The unfortunate chapter of errors surrounding New Zealand’s non-attendance at the recent 5^th World Holocaust Forum ranges from the bizarre and unbelievable, through to the downright sinister. The only constant is that as the various explanations have been put forward, our Minister of Foreign Affairs has been at his slippery best in defending them. But, at the end of the day, however, it has not been a good look for either our diplomacy, or international commitment to respect for diversity and racial tolerance, no matter what explanation is offered.

The 5^th World Holocaust Forum was convened in Jerusalem by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation under the auspices of the President of Israel, to mark the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Nazi occupied Poland. It took place against a backdrop of rising racial intolerance and xenophobia-inspired terrorism in Europe in particular, where anti-Semitism is on the rise.

More than 50 Heads of State from around the world attended the commemorations. Among them were the Governors-General of Australia and Canada. Yet one of the first excuses offered by our Foreign Minister was that that the organisers had a "mistaken impression" of New Zealand's constitution, so sending the Governor-General to represent us was never an option. However, the same "mistaken impression" applied to both Canada and Australia but had not put their governments off from sending their respective Governors-General to represent them.

When that excuse fell flat, the Foreign Minister’s next line was to say that New Zealand had offered to send the Speaker of the House of Representatives to represent this country, but that offer had been rejected because the organisers said they could not  guarantee security for him. Well, if sending the Governor-General could not be justified because of a "mistaken impression" of her constitutional position, how on earth could that have been rectified by sending someone further down the line of precedence in her place? That was simply a nonsense argument.

By this point, the Foreign Minister was looking more like an international bumbler than even many of his detractors had dared to imagine. What was to follow shifted the argument from Ministerial incompetence and bungling to something far more sinister. The Minister’s third excuse for New Zealand’s non-attendance was that even though the invitation had been received by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September last year, it had not been passed on to him to consider until earlier this month, leaving little time for it to be properly considered.

That is a very serious charge to make. If it is true, it raises important questions about the relationship between the Minister and his Ministry. Why did the Ministry keep this matter from the Minister for some months, and what other important foreign policy issues have been or are being similarly kept from the Minister? What are the Ministry’s reasons for doing so? Is it that distrusting of its Minister, and has their working relationship become that dysfunctional? Do the diplomats, who can be very over-bearing and “we know best” on foreign policy issues at the best of times, have so little confidence in their Minister, as to not only bypass him on an important international issue, but also embarrass him in the process? Or is this latest line just one more in the series of fabrications to justify non-participation in this significant international event?

However, whatever the reality, it pales behind the Leader of the Opposition’s reported response. National had been making good ground raising questions about New Zealand’s absence from the Forum before its leader tried to link it to the current anti-Semitism controversy dogging the British Labour Party. "I hope none of that is part of the Labour Party's calculus - that has no place in New Zealand society," he told Magic Talk Radio, in reality strongly implying the very opposite to what he was saying. The linkage was as irrelevant as it was cheap and despicable. It was also utterly unbecoming of his office.

Moreover, the timing was appalling, coming shortly after a report the incidence of hate speech in New Zealand has been rising since last year’s March 15 Mosque shootings. Just as we had never really imagined that a major terrorist attack could take place on our shores, until it happened, we have also never really considered ourselves racially intolerant like other countries, but international trends seem to be being replicated here. The pixie dust of tolerance that was sprinkled on the country after the Christchurch tragedy has now well and truly evaporated, leaving new, hard questions to be confronted and resolved. Our challenge now is to do so.

Attendance at the World Holocaust Forum would have sent a signal that New Zealand is concerned and is not just all talk about combatting racism and intolerance but does take these issues seriously. Instead, our response has left us looking pretty half-hearted and ambivalent.

All these events were a time for the Leader of the Opposition to seize the vacant moral high ground; to assert strongly New Zealand’s commitment to supporting diversity and upholding tolerance; and, to lead the charge in supporting moves to eliminate  racially inspired hate speech in our society.

It is to his shame that he instead chose to respond to one slur, with a slur of his own.  As a country, we deserve so much better.  

When a Minister dismisses the criticisms of a high-powered group of citizens as just “political” one knows immediately the criticisms being made both have more substance than that and are probably pretty accurate. So it is with the case of Whanau Ora Minister Peeni Henare and the group of distinguished Maori women led by Dame Tariana Turia who have spoken out strongly against the government’s management of the Whanau Ora programme.

In my view, Whanau Ora, the brainchild of Dame Tariana and the Maori Party, is one of the most innovative and potentially effective social intervention programmes initiated by any government in recent years. Whanau Ora unashamedly places the family at the centre of resolving the issues affecting families, recognising that flourishing families lie at the heart of the nation’s wellbeing, and that when they flourish, the country flourishes. It aligned very closely with UnitedFuture’s family-centred focus which was why we were keen supporters of it.

One of the keys to Whanau Ora’s success is its flexibility, recognising that no two families are the same, and that different responses will be required in so many cases. Implicit in this is an understanding that services need to be nimble, flexible and participatory. Support for families is not just something passive – to be done to them at their time of need – but an active process requiring full participation. Families are much more than just recipients of help – Whanau Ora works with them to overcome their challenges together. Its constancy and tailored hands-on approach to specific circumstances was and remains Whanau Ora’s strength, but, by its very nature, it was almost inevitable that it would run into conflict with the Labour-led Government.

The is not because of Labour’s churlishness towards the Maori Party, which its insensitivity had spawned originally, but because of a much more fundamental difference of view about the best way to make social interventions of this type. There is probably no less concern within the ranks of the Labour Party than among Dame Tariana and her colleagues, or the Maori Party at the time Whanau Ora was introduced, about the negative social impacts of dysfunctional families and the need to break those cycles. Rather, the difference lies in the way of going about it.

Labour is still wedded solidly to its historic principles that the state knows best when it comes to the welfare of its citizens, and that, therefore, it is not only the prime role of the state to look after them, but ipso facto, only the state is capable of looking after them. I was astounded to hear from the head of a community-based welfare support programme just before the last election that the now Prime Minister and Finance Minister, still in Opposition at that point, had visited their programme and while full of praise for the work they were doing, had left them flabbergasted by going on to say in no uncertain terms  that they should not be doing such community work, because that was the responsibility of the government. 

 

In office, Labour has taken a similar approach to programmes like Whanau Ora. Rather than fund a range of innovative providers to provide an agreed range of services and be held accountable for them against an approved range of targets, Labour not only quickly abolished all the targets, but decided that all services would henceforth be provided by central government agencies. The nimble, flexible, family-centric, highly individualised approach of Whanau Ora quickly gave way to the return of the rigid, awkward, one-size-fits-all, only the public sector can deliver help approach that had characterised the provision of social services previously. The breath of fresh air and focused, practical help and support Whanau Ora is all about, with its attendant risks of failure from to time, was simply too much for Labour to contemplate. It really believes its own propaganda that it is the party that has historically cared for the disadvantaged. It just cannot bring itself to believe that anyone else could have a similar concern, let alone a more successful way of dealing with it, or that there are people out there who might like a more different, personally centred approach. In its mind, Whanau Ora is an affront to all Labour stands for, not an innovative approach to the resolution of hitherto intractable social problems.

Against that backdrop, the criticisms of Dame Tariana (who has committed the other cardinal sin in the Labour book of daring to attack the Prime Minister as “not up to it” on this issue) and her colleagues are hardly surprising. Particularly at a time when family deprivation, homelessness, child poverty and overall dependence levels are rising sharply, all on Labour’s watch. The party’s long self-proclaimed mortgage on concern for the disadvantaged is looking more than a little tatty, and the last thing Labour wants now is a distinguished group, like the Maori women leaders Dame Tariana has brought together, to point that out.

In dismissing them in the brusque way he has, Minister Henare is the one playing politics – and badly at that.