© Tze Ming Mok 2006 | First published in the Sunday Star-Times, 6 August, 2006
 
Like our unraveling society, treason itself is increasingly lax.  Gone are the days when you had to put real energy into treason, say by waging war against New Zealand, or for those of a more romantic bent, by kidnapping the Queen.  Now merely expressing an opinion that people should act against an uncontested idea of New Zealand’s economic interests will do. 

This is the only conclusion we can draw from National Party leader Don Brash’s odd claim that a Muslim resident who supported a boycott on New Zealand products in the international media was committing “treason”, rather than an exercising his freedom of speech – one of those protected rights and bedrock values that Brash is so anxious to preserve.  This doesn’t put Brash’s own track record in a good light, given his tendencies to paint the New Zealand economy as a basketcase to potential overseas investors.  It’s difficult to take Brash’s ‘bedrock values’ line seriously when he is potentially accusing himself of treason, and while also putting forth that immigrants (and maybe even born-and-bred citizens – he seemed a little unclear on that) must simultaneously embrace democratic values without being granted the right to actually exercise them. 

But naturally, a basic adherence to egalitarian and democratic values is important to our social and cultural consensus.  And of course, immigrants – especially Muslim communities – have never had the point hammered home to them that they have to fit in otherwise be made to feel unwelcome and undeserving of citizenship.  Brash’s groundbreaking announcement that they must, may well result in a dramatic sociological sea-change. 

Those immigrants and Muslims will stop organizing massive street marches vowing to stamp out homosexual evil – oh, sorry no, that was Destiny Church.  Er… they will cease their railing against the ‘homosexual menace’, the feminist witches of ‘The Sisterhood’ and progressive liberals as ‘PC-fascists’ in their national op-ed columns – wait, no that’s secular Pakeha pundits and maybe John Tamihere.  Um… they’ll stop putting out pamphlets instructing parents to beat Satan out of their children.  Whoops, Christian fundies again, sorry.  Hm, let’s see… they’ll stop coming up with lines like: “There will never be peace in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbours, at least not until [Mohammed] returns in all his power and glory to rule the Earth.”  Okay, okay, that was actually Garth George in the New Zealand Herald, talking about the second coming of Jesus.

When pressed on National Radio, Brash admitted that New Zealand’s migrants from repressive regimes, conservative societies, or even rabid theocracies, in fact generally leave their countries in search of freedom, democracy, and a tolerant society, and are not a fundamentalist fifth column trying to bring down the decadent West.  Ultimately, he admitted there isn’t really much of a problem here at all.  So his point is?  Well… that there could be a problem one day, maybe, and it’s important to scaremonger about it now before it’s too late.

Brash pointed to Australia as one of the examples where a larger *cough*Mu*cough*slim* population has resulted in strife.  According to Brash, we can avoid Australia’s recent problems with multiculturalism by bringing in more Australians.  Peculiar logic in itself. 

Furthermore, are the Australians who he says will merge ‘seamlessly’ into New Zealand’s political culture, fleeing a breakdown of ‘bedrock’ progressive values on their shores? Given that Australia’s most recent shame was the vast explosion of mob violence by white Australians against people of Mediterranean Arab appearance on Sydney’s beaches, one can only assume Brash means that we need to import more Muslim Australians to give them a break from this unseemingly change in the Australian national character.

Australian academics and the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission have shown that Australia’s recent ethnic and religious tensions have been stoked by politically sanctioned bigotry against Muslims and Arabs, in reaction to the perceived threat of terrorism –  not by any meaningful clash of ‘bedrock values’ about democracy, religious dictates and gender roles.  It is dishonest and harmful for Brash to scaremonger about ‘too much diversity’ (ie, more non-white immigrants) potentially  degrading New Zealand’s egalitarian values – maybe we should be more worried about the role ‘mainstream’ New Zealand plays in degrading its own egalitarian values.

Brash seems not to understand that supporting diversity in New Zealand is not just about ‘celebrating’ multiculturalism or swamping out Pakeha, but is directly related to a deepening democracy.  Supporting diversity helps institutions understand how to cope with differences between diverse groups that already exist, so that people can have truly equal access to the common public goods that we all have a right to.  Supporting diversity also is about preventing cycles of resentment, alienation and hostility between communities, by refraining from labeling minorities as potentially disloyal or suspect, for political gain.  With his ‘treason’ comments, Brash has already displayed hopeless confusion about the attainment of liberty.  Perhaps to grasp equality and fraternity, he might have to break up a few more of the bedrocks in his head. 

END