).  For all of the other issues I may have inherited from my parents, body image issues were not one. My mum still considers a cheesy quiche healthy, and pudding was as much an essential meal as breakfast or lunch. I definitely wasn’t being put on a diet at age seven and being humiliated at Starbucks by my mother pouring my hot chocolate in the garbage as she stormed out of that haven of calories. Despite a fairly expansive vocabulary honed through the reading and rereading of The Babysitter’s Club, obesity was not a word with which I was familiar. I can distinctly remember kids at my school – admittedly, largely boys – boasting about who weighed the most. I’m not saying I existed in some image-blind utopia, and I’m acutely aware of the fact my perception would have been at least partially shaped by the fact that I was the wonderful misnomer that is a “normal”-sized child, but at age ten, I didn’t know what a carb was or why toast was the Weight Watcher’s equivalent of adultery.

Obviously my seemingly size-blind bubble could not last. Sometimes I look around my demographic – young professional women, many of whom are high achieving – and marvel at the fact that it seems not one of us has escaped the crushing pressure to be a particular shape. Of course, the way these body image issues manifest and the extent to which they intrude on our daily life varies. But the pervasiveness of weight-related angst is nothing short of remarkable. I stand at a function where drinks and nibbles are provided and watch women wistfully eyeing up cupcakes, only to eventually succumb by cutting one in half and slowly nibbling away at it. I sit at potlucks and feel an almost physical weight around the table as a bunch of twenty-somethings talk about how everything looks just so divine, delicious and delectable, and “ohmygod can you send me the recipe of this tart” only to politely decline a slice. I see post after post of brunch-porn on Instagram only to flick tabs to Twitter and see scatterings of MyFitnessPal workouts. I write this and I eat a fucking rice cracker. There is an epidemic and it’s called Agonising Over Every Mouthful.

However, TV3’s new show “Saving Gen-Y” is concerned with a different “epidemic”, one that is apparently wobbling down our streets with no dignity, the one that people cannot save themselves from because they’re too lazy and disgusting and busy blissfully stuffing their face with Tim Tams. From the TV3 website:

“The show Saving Gen-Y follows the physical and psychological journey of eight young New Zealanders. This programme tracks a year in the lives of a group of eight young New Zealanders trying to break their cycle of food addiction. For some it is a life-or-death decision, as their health is at grave risk due to their weight. For others, it is a decision to improve their quality of life. Through the eyes of our eight people, Saving Gen-Y presents a thought-provoking series that will challenge teenage obesity in New Zealand.”

Below this synopsis you’ll find photos of “our eight people” (/miserable fat people) standing in their underwear and accompanied by bios. The bios, which include vital stats such as the person’s current weight and where they go to school (because there’s nothing like interschool gossip to fuel viewership), purport to be a two-paragraph psychological assessment, served up for viewers to salivate over from their sofas of superiority. The eight young people are depicted as having two things in common: they’re fat and they’re fucked up. Size is equated with misery, normality – both physically and mentally – with thinness.

The Weight Loss Idol model of reality TV is by no means new. Shows like The Biggest Loser consistently top the ratings under the guise of an attempt to help the helpless. What is new – at least in New Zealand – is a weight-loss show specifically focussed on, and arguably targeted at, young people. Perhaps these young people do want to lose weight, which is a) totally up to them, and b) zero percent my business; regardless, it’s clear that putting them on national TV in a country as small and insular as New Zealand to be humiliated and exploited is not going to “save” anyone. Maybe the producer, sipping on coconut water and nibbling raw seeds while sitting behind a desk talking about how we need to SAVE GEN-Y, ought to consider another generation that needs saving: the generation of predominately young women growing up believing their happiness and success in life is inextricably linked to a number on the back of their dress, a generation of girls who would rather be blind than classed obese.

There are so many wonderful people writing on body politics, and by no means do I purport to be one of them. My perspective is as a young woman who lives every day in a world where food really is for thought – for analysis and obsession but not for consumption. I do not put myself out there to be above body policing – at least on a personal level. It feels incongruent critiquing the policing of women’s bodies when I know I can be an authoritarian dictator of my own body. I am a product of so many things, included but not limited to an insulated upbringing, an all-girls high school and now a profession that tells me I should be this high-flying career woman with two kids and a Bond girl body to boot.

No one in Gen Y – not me, not the young people on this show, not the ten-year-old I nannied – need these body missionaries purporting to “save us”. What we need is a free and frank discussion about the dangerous pressure put on especially young women – and increasingly younger girls – to be thin. We need to talk about the problems inherent in assuming you have a right to “save” anyone.  We need to challenge the basic premise that You Will Be Happy When You Are Skinny. When there’s a TV show addressing these issues, we can start talking about really “Saving Gen-Y”.

Sticks and stones and weed and bombs, Mr Prosser

Yesterday the story broke of Richard Prosser, a Member of Parliament for the NZ First Party, publishing an opinion piece in which he argued that Muslims should be banned from Western air transport because – among other reasons – “most Muslims are terrorists”. While many people dismissed his comments as being that of a bigoted, small-minded racist not even worthy of a page click let alone words on a page, and many more took to social media with angry, pithy comments pointing out that if all extremists are banned from Western air transport Prosser himself will have some difficulty getting around, some penned more powerful sentiments. Here, my dear friend Saziah shares why Prosser’s rant was more than something to be dismissed and filed under “trolls will be trolls”, or put down to a pathetic political attention grab by an increasingly irrelevant party, and instead a painfully personal attack – while perhaps not new, not to be dismissed.

Normally anything I have to say about, well, anything, but in particular political and quasi political and pseudo political things, is confined to (a) the (arguably) safe confines of my head, (b) my Facebook and Twitter, and (c) rants via txt and email to various friends and, on occasion, my sibling.

Expressing opinions on Facebook has its pros and cons. On the one hand, there’s that instant gratification of a “like.” On the other hand, there’s my heavy self-editing because I am sometimes quite self conscious, often too angry and always aware that my friends list encompasses a diverse mishmash of new friends, family friends, old friends, colleagues, relatives etc and that it would be all too easy for a poor choice of words to unintentionally offend or antagonize. Of course, some days I am basically like “ZOMG WTF POTATOES!?!@”

So today, as per usual, I posted a link about Richard Prosser’s Muslim men should not be allowed on planes thing on my Facebook, accompanied with a comment along the lines of “No, Mr Prosser, YOU are a troglodyte” and emailed Di with a (commonly used in our case) “wow have you seen this” one liner email.

I was going to leave it at that. GRRR ARGGH – that’s all you’re getting out of me when it comes to discussing an obviously racist sentiment expressed by a racist MP. I wanted to limit my response to trollolollll and move on because I just wouldn’t know where to start with what was wrong with what he said (hint: all of the things!). Why waste my breath, you know?

Except Di responded, not only in her usual supportive solidarity and shared degree of frustration. But she asked me if I was okay. Because surely something like this must be quite hurtful.

And she was right. I am not okay. I AM hurt. And for once I felt I should at least speak out in more than the confines of a negligible status update, because this hurt.

It hurts because you know when this hits the different news websites, and when Campbell Live or someone else picks up on it, while a lot of people will dismiss it as “Prosser’s just an idiot” and some will point out that it’s completely inappropriate for an MP to say something this blatantly racist, others will start reminding everyone not to forget that Muslims *really are* terrorists so why is everyone defending them, and more people still will silently agree that it was about time someone “spoke up.” At time of writing, Peters, while assuring everyone that this is not what his party stands for, hasn’t outright condemned Prosser entirely or demanded an apology.

I won’t talk about how advocating THAT degree of discrimination is not only socially and morally abhorrent but legally fraught. I will not list for the you the number of rights it would trample on.

I will tell you why, personally, this is yet another slap in the face. For me, politics is always personal. But this hits home. It hurts me in the same way it hurt me when, post 9/11, some stranger in a West Auckland supermarket had the audacity to walk up to my mother and tell her to go back where she came from because she wasn’t welcome here, simply because she was wearing a head scarf. It hurts in same way it hurt me when my younger brother came home from his part-time job one day in a North Shore mall, having dealt with a customer who, in response to my brother’s generic offer of assistance, said he didn’t need any help from the likes of him, who were “coming here” and “taking all the jobs.”

This isn’t to say anything of the years of name calling as children and “harmless joking around” as adults we’ve had to put up with. Yes, yes it’s hilarious when someone lumps all Bangladeshis together with Indians and Pakistanis and Sri Lankans and, in my case, a few times “Africans” (because, don’t you know, Africa is a country).

It goes beyond the exhaustion of having to detail my ethnic origin and travel history to every person who asks, and they do ask, all the fucking time. I don’t usually have a problem telling you I am originally from Bangladesh, I am proud to be Bengali, or why I don’t have an accent, or why I speak English well. Of course I give them the polite, quick version “oh my parents moved around a lot when I was a kid” instead of “I wasn’t born in Bangladesh and I have never lived there, I am a New Zealand citizen and of course I can speak English, I have a fucking Masters degree in Law for fuck’s sake” because, really, I JUST want to pay for my chocolate bar and leave your shop. And look, now the chocolate bar has multiplied into several chocolate bars because of the stress you’ve caused me. So, really, kudos on the ingenious sales strategy.

But fatigue from that sort of borderline offensive, often “harmless” curiousity I can handle.

This hurts particularly because, on an official level, it goes to the heart of the question of my identity.

Richard Posser’s suggestion that Muslim men of a certain age not be allowed on Western planes is offensive, blatantly racist and, let’s face it, ludicrous. There is no doubt about that. But Mr Posser’s comments hurt me personally because he is challenging who I am.

I am a Bengali New Zealander. I am also a feminist, a bookworm, a foodie and a cinephile. Some days I have good taste in music and some days I have bad taste in music. I love the beach but hate getting sand everywhere. I speak several languages. I still get upset at the thought that Dumbledore dies. When I lived in Auckland, I thought of West Auckland as home. Now that I live in Wellington, I think of Auckland as home, and of Wellington as “my city,” whatever that means. I bake decent brownies (oh the irony).

Oh, yes, I am also a Muslim.

You would think that would be the only thing about me that would be relevant to this conversation. But it is not. We are a sum of all our parts. Reducing us to one characteristic, especially one that is viewed with a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding, dehumanizes us. It is destructive. It is destructive to our personhood, in your eyes. And it is destructive to my identity in my own eyes.

I am not a perfect creature, and I grapple with my own identity every day, much the same way most people, for various reasons do. Possibly more so because of added factors. What I don’t need is an MP telling me what I am or am not.

Richard Prosser’s comments hurt because he’s saying I’m not a real New Zealander. I am an Other. I am suspect because I don’t, undoubtedly, look like his daughters. My little brother, now 20, studying a Bachelor of Commerce, with his terribly cheesy sense of humour and his kind, kind heart, who loves his sports and protein shakes but who I will partly always think of as that bossy toddler with chubby cheeks, is for no other reason than because Mr Prosser, from his position of power and privilege says so, not enough of a New Zealander. Because of only one thing, out of the many things that he is, because he is Muslim. Not enough of a New Zealander to deserve the minimum modicum of respect one would expect from an MP when talking about one of the citizens of this country, simply based on his faith, and, let’s be honest, the colour of his skin. Not enough of a New Zealander to get on his Western planes.

I can’t begin to discuss the issues behind considering Muslims a homogenous group, of defining the term “Western” or even how comments like this create and solidify the language of “us and them.” It is a self fulfilling prophecy. In Othering us, you are causing us to consider ourselves the Other, thus creating an Other when previously there was none. How, in 2013, are we still grappling with basic orientalism? After all these decades, isn’t it actually shameful that Said’s words still remain relevant?

Have some Muslims committed acts of terrorism? Yes. Have some Christians? Yes. Have some white people? Why yes. And so on and so forth. Are all the complex geopolitical issues from which a lot of this sentiment stems so easily summed up as “Muslims bad, non Muslims good” – I would argue: fuck no.

More importantly, I shouldn’t have to explain myself. I shouldn’t have to question my identity as a routine Tuesday afternoon activity. I shouldn’t be made to feel like a second-class citizen, not simply because I am not, but because such a thing should never exist, because if there is a hierarchy, a differentiation between citizens in that way, our personhood in the eyes of the State loses all meaning. Citizenship loses all meaning.

To allow MPs to spout that form of rhetoric unchecked makes us complicit in this concept of second-class citizenship. And it kills me that that means I am part of the system that is dehumanizing me. An MP who doesn’t understand that the legitimacy of his role and the power it entails derives from the people of this country, and that I AM the people of this country, my Muslim brother is, my Muslim friends are, my Muslim parents are, that MP can never understand that his position is not simply a platform to mouth off but an office bound by duty to the people, like me, from whence his power comes.

It makes me angry that MPs have such little appreciation for their role, that they would abuse it in this manner. All we’ll get from politicans on this is a lot of political posturing to their own ends.  All we’ll get from the media on this is some blasé reporting, no critique that wouldn’t fit into a nifty little soundbyte that would retain consumer interest, no critical analysis, not one mention of the word “Islamophobia.”

I was hurt, and I needed to get this out. It is not an intellectual or academic piece of writing on rights and power politics, I didn’t go into immigration or multiculturalism or geopolitics or counterterrorism or traverse the topic of race in any meaningful way. Incidentally, one could argue, if anything, only making statements after carefully taking all such relevant issues into consideration actually IS Mr Prosser’s job. But this is a snapshot of how just another passing instance of racism, which will no doubt fade away in everyone else’s memories by tomorrow, made me question something as fundamental as my being here, in New Zealand, in my very own home. And I can assure you I’m not the only one.

For all the difference it makes I might as well have banged my head against my desk and left it at that. I should have left it at “No, Mr Prosser, YOU are a troglodyte.” I should have just left it at grrrr. Arrrggh.

If a constitutional review is announced and no one knows, did it happen at all?

There’s a constitutional review going on but you’d be forgiven for not knowing. Or, frankly, caring. You know when a word has got five syllables it must be important, but there are so many reviews going on and, well, sometimes you only have so many review spoons. For many New Zealanders, bigger concerns occupy our minds: jobs, debt, and, for an increasing number of people, survival. 

But this review isn’t just about one particular issue or one particular government policy; this is about the way we set up government and keep it in line, which affects all of the issues and all of the policies. Back in December 2010 the National Party and Māori Party announced a “wide-ranging review of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements”. The terms of reference include electoral maters such as the size of Parliament and the length of Parliament’s term; the role of the Treaty of Waitangi within New Zealand’s current constitutional arrangements; and whether we should have a written constitution.

Upon making the announcement, Bill English stated: “This is the start of what will be a considered process over the next three years.” That was in December 2010 – nearly two years ago – meaning we are nearly two thirds of the way through this “considered process”. So far the only public signs of progress have been limited to the appointment of an advisory panel and a cross-party reference group, and a couple of half-hearted press releases. Those who have seen this “progress” have had to seek it out. There’s no website, no announced plan for public engagement, and no public education campaign as to what consideration of all of these important constitutional issues even entails. The MPs on the cross-party reference group have conceded that they have met just once, which was presumably after the announcement and before the change of members following the 2011 election. No doubt the Constitutional Advisory Panel has been working hard, but without political impetus in terms of generating conversation, funding engagement, and putting the review on the political agenda, its work is effectively meaningless.

And what is painfully clear is the lack of political impetus. It’s hard to generate interest in something few people even know exists. It’s even harder when those who are supposedly trying to generate interest serve to lose from the likely outcomes of that interest.

At EmpowerNZ, a recent event aimed at generating a discussion around whether New Zealand should have a written constitution (a private and non-governmental initiative, I should add), Dame Claudia Orange had one word for what a constitution is about: power. Who has it, how they exercise it, how the power is constrained – this is a constitution. At the moment, those questions can be quite easily answered: Parliament has the power and the government of the day exercises that power with few constraints. Indeed, New Zealand has one of the most unfettered versions of parliamentary sovereignty in the Western democratic world. What does that mean? Our constitution gives more power to our Parliament, and contains less checks and balances, than that of most other countries. On the face of it, we trust our politicians to act according to our interests more than any other Western democracy.

So it is not surprising politicians are in no hurry to make noise about this review. One outcome of adopting a written constitution could be that the constitution is made to be supreme law. That would give the judiciary the power to strike down legislation inconsistent with the constitution. That would mean our Prime Minister couldn’t get up, give the finger to the Waitangi Tribunal and say I’ll Do What I Want, because the courts might just Do What They Want. 

The enormous opportunity for change cannot be overstated. We are one of only three countries in the world with an unwritten constitution. And that’s been, in large, working OK. Politicians seem happy to trot out the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” line. But how can the public judge it “ain’t broke” if we aren’t aware of its existence – of its flaws and its risks? Are we really going to wait around until it is seriously “broke” before actually sitting down and doing something? And who determines what is “broke”? I would say the fact the majority of the population doesn’t know what a constitution is – the instrument that fundamentally controls the relationship between the state and the People – shows the situation is pretty damn broke. Do we wait for politicians – the people who ultimately benefit from the lack of constraints on public power – to say it is “broke”? Or do we look at a current situation, such as the water rights claim and its implications for the legislation to sell off state assets, and say, well actually, now is probably as good a time as any to be looking at the almost unfettered power of government to legislate. Now is as good a time as any to look at what place the Treaty of Waitangi – as the founding document of this country – has in our constitutional arrangements and how it ought to be considered when legislation infringes on the rights contained within.

I don’t necessarily advocate for a written constitution. What I advocate for is the opportunity for the People to make that decision themselves. That opportunity will not be realised by announcing a constitutional review, which the government knows will mean absolutely nothing to the vast majority of New Zealanders, and proceeding to do nothing but a few token press releases and photo opportunities.

At this recent conference, a cross-party panel was given an opportunity to discuss the possibility of a written constitution. The National Party MP made the caveat that “he was not speaking on behalf of the National Party”, because as a party, they have only discussed the review once. Once. Two-thirds of the way through this “considered process”, and the party co-leading this whole review have only had one conversation within caucus. When the review was announced, many touted it as just a token gesture to the Māori Party of which nothing would eventuate. Sadly, that’s looking increasingly likely.

Many people I have talked to about this review – people who are politically engaged, well educated and many who are concerned about the current direction in which our government is heading – have plainly stated they don’t know much about it. They have said if they did know something about it, they would probably really care. Perhaps that’s the greatest sign that something is “broke” in our current constitutional arrangements: that a government can put all of these things up for review, bank on the fact few people will understand what’s at stake, and carry on down its path of flagrant disregard for the rights of citizens.

Note: I was a facilitator at the recent EmpowerNZ event. These thoughts are my own and do not represent the thoughts of any of the speakers, facilitators, participants or organisers at the conference. 

Postscript: It seems in August an “interim website” was set up, which details the plan for public engagement. Not only has the launch of this “interim website” come one-and-a-half years after the review was announced, it doesn’t even show up in a Google for “constitutional review New Zealand”. And we all know if it doesn’t show up in a Google search, no one is going to know about it.

The cowardice of New Zealand First

Today Winston Peters made a public statement that NZ First would not be voting in support of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill. This was not because the NZ First necessarily opposes the Bill, but because, to quote Peters:

“NZ First… wants a public referendum to decide the issue. We believe issues such as this should be decided by trusting the people of NZ to decide rather than to leave it to temporarily empowered MPs.”

I understand that when you belong to NZ First, being only “temporarily empowered” must always be at the forefront of your mind. But it is clear that MPs abusing their power as democratically elected leaders is not NZ First’s motivation for demanding a referendum.  Instead, it is painfully clear the real reason behind this stance: cowardice.

Let’s start off with the obvious: representative democracy. The basic premise of representative democracy is that it is unworkable for decision-makers to consult with the wider public on every issue so we elect a smaller number of people to represent our views and make decisions on our behalf. A system in which decision-makers go back to the public on every issue is known as direct democracy. New Zealand does not have this system. Instead, every three years we elect 120 MPs to act on our behalf, spend some of our money, and make decisions that promote the rights and well-being of all citizens. We do this in the belief that this model is more desirable than requiring them to consult on every issue that comes before Parliament. In this system, temporary empowerment and accountability through elections are generally seen as good things. Dictatorships are not.

While this is the basic premise of representative democracy, it does not mean once MPs are elected they have a free reign to do as they wish until the next election. They should be regularly gauging public opinion and ensuring they are acting in the interests of the people. However, referenda are often a bad way to go about this, and referenda are especially bad ways to go about this when the issue in question is of some importance to all New Zealanders but of heighted importance to a minority of New Zealanders. In other words, a referendum should be a last resort and should almost never be resorted to when we are looking at a minority issue.

There are many reasons I believe referenda are an undesirable way of gauging public opinion. They are blunt: they over-simplify often complex questions and insist that we provide a yes-or-no answer. The “anti-smacking” referendum showed – if nothing else – the futility in asking a question to the whole nation if it is a poorly-worded question. Referenda are hideously expensive – even if done with an election. And, most importantly in my opinion, they no longer provide a useful voice of the nation. One only needs look back to last year’s election to see the traditional methods of voting are not working. The trip-down-to-election-booth model does not reflect modern life. It’s probably the only time in three years I actually use a pen to write something important. Referenda are no different – if you are only able to mobilise 68% of the population on what is effectively a vote on every issue for the next three years, good luck mobilising them to vote on just one issue. Until the process around referenda – including the way in which citizens initiated referenda signatures are collected – reflects the realities of modern life (read: computers) they will generally not be a useful way to gauge public opinion.

I qualify that with the word ‘generally’ because I believe referenda still play an important ‘last resort’ function. It is for this reason that I support the asset sales referendum. It’s clear that Labour and the Greens did not see a referendum as their preferred option. There has been a long and hard campaign against asset sales going for some time now. I have no doubt that if Labour had been in a stronger position on other fronts (namely, popularity in terms of leadership and wider policy), asset sales could have easily taken them to victory in the 2011 election. However, that was not to be, and as a last resort to protect what essentially is the future wealth of all New Zealanders I support the efforts to stop asset sales.

Which brings me to the major difference between the asset sales referendum, which I accept has merit as a last resort, and NZ First’s call for a petition on marriage equality. Asset sales affect all New Zealanders. Currently, we all own those assets and they are about to be sold back to us and eventually sold to whoever can afford them. It affects us, our children and our grandchildren. However, marriage equality is different. It affects us all, yes. One does not need to be in a same-sex relationship to support basic human rights. However, the difference with marriage equality is that is has a large impact on the lives and rights of a minority of New Zealanders – 10 per cent if you accept conventional statistics. This is not to say I think anyone who heterosexual should not get a say on marriage equality. It’s simply a fact that it affects some people – namely those who are currently deprived of rights afforded to all other citizens – far more. It is for this reason I believe a referendum would be the worst possible way to go about changing the law in this area. MPs need to be mindful when they vote on this Bill that public opinion is important, but that as a minority issue public opinion is just one consideration, and that protecting the rights of minorities should be a greater consideration. I strongly believe public opinion is in favour of marriage equality, but really that’s just a bonus.

It is clear that Winston Peters likes to fancy himself as the cunning maverick of New Zealand politics. No doubt he is very aware that there is no way National will initiate a referendum on marriage equality. They have repeatedly said it’s not a priority for them. Further, there is no citizens-initiated referendum in the pipeline, and of course no one is going to collect 200’000 signatures when the issue is already before the House. Instead, Winston thinks he has found his party a way to take no stance at all and allowed NZ First to do what it does best – sit on the fence. Essentially, NZ First has shown itself too coward to take a clear stance – ironically, in a situation it as a party did not need to even take a stance, given that it will be a conscience vote.

Perhaps, though, Winston has for once positioned himself on a barbed wire fence. What this stance shows is a party battling with its identity. It is a party that fears sitting too close to the left and too close to the right so positions itself nowhere. It is no secret that NZ First has taken a number of left-leaning positions lately, including opposition to asset sales and support for extending paid parental leave. Perhaps Winston is scared that NZ First appears too left-leaning and he felt the need to throw a line to conservatives. However, this is not an issue to assert political identity or to try and grab a few cheap votes. This is an issue that allows New Zealand to finally afford all citizens the same rights under the law. It allows New Zealand to remove what is currently a massive black mark on our human rights record. When you have a suicide rate among young queer people as high as it is, you have an opportunity to tell them they are not second-class citizens that deserve to be discriminated against by their own country. NZ First can claim that they do not necessarily oppose marriage equality. However, to take no stance as they have effectively opted to do is essentially the same as taking a stance against marriage equality. In the words of Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.