Keith Rankin

Keith Rankin is a political economist and economy historian
who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. His biographical info.
Keith's email contact is: <keithr@ak.planet.gen.nz>.

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The Rankin File: #32

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

Keith Rankin

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The Rankin File: #32

MAI, what a Treaty.