Catching the fish and cutting it up

 

July 2005

 

 

What do Michael Campbell’s shirt, nanotechnology, Playstation, and Sir Paul Reeves all have in common? They are all part of the largely invisible phenomenon of the Māori economy. This special issue of NEON puts the spotlight on Māori making it on their own terms in employment and the business world.

Spearheading this development is the Hui Taumata Taskforce. Twenty-one years after the first Hui Taumata on Māori economic advancement, the Hui Taumata convened again this year in March. NEON talked to Sir Paul Reeves just after the first meeting of the new Hui Taumata Taskforce last month.

NEON: What direction did the Taskforce meeting take?

Sir Paul: There’s a lot of energy there, and I think we see great potential for partnership between Māori and business, Māori and labour, Māori and Māori, and Māori and government. The talk in the 90s really only involved Māori and government, and that is seen as only part of the journey. Partnership with the Crown tends to take Māori back to a familiar colonial type relationship, so I think it’s time for Māori to step out further.

NEON: So Treaty of Waitangi partnerships go beyond the Crown and into the workplace?

Sir Paul: On the one hand you can say there are Māori in the economy. But the other emphasis is that there is such a thing as the Māori economy. An economy and identity are two sides of the one coin, so as you work on your economy you’re also pursuing the whole issue of identity in the 21st century as Māori.
Hui Taumata wasn’t at all scared to say ‘look, the way to elevate our health and education is to improve our wealth!’ One of the problems is that the iwi structure does not necessarily work for all Māori. Not all Māori know their iwi identity, not all Māori have contact with their iwi. So there was also a sense in the hui that we must concentrate on the whānau, and while many Māori may not have an iwi identity, I think all Māori with a few exceptions, belong to a family. I‘d say the family is the gateway of the Māori world.

NEON: On the subject of whether the Taskforce is dominated by older conservatives, rather than young-guns, you’ve said you think the young are the most conservative. What do you mean by that?

Sir Paul: If you want to get something done, pick an old man in a hurry! I think what older people do have, is a certain reluctance to simply sell themselves to a corporate model, where basically the issue is steered by the managers. I think there is a large cost to pay for economic growth in the corporate model. I think Māori still have what I would call a basic collegial model, a model where we have a sense of responsibility to each other and that’s expressed in our trust boards, and in a sense of care and aroha and understanding. I think older Māori remember that and it’s their task to say to younger Māori ‘don’t forget that.’ On the other hand I’m absolutely bowled over by the level of skill and attainment among young Māori, especially in the IT area. The Māori economy has been characterised by the three great Fs – farming, forestry and fish, but our economy has to go wider and broader than that, and IT is one of the means whereby we pursue our economy in the international arena.

NEON: Is there a danger in the Māori economy being too dependent on the international market?

Sir Paul: The Māori economy is an international economy. We are increasingly dependent on the strength and vagaries of the international market. So we must learn how to hedge the Māori economy in the international arena, that’s obvious. But there are two associated things:
One is you can’t manage unless you measure. We must find adequate measures to determine the outputs and the outcomes of the Māori economy. That’s absolutely essential, and I don’t think we have as yet captured how to measure those outcomes when we talk about the Māori economy.

The second is, as Matiu Rata said ‘it’s one thing to catch the fish, it’s another to cut it up.’ Māori still have to work hard on the issue of distribution. I think we would be failing if the Māori economy grew substantially but those Māori who we would call poor, still stayed the same number or percentage.