Swearing at... the Treaty?

Tuesday 2 August, when the New Zealand Parliament resumes sitting in Wellington, will be a defining moment in our nation's history, even if it goes relatively unnoticed.   Hone Harawira, elected representative of Tai Tokerau, will confront Lockwood Smith, the Speaker of Parliament, over the requirement for an oath of allegiance to the British crown.

If both men stand their ground, Hone would not be permitted to take up his seat in parliament at this time, but the final outcome would be different.   Eventually parliament would be forced to accept representatives of the people who are not in allegiance to the British crown.  It would only take the refusal of one elected member to have the requirement of allegiance to the Crown finally repealed from New Zealand law, for the simple reason that this is a regime which claims to honour freedom of opinion, democratic process, and cultural diversity.  If the regime does not allow the people of Tai Tokerau to send it a representative whose allegiance is to his own people, it would sacrifice the moral ground on which it bases its claim to political legitimacy.  Sooner or later - probably within six months, almost certainly within three years - the regime would remove the test of allegiance to the British Queen as a requirement for citizenship and political office.  It would be obliged to do so because with every day of delay its claim to legitimacy would be slowly and surely eroded.

If Hone stands firm, and Smith allows him to do so, the way would be opened to small but significant reform of the political institutions of the New Zealand state and the regime would be able to assert its claims to inclusiveness, tolerance and respect with rather more credibility than it can at this present moment.  That would be the politically simple and sensible way for the regime to move forward.

The third and most widely anticipated possibility is that Hone Harawira submits to the demands of Lockwood Smith.  For those in the regime with seriously impaired and short range vision (perhaps the majority) this is also the preferred option, because it would seem to finally settle the matter on the basis of the status quo.  Smith would have his authority upheld.  Harawira would lose mana.  However it is not only Harawira's mana that would suffer.  The mana of the regime would decline with it, as the people of Tai Tokerau, and the people of the motu as a whole, would lose faith in the pretensions of the regime to be diverse, inclusive, democratic and tolerant of political differences.   Denied a voice in the formal institutions of democracy, the people will  find their political voice in institutions and organisations of their own making.  The point of view expressed by Hone Harawira when he last met with Lockwood Smith would not go away.  It would go underground.  That much should be apparent to even the most myopic regime.