Keith Rankin
is a political economist and economy historian |
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http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/6783/ |
"The agreement will not allow multinational companies to exploit New Zealand. It does no more than guarantee fair and equal treatment to foreign investors compared to local ones."
The OECD sponsored Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)
is proving to be a contentious issue which any political party
seeking the support of middle New Zealand must confront. The MAI
treaty seeks to create a global investment environment which presumes
no discrimination against investors from any country vis-a-vis
any other country. Unless a specific exclusion applies, investors
from any developed nation will be able to invest anywhere else
in the OECD without discrimination.
The principal grounds for exemption negotiated for New Zealand
relate to that most special of treaties, the Treaty of Waitangi.
The prevailing interpretation is that exclusions based on Waitangi
are exclusions solely on behalf of Maori. Yet the Treaty of Waitangi
is a treaty between two sovereign peoples - Maori and British;
a treaty for two people to become partners of a shared sovereignty.
What defined the nonMaori partner in 1840 was being a subject
of the British Crown, as distinct from being, say, French, German,
American, Chinese. But it could not be said to have been a Treaty
between the Maori and all of the Britain's imperial subjects.
It was an effective treaty between British settlers,
and indigenous Maori. In practice the key word for the treaty
partner was "settlers" and not "British".
Bohemians settling in Puhoi, for example, in pledging loyalty
to British monarch, could be said to have become parties to the
Treaty of Waitangi.
Some years ago, Wellington historian Tony Simpson developed a
very useful hypothesis about nonMaori New Zealanders. One
group of pakeha saw New Zealand essentially as an economic resource.
They had no sense of loyalty - sense of place - with respect to
these islands. (In imperial times, many will have had a sense
of loyalty to the British Empire, as a global economy within the
global economy.) They were economic immigrants. They would go
as readily as they came, if it was to their financial advantage
to do so. Indeed, emigration, as well as immigration, has always
been a major feature of New Zealand demographics. These unbonded
settlers were sojourners - tauiwi. They included the estate
owners who viewed their lands as an asset to be bought or sold.
The second group of pakeha were looking for a home, a place to
lay down roots. They were economic migrants in the sense that
they left the British Isles (or wherever) because of economic
difficulties. But they were much more than economic migrants.
They had dreams of a better society; a society that they wanted
to build and to be identified with. These were the settlers,
distinct from the sojourners.
This latter group - the settlers - might, only slightly facetiously,
be called Ngati Pakeha, as indeed James Belich calls them
in Making Peoples, his 1996 history of New Zealand. As
I see it, the settler interest was the other partner to the Treaty
of Waitangi.
In the economic debates of the late nineteenth century, the genuine
settlers were generally happy to be called "protectionists".
(Indeed the terms "protectionist" and "free trader"
became de facto party political labels in the 1870s and
1880s.) They called Britain "the Old Country" whereas
the sojourners called Britain "Home". By and large they
- loyal protonationalist New Zealanders - held a cosmopolitan
rather than an imperial world view. They believed in a world of
free nations, and saw their contribution to the "world states
system" as being through their focus on their nation's development
as a role model for other nations.
It was the transcolonials who saw themselves as "free traders".
They strongly supported free trade within the British empire,
and that they believed in an "international division of labour"
(ie a transcolonial division of labour) which consigned the peripheral
regions of the empire as commodity primary producers. The tauiwi
saw New Zealand as Britain's farm in the south, whereas the settlers
saw New Zealand as a new southern Britain.
We can make the same sort of distinction today. Most people resident
in New Zealand have a commitment to New Zealand society (settlers
and their descendants), while a minority are committed to making
money anywhere, any time, and seek to do so on a level international
stage. The be fair to this latter group, they generally believe
in healthy national economies. It is just that they see national
economic health as being a consequence of a healthy international
economy. They see international health as being determined by
the freest possible interplay of market forces. The settler group
tends to reverse that order, seeing an economically healthy global
society as a result of rather than a cause of healthy national
and local economies.
The settler group of New Zealanders contribute to their nation's
public domain through various forms of gift exchange; through
a quasivoluntary economy that can only be assessed through
social audit procedures. As such, they generally prefer local
or national investments that might not yield the highest possible
cash returns; they often choose investments that yield a visible
social return. It is this group of New Zealanders to whom I believe
the Treaty of Waitangi gives shared rights, as partners, as Treaty
signatories. As such, it doesn't matter whether settlers are new
immigrants or fifth generation New Zealanders. And their ethnicity
doesn't matter. What matters is their sense that Aotearoa / New
Zealand is their "Home"; that they sense a two-way relationship
with New Zealand's public domain; that they live in a relationship
which involves economic give and take outside of the marketplace.
Richard Nottage is right when he says that the MAI creates a level
playing field, and when he says "the MAI will in no way override
the rights of Maori under the Treaty of Waitangi. The government
has put a broad reservation on issues concerning the treaty partner".
But what about the other treaty partner; Ngati Pakeha for
want of a better name, those people of nonMaori descent
for whom New Zealand is Home?
The debate in New Zealand so far divides the world population
into three: Maori, nonMaori New Zealand residents, and nonresidents.
The perspective that I have suggested here creates a subtly different
division: (i) Tangata Whenua (Maori), (ii) Ngati Pakeha
(nonMaori settlers), and (iii) Tauiwi (everyone else
on the planet, including the various transnational sojourners
residing in New Zealand).
The MAI negotiations should recognise both Maori and committed
settlers as signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi, and therefore
should place both in an advantageous position visavis
international capital (the "Tauiwi" interest).
Such discrimination is simply a part of the give and take of a
giftexchange economy. Exemptions from the MAI that recognise
the rights of both Treaty (of Waitangi) partners should
be seen as part of our particular nation's social contract.
It is not foreign "multinational" corporations that
are the object of concern on the part of parties such as the Alliance
which are suspicious of the MAI. Rather it is transnational
capital that causes concern, because transnational capital recognises
no sovereignty. Much transnational capital invested in New Zealand
is not technically foreign at all (although it is tauiwi).
I - like Richard Nottage - can see no reason why indigenous transnational
capital should be given any advantages over foreign transnational
capital. Here, I am fully sympathetic with the aims of the MAI.
I simply differ from those such as Nottage who have gone public
in support of MAI because I feel that they have ignored one of
the partners to our nation's social contract. The inadequately
advantaged partner is that group of settlers and descendants of
settlers who share a special affinity for this nation. All those
who depend on this nation as their Home need protection from the
(MAI) treaty through a modern interpretation of the (Waitangi)
Treaty. The Treaty of Waitangi cannot be fully understood unless
it is understood to whom it does not apply. It does not
apply to transnational interests.
{ This document is: http://www.oocities.org/Athens/Delphi/3142/krf32-waitangiMAI.html
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( viewings since 28 Dec.'97: )