New Zealand’s culture wars backlash

I’m in New Zealand on a speaking tour organised by the Kiwi Free Speech Union, and in some ways it’s like visiting Britain in a more innocent era. This struck me when I went on a tour of the Hobbiton movie set, where The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were filmed. The Shire of Tolkien’s imagination, lovingly created by Peter Jackson, is an idealised version of rural England – and New Zealand, with its perfectly manicured lawns and open-faced, friendly people, is a bit like that. Although, to be fair, I may be viewing the country through rose-tinted spectacles because Labour was heavily defeated in the most recent election, winning just 34 out of 120 seats.

Labour’s six years in power, with Jacinda Ardern at the helm for most of it, may provide a foretaste of what Keir Starmer has in store. Public expenditure skyrocketed, taxes shot up and the ban on oil and gas exploration imposed in 2018 left the country teetering on the edge of blackouts. But perhaps Ardern’s most toxic legacy was the deepening of racial divisions between the white European population – 68 per cent of the 5.25 million total – and the indigenous Maori, who make up 18 per cent (the remainder are Asians and Pasifika).

The conflict between New Zealand’s two largest ethnic groups revolves around how to interpret the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between Captain William Hobson, the first lieutenant-governor, and 540 Maori chiefs. The nub of the dispute is over how much sovereignty the chiefs surrendered to the Crown.

Were the Maori people agreeing to throw in their lot with the British in return for peace and security? In the two decades preceding the signing of the treaty, the Maori had been beset by an inter-tribal conflict in which 20,000 of them were slain.