Thursday, February 1, 2007

Kumara & fairness

It never rains but it pours. After weeks of inactivity there is suddenly plenty to get the attention.

We as a nation are doomed to stay where we are, or even accelerate our slide backwards, if we cannot look to the future and have a pragmatic view of the past. This is is no way meant to sound like Maori (or Serb or Vietnamese or anything) bashing but we have to put all this Treaty stuff behind us and move on. That there were rights and wrongs, most of which occurred decades and even centuries ago, is undeniable. But what relevance does great globs of it have to life in a different world in the twenty first century. Caesar arrived in the UK completetly uninvited and generally unwanted nearly two thousand years ago. Is it my right that I spend my every waking hour petitioning Rome for compensation for wrongs heaped upon my ancestors? Wasting my time and money on endless 'Waitangi' issues is approaching that level of silliness when we read this morning there is a claim in for the rights to 'original species of kumara'. This is right up there with claims on the electromagnetic spectrum. This is stupid on a spectacualr scale. But it is given lip service by people being paid for by me. Instead of 'Sod off you are being a pratt' we spend years repecting things and constructing an apology to be delivered in a flax bag with a big fat cheque. We are living in a modern world that doesn't do this sort of thing for a very pragmatic reason - it has no relevance at all to getting on with a normal life for a vast majority of people. Let's wake up to the fact that the majority of people are just that, the majority, and their wishes should be paramount and not those of the vocal minority that seem to rule this place.

Which brings us on nicely to the Editorial. This raises the subject of democracy - brave man. The endless pandering to consultation, fairness and the inabiltiy (or unwillingnes more like) of elected bodies to make decisions is hamstringing us much as our unstoppable desire to look backwards. We should elect people on the basis of clearly stated policy intent and then, here's the rub, they just do it. And woe betide them if they don't. None of this 'We must respect (odious, overused word) the opinions of every tree frog we can lay our hands on'. None of this 'The three one armed lesbians in Levin are being descriminated against, therefore it won't happen despite the other four million wanting it' crap. If the decisions that are made along these lines arre spectacularly unpopular then the decision makers won't last long and they will be more careful as to how they word their manifestos won't they? Well, maybe not. Unfortunately this approach to running the country has as much chance of coming into being as I have of becoming Pope as it requires a degree of honesty and transparency in politicians that we are unlikely ever to see.

This again leads nicely into Garth George's piece. He predictably gives a very favourable (almost sycophantic) review of John Key's little effort in the South Island a couple of days back - well he would wouldn't he? The intersting point that he picked upon that I had missed was that Key says he wants to be measured by how he performs and not how long he stays in office. Let's see if he is singing the same tune in, say, five years time.

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