Judith Collins, in the previous National Government, appointed Dame Susan Devoy as Race Relations Commissioner purely to upset the Lefties and undermine the institution. 100%. There were no other reasons for putting such a grossly unqualified airhead into such an office. This was the woman who wrote in her memoir that the only reason she didn’t break the sanctions to play professionally in Apartheid South Africa was because every year when she went through the finances with her husband the money was never quite enough. She never expressed any concern for going to an Apartheid regime. If only Pik Botha had been just a bit more generous with squash as he had been with cricket Devoy would have gone over and been black listed. All of that and Collins appointed her the arbiter of race relations! It was straight out contempt – a bite back at the Left-wing establishment, the woke, politically correct and their stranglehold on the ideological virtue ministry. Appoint a Karen just to signal National’s commitment to be Karens. Perfect match. Their voters would understand it, appreciate it.
This time round the new coalition Government (was going to say “National-led” coalition Government but the other parties are the ones leading, not National) are up to the same tricks: appoint people most likely to cause offence to the Lefty establishment. Dr Stephen Rainbow, who had apparently been posting pro-Zionist propaganda during the Jewish state’s “plausible genocide” of Gaza has been made Chief Human Rights Commissioner, and Dr Melissa Derby of the Right-wing Free Speech Union has been made Race Relations Commissioner. Two more Right-wing patsies and two less Lefty luvvies on that particular carriage of the Wellington gravy train. Cue: outraged Lefty luvvies and a Bluesky cryfest, smirking Tories and a victory lap of Twitter. The coalition Government’s metric of outrage exceeding their quarterly KPI, surely.
But the contempt hasn’t let up. There are hundreds of such sinecures falling vacant during any three-year term of Parliament and they likely will fill them with gratuitous candidates that read like Muldoon’s revenge fantasy. The special guest star getting set for love and adventure, romance on a high seas cruise, in last week’s heart-warming episode of the Hate Boat was Hon Richard Prebble CBE. “Mad Dog” was an enduring term of affection and so rightly – and I do mean Rightly – attributed. He is there to bite, and hard. As a member of the Waitangi Tribunal he will have opportunities to sink his teeth into proceedings, even if – as his former Labour colleague Dr Michael Bassett has speculated – he will wait a while before pouncing. Will the entire tribunal be rabid? Dr Bassett rates Prebble’s nous very highly when developing a solution to a problem. However how much credit for constructive outcomes can be given in a situation where the group giving the credit is the Rogernome parliamentary Labour Party of the 1980s?
Aotearoa is a big island group with a large population relative to the other Pacific nations, but it is still such a small place the connections between people can seem like a micro-state where everyone is half a degree of separation from each other. This situation is one such example.
The Chief Maori Land Court Judge, Dr Caren Fox, is the ex officio Chair of the Waitangi Tribunal (so she will be Prebble’s boss essentially). She approved my next-door neighbour’s Occupation Order about twenty years ago when she was an ordinary Judge in the Land Court. This case is an insight into the sort of person she is and the sort of person who gets appointed within the judicial system, and also a reflection of the Tribunal.
The Court’s minute book made reference to a visit Judge Fox had undertaken to inspect the land block upon which this order would apply. The order was subsequently granted by her – I’ve read the minute book and seen the signed order. My father was living on that land at the time and was astounded when he learned of what had happened. For this there had been no meeting of owners, no disclosure to or consent of owners, the Judge hadn’t visited the other people on the block, there was no reference to the existing Trust order and its map (which did not support the Occupation Order) and most idiotically of all the written description was inadequate to define the area properly and the accompanying sketch map (scribbled on a page of refill pad) did not define the area either thus creating an irresolvable situation. And Judge Fox – with all these very obvious insufficiencies just went ahead and made this Occupation Order with all the dramas that would inevitably ensue to beset our whanau probably forever or what will seem like forever. Oh – and I didn’t mention it – the applicant is an in-law, by gift not by descent, and so not even directly related to the land. One egregious mistake after another by Judge Fox. When I examined this atrocious state of affairs and saw that Judge Fox was solely responsible for the mess I realised she was a hopeless and probably supercilious individual unsuited to this particular job. A woman who can’t understand a map or a description of an area is a Land Court judge for Christ sakes? Now she’s head of bench!
And as for the Waitangi Tribunal, my God. The Right complain it is too far Left, too pro-Maori too much woo-woo wokery. Superficially perhaps, but from my experience on substance their decisions are the crunching gears on a colonial killdozer and the driver is as likely to be a kupapa as it is a Pakeha. Their competence too is highly questionable.
I was involved in the Eastern Bay of Plenty inquiry (still ongoing). Judge Carrie Wainwright was initially assigned and turned up in Opotiki to hear the parties. She heard, but she had obviously already made up her mind beforehand because after two dozen parties had said we want an inquiry and only two or three parties (the ones being paid by the Government) said they didn’t she told everyone that she was recommending mediation that she herself would conduct. Like it wasn’t completely obvious where the vast majority stood! There were near on a hundred people on one side a handful on the other. Mediation for who? I only spoke twice during this farce. The first time was to tell her that her mediation idea was prejudiced because she had so very obviously predetermined it before hearing a word from us, that it was nonsense because the weight was so overwhelmingly against the Government-funded parties and that the only reasonable – and blindingly obvious – thing to do in these circumstances was to just order an inquiry. She, of course, ignored this and she forced her mediation. I spoke the second time the following day about half way through the mediation – stopping her mid flow during one of her speeches at the white board where she preferred to hold court – by calling a point of order. I stood up: “It’s Eastern Bay of Plenty – not Western Bay of Plenty! You’ve been saying Western the whole time, it’s not – it’s the Eastern Bay of Plenty.” Complete silence. The ones who did know she was continuing this irksome mistake never had the brains – or balls – to tell her she was in error. She looked chastened and sheepishly said, “How stupid of me.” Her confession hung in the air. No need for me to underscore it, I just sat down slowly, that was enough emphasis. Going by Wainwright and Fox I’m guessing there aren’t that many female cartographers in existence.
The inquiry itself was foreshadowed by resolving whether the utterly corrupt ‘mandate’ given by the Government to the kupapa’s trust entity to negotiate a Whakatohea Treaty settlement was valid. At the start of that hearing with Judge Doogan presiding (Wainwright had conveniently made herself ineligible for the inquiry because she took the mediation) he had stated that the Government’s ‘Agreement in Principle’, which recorded it was not binding and had no legal standing and could not be used in any court or proceeding, was accordingly not going to be used by him to prejudice anything. And yet he bent go the Government’s will and reneged on that undertaking just a few months later in a show of thorough bias. He said that the AIP included an offer of a sum of money so generous that the offer alone meant he would keep the AIP alive when he otherwise would have ruled against it. So there was this judge ruling that an AIP that said it had no legal standing was been given a standing by this judge because money. The ultimate Pakeha value – money – being used to overrule every other value. And to compound the white man’s prejudice over principle was the white man’s assertion that it was a considerable sum for Maori when it was in fact less than the sum that would be hypothicated if the original sum offered as settlement by Doug Graham back in 1997 had been left in the bank. Any member of that panel with any credibility would have either demanded a minority decision be issued or have resigned from the panel – neither happened. There is no integrity and no honour from any of those Tribunal members. Just as how a hundred people can listen to a mistake be repeated over and over without correcting it so it seems a panel of experts in tikanga and law can let a Pakeha judge find that a Government intimation of money can overturn everything else. The Government can wave their magic money wand and hey presto – a Crown financial veto suddenly exists! How inventive. Far more inventive than any notions benefiting Maori. His whitesplaining couldn’t be countermanded either because that took a judicial review, which was not funded by legal aid, and which none of the non-Government-funded parties could afford to sustain. Christ how utterly corrupt and utterly unjust it all is. The people who perpetrated this are highly paid, highly praised mercenaries . They’re respected business people, respected professors, but when a fundamentally unjust decision was made by the presiding officer they all went along with it. They are goons. Some of them might be appointed for that very reason and some of them may just be acclimatised to it over time, but they are all in the goon squad, the business of whitewashing and rubber-stamping of dodgy Treaty settlement deals, a production line of perfidious lies. Excuse me then for having no confidence in the actual purpose or actual membership.
To the Tribunal now add Prebble. What order of goon is Prebs? Can he be any worse than these other goons?
NZ is a small place, so my Prebble story is a result of close connections more than coincidences. This is going to sound like an impossibly, horrifyingly Right-wing fiction, (and the Lefty readers will be horrified) but in 2003 I was at an invite-only military field day at Ardmore (or Whenuapai possibly, one of the air bases in North-West Auckland). It was a weekday and I was between gigs so I was there – picked up in an army jeep with a staff driver. The wide seats, the solid metal, just me and the NCO in his full uniform with beret, the tyres grooving like a rumble strip down the NW motorway. It had to be Monty’s drive on Lübeck. Graham Watson, the accidental or otherwise mentor to a generation of would-be politicians of all stripes at Auckland University was there too. We were mutual friends of the army guy who invited us, The Daily Blog’s Military Correspondent, Ben Morgan.
It was somewhere between taking turns firing the field gun and the machine gun range that Graham asked me to be acting GM of the Act Party while he was on a holiday for a few weeks. Run the Act Party for a few weeks, and manage a big campaign as well, a few weeks lead in with him and then it would be my gig for some (4?) weeks. The Head Office was the old AEPB building in Newmarket – which meant I could take the Link bus. Well, I had nothing to do, it was the most successful ultra-Right party in the Western democracies at the time, and the bus was pretty handy. That’s all the justification anyone needs. Donna Awatere Huata – she was there too. Normal people, Deborah Coddington. They weren’t all crazy. And I had established the precursor organisation to what became Act On Campus when I was active during 1994. OK, Roger was a maniac, and Prebble too, but I considered that their best quality. (Yes, it’s all horrifying, I know). So it might have been Monty to NW Germany coming in but I understand if the Lefty readers see going out as being more like return to Berlin down Reichstrasser 1 with orders to work in the Führerbunker. Graham had explained that under the arrangement I would be an Electorate Agent of Prebble who was Leader of the Party. Not having met him, Graham made contact and gained approval (he said Prebble had laughed off previous convictions as comedic faux pas) and I didn’t get to meet him in person till a few weeks later on.
He was hands off Head Office but very hands on the caucus, wrapped around their throats to be precise. He was under stress, being put very deliberately under pressure from Rodney Hide’s undermining efforts (ultimately successful). This struggle permeated the party. Hide had set up “Fortress Epsom” – a Bavarian citadel garrison of the party autonomous from Berlin to the point of being independent from the rest of the political and administrative apparatus – and Hide would stand with the goal of gaining the electorate (and thus survive a fall of the party vote below the 5% threshold).
Breaking point in the relentless strain happened in the midst of Prebble’s book tour I was arranging. I had spent a couple of days hassling every feasible location in Ashburton to take his book-signing on his way down from Christchurch and no-one could commit. It was I’ve Been Thinking or the second volume of it. I had done more than what anyone could do, bookshops, stationers, cafes, the library, nothing, not even a bus stop. Every other location I could and did book something, all except intransagent, Soviet-occupied Ashburton. After reporting the bad news in the finalised itinerary I got a phone call from Prebble in Wellington. He went off his nut at me from the moment I took the phone, just launched straight into it. A high volume set of rapid, rhetorical, unanswerable questions to which his reply each time was an even higher volume stanza of staccato swearing loud enough that everyone could hear. I would have transferred it into Graham’s office but as it was I was stuck in this barrage of invective in an open plan reception area and everyone avoiding eye contact. About fourth question/insult in I realised the Parliamentary Service contract is brutally one-sided: the MP can dismiss their Electorate Agent without notice and with immediate effect. Prebble could sack me then and there on the spot. It felt like a summary court-martial, I had to stand to attention and just take it square. Don’t argue just answer as succinctly as possible. I expected it after about question six – I had detected ready and aim despite their being no explicit threat to fire. He had got it into his mind that I had “sabotaged” his book tour because the Red Army had taken South Canterbury. But they hadn’t taken anywhere else was my positive note. He was so furious. He was also deeply paranoid, and justifiably so, but he was accusing the wrong man. He did think everyone was out to get him, and he was half right. He hung up on me. But he didn’t fire me.
I mentioned this – not by way of formal complaint though – to Graham soon after and he was so outraged, he said it was unacceptable, and he would get an apology from him. He did. Prebble rang up and apologised to me, fully. Graham was a really solid guy like that; loyalty and honour a code worth keeping. Prebble was solid too, he didn’t fire me, he came to Auckland soon after and it was fine. I like Prebs is what you’re reading here.
Prebble was a very successful leader for Act because he had the attributes Act voters wanted, whereas Hide, Brash and Banks didn’t quite have that mix of personal qualities and could never reach those levels (although Hide came close in 2011). Only recently has Act climbed back to where Prebble had it (and incredibly under a leader with a deficit of personal qualities). If mad dogs are appreciated on occasion is the Waitangi Tribunal one of those occasions? What is the value of Prebble on that Tribunal if not for shock value? A visible Act Party appointment to parade?
If we take Dr Bassett’s recommendations at face value Prebble will assist panels to better navigate the difficult passages pragmatically. If we take my experiences at face value Prebble will become emotionally engaged. The question I cannot answer is the take on where his ideology in respect to the Treaty sits. Since I won’t pay for NZ Herald Premium I don’t know what his (weekly?) columns are like and where he says he stands on Treaty “princples” or anything else. It may not be surprising to hear this, but the panels need a range of people – people not academics – to sit on them. It may be surprising to hear this, but if Prebble can just resist doing all the Government’s bidding, even just on occasion, he would make a better Tribunal member than a great many of them.
