Politicians like to bang on all about the need to heal society’s racial/economic divisions, but in their actions they’re more keen on stoking those divisions, with the Treaty Principles Bill being the classic example. The Bill seeks to dilute the Crown’s responsibilities to Māori at the same time as it diminishes the rights available to Māori under the Treaty. What could possibly go wrong?

Obviously, stacking the deck in this fashion is not how to conduct in good faith a reasoned constitutional “debate.” Good way to start a riot, though. To put it mildly, David Seymour’s Bill isn’t a balanced revisiting of the Treaty’s true meaning. It has more in common with the Foreshore and Seabed smash and grab.

It is also how this government rolls. Banning gang patches has been a similar exercise in Māori-baiting. Having stoked fear about gangs so successfully that some people report being terrified by the mere sight of Māori on motorbikes, the government has called on Police to enforce the ban on gang patches.

Who knew that the problems of affiliation to say, the Mongrel Mob could be solved by simply making the Mob change their jackets? In reality, the patch ban serves little purpose beyond pandering to an atavistic redneck hostility to any and all public expressions of Māori collective power.

As the hikoi arrives at Parliament, the supportive presence of the Maori Queen Nga wai hono i te po will be consistent with the careful opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill demonstrated by the Queen’s late father, and predecessor.

Many New Zealanders have mixed feelings about the Kingitanga movement, but its stance on this issue has usefully demonstrated just what an outlier Seymour’s wretched little Bill really is.

The Bill is out to reverse the past 40 years of bi-partisan progress on race relations, such that even traditional National Party conservatives (eg Jenny Shipley, Chris Finlayson)have come out in public opposition to it. If only National was being led by a competent person – Jim Bolger, John Key - this thing would never have made it past the coalition talks.

Yet here we are. Under the leadership of Christopher Luxon, it seems that everything – even the nation’s founding document – is transactional. (You help give me the Treasury benches, I’ll help give you the Treaty to play with for six months etc.) And through it all Seymour continues to fail upwards, with his smirk intact.

Engineers of chaos

Looking further afield, Donald Trump and the cult he leads plainly have no interest at all in fostering good government. They don’t believe such a thing exists. Their conscious aim is to destroy any lingering hope the public may have had that the government can ever be a positive force in their lives. Putting Robert Kennedy Jnr in charge of the US public health system marks a giant step in that direction.

On the surface, making an anti-science peddler of crackpot conspiracy theories (Vaccines cause autism! Fluoride is poison!) responsible for public health makes as much sense as putting a sexual predator (Matt Gaetz) in charge of the US justice system, or a Fox News host (Pete Hegseth) in charge of the Pentagon, or making a fangirl of Vladimir Putin and Bashir al-Assad (Tulsi Gabbard) the overseer of US intelligence agencies.

These are joke appointments, but with a purpose. The aim is to generate top-down chaos, carried out by people whose only credential for high office is their unswerving loyalty to the man who appointed them. On climate change, this Trumpian worldview hasn’t changed in any visible way, either.

Back here at home, former GCSB boss and current SIS chief Andrew Hampton recently worried out loud that maybe some visiting sister city officials (from China?) posed a security risk to this country. Presumably, Christopher Luxon didn’t raise this existential threat with Xi Jinping at their meeting last week.

But how is Hampton feeling now that all the secrets of the 5 Eyes network are to be entrusted to a walking talking security risk like Tulsi Gabbard? Not that Hampton would ever publicly voice such concerns – but he and his former colleagues at the GCSB must be wondering if there is any possible way of insulating the 5 Eyes network from Gabbard’s access and influence.

Of all these bizarre appointments, Robert Kennedy Jnr probably has the best chance of being a political success, at least. A lot of Americans of all political persuasions happen to share Kennedy’s hostility to Big Pharma and to global agri-business. Kennedy also harbours deep suspicions of what ultra-processed food – including seed oils and scented food – might be doing to the hearts and minds of Americans, and to their intestinal tracts.

Reportedly, Kennedy (and his good friend Tucker Carlson) believe that the incidence of cancer, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, the rise in dementia and the decline in sperm counts across the West can all be traced back to (a) the consumption of too much ultra-processed food (b) the ready access to certain vaccines and (c) the use of the contraceptive pill.

Kennedy has vowed to therefore stop what he calls “The mass poisoning of America’s children.” Right. Regardless of his excess of zeal, Kennedy’s crusade on behalf of America’s metabolic purity could garner a large amount of bi-partisan public support.

The current bible for Kennedy’s worldview appears to be a best seller called Good Energy - The Surprising Connection Between Good Metabolism and Limitless Health written by the sibling duo of Casey and Calley Means. Reportedly, Kennedy likes the book a lot. The UK Spectator magazine predicts that this pair will be given prominent roles within the next US federal health administration.

Footnote One: Given Kennedy’s past role in promoting the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism, and given his open hostility to the Covid vaccines that saved millions of lives worldwide, one can see why Kennedy recently tried to reach out and re-assure the public that “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.”

Even if that is true – and it remains to be seen – Kennedy is plainly not the man likely to reverse America’s declining rates of vaccination, a trend already threatening to see the re-emergence of deadly, entirely avoidable diseases like polio. On the contrary. Rather than mount federal vaccination campaigns to promote community safety from such diseases, Kennedy appears to be intent on turning vaccination into a purely individual decision. Children and further generations will pay the price of their parents’ paranoia.

Footnote Two: As the American Prospect has reluctantly conceded, not all of Trump’s Cabinet picks are feral lunatics. On trade, Trump has re-appointed Robedrt Lighthiizer, one of the very few Trump appointees who were (a) reasonably competent and (b) able to survive Trump’s first term.

In a recent Economist article, the Prospect adds, the newly appointed national security adviser Michael Waltz had given the world a pretty clear outline of Trump’s early foreign policy priorities – i.e. hand Ukraine to Putin via a speedy “settlement” of that war, so that the US can concentrate on what Trump believes to be America’s only genuine threat: namely, China.

Europe will be left to fend for itself. Trump does not live in a multipolar world. Since AUKUS is targeted at China, the pact will prosper during the second Trump presidency. To put that another way: if New Zealand opted to stay out of AUKUS for whatever reason, we would quickly wind up on Trump’s enemies list.

So much for any hopes we might like to entertain about retaining an independent foreign policy. Team Trump or Beijing Buddy? Our diplomatic space has just got a whole lot smaller.

The other Tyler

Country music star Tyler Childers is due to play in Auckland on February 6th, at Spark Arena, no less. Is Childers really that popular here? I guess we’re about to find out. Like many other youngish (he’s 33) country music traditionalists, Childers doesn’t fit into either the Nashville mainstream, or the Texas outlaw mould.

He’s no fan of the Americana genre as a whole, either: "As a man who identifies as a country music singer, I feel Americana ain't no part of nothing and is a distraction from the issues that we're facing on a bigger level as country music singers. It kind of feels like purgatory.”

The inability to pigeon-hole Childers – and his tradition- soaked peers – means that on his most recent album, a deeply religious track (“Luke 2: 8-210”) can sit alongside an equally deeply felt song (“In Your Love”) with a video depicting a queer romance. (The best of the new country traditionalists include a number of openly gay artists, such as S.G. Goodman and Willi Carlisle.)

A not outstanding singer and fine songwriter, Childers is more than anything a likeable performer whose personality transcends his musical gifts. Childers’ breakthrough track was this heartfelt critique – inspired by the death of George Floyd – of America’s violently racist past:

On many of his US concert dates on his 2025 tour – but not alas in New Zealand – Childers’s opening act will be S.G. Goodman. That video mentioned above for “In Your Love” was directed by the best selling author Silas House, who has written this brilliant profile article about Goodman, defining her place within the new Southern tradition.

One of Childers bigger hits to date has been his cover version of Goodman’s song “Space and Time” but IMO, the original version is peerless:

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