Speaker by Various Artists

There's a reasonably famous book by a guy called Hans Morgenthau that tends to be quoted within the ranks of International Relations theorists. Nine times out of ten his post WW2 book Politics Among Nations is paraphrased with the mantra "power is politics", a neat abbreviation of a single idea the book analyses. What's important to note though is that Morgenthau doesn't appear to actually say that anywhere. Instead, this concept has been footnoted down through so many theorists that it is now taken as gospel.

I mention this because many years back someone pointed out that I might in fact be the first person he knew who had taken time to sit down and actually read Morgenthau. In this regard I am being to empathise with anyone who has actually sat down and read Michael King's Being Pakeha, because there appears to be a trend toward understanding this no doubt important book without having read more than someone else's synopsis, or skimming it for the juicy bits. The most obvious example of course is Mallards recent "me indigenous too" speech, but I noticed another column in the Herald this past Sunday.

Now, I think I need to remind you all from the outset that I too grew up in Mount Maunganui, and it's for that reason I find her column a little problematic. Like Sandra, I went overseas on a student exchange when 17, and was involved in the same chapter of the exchange programme as her. I however was banished to the wilds of East Texas, which is a story for another day. Let me say though that the deep and abiding attachment to place she mentions as absent in Americans is alive and well in the forests and counties of the Deep South. Banjos haunt me to this day.

Unlike Sandra however I grew up at the other end of town, with the Mount, Mauao, a presence that loomed in the distance out the front of the house I grew up in. Far more important in my own experience of that same town was the Papamoa hills, a low range of foothills carved into terraces by Ngaiterangi before the signing of the Treaty. I was an adult before I learnt that the first of these was Maungatawa, a totem of the whale that brought Tamatea to New Zealand in the Takitimu waka.

Mauao looms large in my memory, but there was always a palpable distance between that icon and my neighbourhood that's only really understood by people who grew up in the 'bad' part of town. And it's this small difference that sets Sandra's experience away from my own. Even though I know the exact places and things of which she speaks in her column, my perception of them is subtly different in a way that is probably unimportant to an outsider, but provides a point of distinction and commonality between her and I.

So why is this important? Because the way we both imagine the exact same place is a profound influence on our own interpretation of what is a common past. There's an old saying, 'you are what you eat'. As much as our consumption shapes any of us, our past sits within us, under layer upon layer of event, impression, mood and action, giving form to whoever you are today, and guiding you toward that future person. Some things your memory keeps, some it doesn't

Regardless of this difference that makes us individuals, Sandra and I both imagine ourselves to be from the same place, and remember things that give depth to our attachment. And it's for this reason that I find this type of column problematic.

For one thing, I'm noticing that I really should read Being Pakeha. In fact, I'll head out to some second hand bookstores today. The other thing is that the numbers of adherents to this New Indigenous movement, those who subscribe to this type of thought, seems to be gathering momentum in New Zealand. And I'm becoming increasingly alert (but not alarmed) to the way in which it is influencing New Zealand nation-building.

I may have mentioned before that nation-building is a process of encouraging attachment to an imaginary identity, a nation. Completely banal things like currency, the national flag, the news people you watch, the national sport and your neighbourhood all contribute on a daily basis to your understanding of yourself as a member of some nationality.

They say this identity is 'imaginary' because it's shared in a communal imagination, with people being kiwi because they think they are. In other words, I can only be what I say I am if someone agrees with me.

Without having read it, Being Pakeha is an attempt to express the boundaries of what constitutes that national imagination. What separates my generation from those previous is that an ever greater number of individuals no longer feel and deep and abiding attachment to England as 'home', and the New Indigenous movement is trying to give expression to this mutual sense of belonging.

While I think this need to express is good, I'm finding that it is too easy for such writing to stray into platitudes and personal views on what constitutes being Kiwi. And, I'm even more concerned about the possibility of this type of idea being deployed by the unscrupulous to undermine the premises of Maori distinctiveness, i.e. the we are all immigrants argument.

This risk in this instance is that people superimpose their own experience on icons like Mauao, ignoring that history in favour of their own, thereby perpetuating the kind of colonial arrogance that got us into the pickle we now call Treaty politics. Of course, to force people like this to acknowledge and remember the Maori history of Mauao would be 'PC', so there's a bit of a Catch-22 there.

So the example I want to use to illustrate why this approach concerns me centres on immigration. I think that the New Indigenous movement has purchase in the imaginations of Kiwis because they have a particular shared idea of the nation constructed in New Zealand after 1840. Consequently, when a column like Sandra's is printed people identify both with her and her viewpoint, reaffirming what they already believe about their own attachment to place. 'We' came here and built this nation and country, all that 'we' survey is now the possession of the New Zealand nation, Kiwis.

But would this be true if Sandra was Asian?

Two years ago in my capacity as a feature writer for the New Zealand Herald I wrote a piece about the immunisation debate. Please God, never again.

Aside from the confusingly similar names of the bickering protagonists -- the Immunisation Awareness Society v Immunisation Advisory Centre -- it was the kind of issue where the people you speak to assume your interest in them means you will act as their advocate. Of course if you get criticism from both sides after publication you've probably done a good job -- although you can feel pretty shitty hearing that double dose of abuse.

In this case the warring tribes -- the IAS v IAC, see what I mean? -- were eerily silent until a few days later one of the parties got in touch and said I had done a good job and felt their views were fairly reported. That was all I hoped to do and so said as much to my caller. And I thought that was it, time to move on an interview a speed metal band or something.

But that wasn't where it ended. I was now on their e-mail list -- and in the following week I would open my computer in trepidation. There would be yet another 25 page report sent to me. When I tried to explain via e-mail reply that I had finished with that issue, I was moving on to other things and anyway was a mere journalist in their Greater Game it was as if I'd admitted to buggering their first-born and having stolen the wedding photos on the way out the door. Suddenly the e-mails took on a nasty tone.

I cried "Spam" when I was accused, less than 10 days after being told I had done a good job, of not having presented their side of the story at all well and that they, quite frankly, had been disappointed by the piece. These people had expected me to continue presenting their views and when I didn't I had failed as their advocate.

Immunisation? Never again. They are prickly people these unpricked people. And something similar happened recently. So, like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, "I got to thinking ..." Recently I interviewed people inside and outside the local Jewish community about their fears, or otherwise, of a rise in anti-Semitism in this country. The story was prompted by the prime minister's comments on the alleged Mossad agents and the subsequent damage to Jewish gravestones. The mood, if there was one, was exacerbated by the impending arrival of historian David Irving. The story ran before the recent, deplorable desecration of Jewish graves and the burning of the prayer room in Wellington.

The Jewish people I spoke to were generous with their time, reasonable and articulate, and because of my upbringing I was aware of how sensitive they could be to even the most veiled suggestion of anti-Semitism. I was fortunate when growing up that here my adopted family, whom I called aunty and uncle, were Jewish and so we shared family holidays and celebrations, birthdays and bar mitzvahs, and unfortunately many funerals. Every year at Christmas the family, as we called them, would come over for a huge lunch and exchange presents. It wasn't until I was a bit older that the irony of this -- and the fact none of my other friends ever had contact with Jews -- struck me as unusual. And so I guess I brought that to what I wrote in my article when I concluded that this was "a concern perhaps only fully understood within a minority community which has a history of being oppressed, marginalised and murdered."

The people I spoke with were not alarmist, didn't suggest for a minute that anti-Semitism was rife here, and indeed a non-practicing Jew I interviewed said he saw no evidence of it at all.

I got a very nice phone call from one of the ladies I spoke with to say she thought the article fair and that she had been faithfully reported. And so to bed. Well, not quite.

Then the e-mails started to fly, most behind my back but some passed on to me. There were suggestions that I only interviewed the non-practising Jewish guy because he was a journalist who knew me and so got in my ear. (Never met him actually, hadn't even spoken to him before that phone call.)

It was said his opinion should not have been presented because he was the type of character who would pull out his Jewishness when it suited, and what did he know anyway. It was a really low ad hominem attack. Then somebody else said, then he said ...

At this point the e-chatter turned into idle gossip, which is just skin-distance above rumour and innuendo in my book.

(Incidentally, his opinions were brief but included because I thought he had an excellent point: that people such as himself were perfectly entitled to comment because anti-Semites don't distinguish between practicing and non-practicing Jews. In other words, those who discriminate aren't discriminating.)

Then a week later in what I jocularly referred to around the office as "the right hand giving and the left wing taking away" I wrote another separate and largely unrelated piece.

I interviewed a non-practicing, American-born, Jewish professor who had lived in Israel since 1974. He was pro-Palestinian (which isn't to say anti-Jewish, or even anti-Israel of course) and a peace activist. I interviewed him for the Herald's regular "Perspectives" page in which people get to put their viewpoints forward. Often contributors write their own, sometimes a journalist like me simply acts as a conduit. This is not adversarial journalism (although in this case hard questions were obviously asked) but is a chance to let someone air their opinion, whether it be popular or not.

The gentleman I interviewed was articulate and even amusing. But I knew his views, which I faithfully reported, would meet with condemnation from those who saw his questioning of the actions of Israel against the Palestinians as tantamount to supporting Palestinian terrorism. And I figured his views would get approval from those pro-Palestinians who felt their perspective was finally being heard.

The first e-mail, which came from Chicago within minutes of the interview appearing on the Herald website congratulated me (Me? The mere messenger?) for telling about "the atrocities committed by the Israeli government in the occupied territories".

The writer poetically added the adage: "The ink of a scholar is holier then the blood of a martyr" and said my article was living proof of this statement.

"Keep up the good work sir, God Bless the truth tellers and the peace makers. Sincerely yours," it was signed. I knew there would be more to come from the counter-view.

What I didn't realise, as Carrie rarely says, is that I would be perceived a supporter of such atrocities as the killing of innocent Israeli civilians.

For some who wrote it seemed that to be the conduit for an idea or opinion was to be complicit. Huh? So we now not only burn the book and hang the author, but we go after the subeditor, the publisher and the whole damn building? This was absurd and clearly these people did not understand the notion of a section in a newspaper quite clearly labelled "Perspectives".

But the e-mails and phonecalls came in with accusations of the interview being one-sided (Yes. And?), and the old myth of objectivity had to be debunked yet again. And on this issue, as with criticism of contemporary art, if you don't agree with someone's opinion you "don't understand". Sorry, but that's an accusation I have always considered offensively arrogant and the last refuge of the cowardly who cannot accept a debate. I feel sorry now for the person I spoke to who foolishly used the phrase. Their ear is possibly still ringing.

My actions in reproducing this man's opinions were variously described as shameful and highly distorted. Interestingly in this time of global communication, many of the writers were from the United States.

Now, nowhere in my manual of life does it say that if you are critical of an opinion that means you are by definition supportive of another. Or vice versa. It also doesn't say that you will come into this world with a stamp on your birth certificate which says you will never be offended.

But as with the so-called "immunisation debate", the Israel-Palestine discussion is often little more than a Mexican stand-off between two blind men with loaded guns waiting for the slightest rustle of noise before blasting away.

I had a more amusing version of this kind of thing once last year when I wrote a satirical piece for the Herald's Sideswipe column. I wrote it as a letter from someone from Howick who came to the central city and was surprised by the number of non-New Zealanders on Queen St "lounging around using the seats provided" and speaking in a foreign language, "German possibly". It was, to any thinking person, a swipe at the anti-Asian sentiment which seemed prevalent at the time -- but then I got stuck into an overlong e-mail debate with a haughty fellow about it. He, like a few people, hadn't got the joke. But unlike the others who railed against the racism of my imaginary writer then accepted with some embarrassment it was a humorous piece when it was pointed out to them, this gentleman didn't want to shut up after he learned it was satirical.

It was wrong and irresponsible to mislead readers he said, and that such writing was acceptable in Private Eye but not in the Herald. I pointed out that Sideswipe was clearly a humorous column and that even the Herald had a small tradition of such writing, and that I didn't consider my editors irresponsible. He came back at me with something else, I returned the volley, he said his German friends hadn't been amused "and should I tell them they had no sense of humour?" I said yes, and added that he had none either. He came back outraged even more, I said I was weary of this discussion and that I considered the matter now closed, he came back and said that was arrogant and how dare I? He wanted to know how to contact the editor. I told him the details were in the paper every day or he might want to try something called the telephone directory.

Needless to say the editor never heard from this humourless, bullying and self-important git.

But it was much the same mindset as these more serious issues have revealed. That context in which writing and opinions appear is important, and that some people have the unreasonable expectation that all sections of a newspaper be "objective" and "balanced" -- and free of humour it seems. Some people even bang on about this when they read a review of something they don't like: "Yeah but it's just one person's opinion" they'll say to which I invariably reply, "True, but it is an informed person's opinion, and that makes all the difference." That always stops them, and usual pisses them off even more.

Anyway, as Carrie says, it got me to thinking ...

But in the Palestinian/Israeli/Jewish issue -- as with immunisation -- I was reminded of an epigram I heard many years ago which I consider an injunction we could all, journalists included, remember.

It's a saying which comes in handy before blasting at those who hold an unshakeable opinion or even have the temerity to advance someone else's: We all see the world from our own disadvantage point.

I think they called them perspectives.

Drive through America's southern states tuned to country music radio stations and you'll hear it; Letters from Home by John Michael Montgomery.

It's real catchy, was still in the top 20 of the country charts after six months, and you can guess what it's about.

But in case you miss the sentimental message the video is even more literal: photogenic talent-agency soldiers playing cards and looking bored, reading letters from the folks back home, then suddenly leaping into action in some dusty, bleached out world.

It isn't the only country song where the subtext is Iraq – "freedom doesn't come free'' is a common lyric these days – but it is typical of a pervasive mood. This is a reductive and cliched view of heroism but, judging by Montgomery's sales, a popular one. American flags and bumper stickers are visible enough throughout most of the South, but especially so in Texas. This is the president's home state and his portrait as governor hangs in Austin's impressive State Capitol Building, which people will tell you stands taller than the National Capitol in Washington DC.

But that's Texas for you, everything is bigger here – even the myths. The flags may look like banners for the incumbent if increasingly beleaguered home-state guy in the White House, but you don't have to go far to find Texans of a different, and indifferent, persuasion. "Not my president" is a familiar t-shirt around universities. Trophy's Bar and Grill in south Austin is a rundown kind of place in one of the less savoury parts of town. There are tattered pool tables, graffiti covers the toilet walls, and the girl behind the bar says women are seldom seen there.

In the men's toilet there is no door on the cubicle. It seems there never has been one. If you believe what the marker pens tell you someone called Dave is a sexual athlete with the morals of a goat. There's a small, battered stage just beyond the pool tables and working men come here to drink at the end of the day while the jukebox pumps out ancient Beatles songs, Jane's Addiction rock and pompous Guns 'n' Roses ballads.

On the silent television screen above the bar news footage from Iraq rolls on. Few people are watching the captioning but nurse their beers quietly. After an hour however the liquor kicks and the conversations and jukebox become louder, the talk more animated.

"Dead man walking,'' mutters someone when John Kerry appears on the screen. In a state where bars and restaurants have signs warning against carrying a firearm it's hard to know whether he means Kerry hasn't a hope, or that he might be the target of a bullet if he starts pulling too far ahead of Bush in the polls.

But Kerry still seems a lame duck in many regards and even his supporters concede he's coming across as equivocating, his foreign policy statements not sufficiently distinguishable from the Republican positions, and he's no good on television.

"Every time he opens his mouth he loses votes,'' says a friend. "They should just keep him off television.''

"He looks weird too,'' says his wife. Well, elections – as Richard Nixon learned -- have been won and lost on such an impression.

But a lot of people just don't care.

Warren is a weather-beaten Trophy's Bar regular who describes himself as having been a bum.

"But I never had no sign", he barks, as if this would have been demeaning.

He tells the story of his life. It includes hitching from Louisiana, something about living with a couple of prostitutes who took his money, then a gay guy "but I ain't no gay", and now working for the county. He says it would make a great book, "but I can't write".

"I ain't innerested in no politics neither," he says, and in this bar he isn't alone in that. Over in east Austin which is largely Mexican there is even less interest. These are people who feel disenfranchised from the process of politics. Add in the itinerants, illegals, the ineligibles because they are felons (five per cent of those of voting age in Texas) and the homeless (4000 in Austin's Travis County), and you see why voter turn-out can be so low in the United States. Celeb-radical film maker Michael Moore talks of the 50/50/50 divide in America: "Those who vote, those who seem evenly split, and the 50 per cent that don't vote''.

He's not overstating the case. The last election when more than 55 per cent of Americans voted was 1972 (55.2 per cent) and the turnout hit a low of 49 per cent in 96. For the election which saw George W Bush take office only 51 per cent of eligible voters turned up to the ballet box. Bush took office with fewer than half of half the voters.

When you add in the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries – and that thing with the chads in Florida last time – a lot of people simply don't bother with, or even care about, politics.

But Tom sipping a Newcastle Brown in Trophy's is keen to talk geo-politics and what is playing out silently above us on the television. He's in his early 40s, tells of how he joined the military at age 17 ("Part of the poverty draft, I was a high school dropout so what else was there?") and served a tour of duty in Korea. His unit was later on high alert when the Russians invaded Afghanistan.

He's a lapsed military man now and after a lifetime of itinerancy, trade courses, installing satellite dishes and working as a carpenter he is self-educated politically and well-informed. It was the Iran-Contra hearings that alerted him to the idea that all was not right with his government.

"So I just started trying to find out truth. And it's always, follow the money, follow the money."

He reads Noam Chomsky and the liberal left, spent time in South America working for aid programmes, and the Internet has put him in touch with like-minded people and websites. They feed his interests which, he acknowledges, put him just this side of a conspiracy theorist. He's in good company in Austin, the home to the nation's foremost conspiracy theorists Alex Jones who has radio programmes, websites and low-tech cable shows on television.

"I consider Alex Jones a soldier," says Tom. "He's just using his own methods of warfare." It would be too easy to dismiss Jones lightly as attracting only the fringe dwellers. His analysis of the Patriot Act – which he argues is anti-democratic and fundamentally unAmerican – finds common ground with arch-conservatives as well as liberals.

In his documentaries and low budget television programmes Jones speaks of the oil cartels, takes heartland sentiment back to the founding documents of the nation, cross-references to reports in the mainstream media, and steadily builds his case against the Bush administration.

He uses all the available technology – one of his many linked websites is jonesreport.com – and while he may be a blunt speaker he is impressive and even persuasive. And in the absence of contrary voices or the anonymous media releases from the White House he is finding an audience among the doubters, disenchanted or vaguely curious.

Intellectual dissenters like Jones ("Now he's a true patriot," says Ray who runs a local computer software company) are not only important to the democratic process but essential. As we see by the newspaper on the following hung-over morning.

The Austin American-Statesman's Saturday edition comes with half a dozen sections including Metro and State news, Life and Arts, a Business section and, at a guess, approximately half a million car ads.

I turn to World & Nation. It is four pages, two of them full-page advertisements, the other two splattered by quarter and half page ads. The section contains just one story, a slight LA Times piece about how South American countries are not the new "axis of evil" as Republican senator from Illinois Henry Hyde said in October 2002.

And that is the sum of the world news for this weekend edition. Television news is no better. Outside of major networks like CNN or Rupert Murdoch's pro-Bush Fox network, news tends to be local and little further.

In the absence of readily digestible information and the overload of commentators and interpretations by thousands of talking heads on nightly newscasts, it is little wonder the politically curious have resorted to the Internet and AM radio to hear the voices of people like Jones. He might not be reaching as many people as John Michael Montgomery and his patriotic Letters From Home but he is speaking to, and for, a significant, concerned and yes, sometimes slightly flaky, minority.

In the wide open spaces of Texas the opinions of the New York Times, the Los Angeles press or the handsome faces on CNN might as well be from another planet.

"People just want entertainment, another Survivor," says Tom. "But Alex Jones is the real reality television."

We buy more beers and Warren tells me about his new weed-eater. A young Spanish guy rides through the bar and around the pool tables on a pushbike.

"What can you do?" says the barman. It occurs to me later he could have been talking about politics.

One of the topics the revisionist historian Henry Reynolds discusses throughout his numerous books is the unwillingness of the Australian nation to confront its genocidal history in relation to Aboriginal people. Much like the old bogeyman of the 'the stain', Australians just don't seem to want to acknowledge the kinds of injustices levelled against the Aboriginal after the first settlers and convicts arrived. Why this is the case is something too big to deal with in the few words I can offer here, but lets hope that somebody works out something soon, because the situation of Aboriginal people can only be described as dire.

I remember as a kid hearing people compare New Zealand and Australia with statements like 'at least we don't treat our Maoris the way the Aussies treat their Aborigines'. That type of thinking always puzzled me though. How in the hell can you have relativity in the mistreatment of an entire people? And who says they're 'our' Maori? This type of proprietary bullshit pervades conventional wisdoms among colonial-minded nationals in most of the former Empire.

I always feel a slight cross-Tasman pride then when I talk to anyone about the Treaty or Treaty-settlement policy though, I have to admit. At least I know that Maori aren't getting the same kind of raw deal that Aboriginal people are. But, I should specify that its mostly a case of getting shafted by the Howard Coalition Government, Keating set in train a series of reforms that were supposed to get the ball rolling for Aboriginal people, but they were stymied by Howard in the usual favouritism towards the 'big end of town' boys.

The subject is being broached by my good self because last week I went to a seminar expecting to be informed about the proposals to scrap the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). The Commission has existed since the 1990s as the peak representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and was charged with managing a number of programmes, while also providing a consultative role through elected commissioners. It never really worked.

Part of the problem is that ATSIC has always been labelled as handling 'black money', meaning that every time someone wanted to make Hanson-style political points out of the race card they could indicate the 'ghettoisation' of the funding being allocated to Aboriginal people. The usual calls were that it was wasted cash, one billion a year being allocated without any real improvement in the lives of Aboriginal people etc.

The truth of the matter is that ATSIC were lumped with an albatross from the outset. One of the remote communities here in Victoria is a good example. The former mission station is in Gippsland, which is about four and a half hours from Melbourne. Now, although the community there pays rates to the local shire they receive no services. And that means none at all. Nada. Instead, ATSIC provides the cash that keeps the water system flowing, rubbish collected, sewerage removed and that type of thing. This happens in numerous Aboriginal communities and was a substantial outlay from the ATSIC budget.

Second, most of the people residing there are effectively on the dole. But, in a tricky bit of political manoeuvring, instead of being registered with the dole office, they are supplied through ATSIC and a separate programme. This means that less Aboriginal people are formally 'unemployed' in official statistics. Tricky. And these two spending examples are common to all the regions of Australia.

In effect then, ATSIC money is money that could or should already be spent by the mainstream, but it gets used to both hide both local government indifference or racism, and state or federal inaction in Aboriginal policy. And meanwhile, Aboriginal people are experiencing 'third world' levels of poor health and mortality.

So, I figure that I'll attend this seminar and get some more facts to supplement what I've heard in the media. But little did I know I was being bushwhacked.

It turns out that the ATSIC topic was an entrée to a party political drive by a bloke called Richard Frankland for a party he is trying to establish called 'Your Voice'. It's still in the early stages, but it was really interesting to be there when something like this is just getting off the ground, especially considering that he is an Aboriginal man trying to get an Aboriginal political party moving. So if you're living in Australia and want to get involved, join the party, it costs very little and you might be able to put an Aboriginal Senator in place to hold that balance of power. He only needs 500 members to start trying to make a difference

One of the things Frankland pointed out that is very is very true is that the Wik Amendments to the Native Title Act scraped through the Senate because one independent Senator, Brian Harradine, supported the Coalition. This isn't the place to talk about the inequities of the Wik Amendments, designed as they were to make it impossible for Aboriginal people living anywhere near the bigger cities to try and claim back their traditional lands. Maybe another day.

So, after a brief talk about ATSIC and a mention that Howard is scrapping the Commission instead of following the recommendations of this report, the first speaker sits and Frankland gets up to speak. Now, as soon as I realise what's going on the 'cynic bells' are ringing, and I'm getting a little worried about wasting half a day and travelling an hour by tram to see this stuff.

I needn't have worried.

At first Frankland comes across with some angry words about the state of Aboriginal society and the way in which it is impossible to find support to prevent the further erosion of Aboriginal culture, in what is the 'usual' talk, but then the mood changed. It seems that he was a Field Officer during the investigations surrounding the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and he related some of the things he saw and heard to us in the audience.

Now, my bullshit detector is pretty finely tuned after years of hearing people describe the situation in Aboriginal Australia, and I've travelled to a few remote places were Aboriginal people are doing it tough, so none of this was a surprise to me. But what really hit me, what was really a punch in the gut, was watching tears well up in his eyes while he spoke of the way the fieldwork had affected him.

Any bloke who can confess to an audience of complete strangers, without apparent insincerity, that he spent eight years identifying 'hanging places' in his home, his workplace, in public, and had to tell himself every single day to not take up the rope himself and rid the world of one more Aboriginal gains my respect, and deserves the standing ovation the audience gave him.

Like I say, a punch in the gut.

As a final note, I want to talk about the democracy problem. A lot of the time the marginalisation of Aboriginal people is excused because they total a mere 2% of the Australian population. Hence, it's difficult to explain how and why so much time and effort should be expended helping them reach the living standards of the majority. But my answer to this is that you're still talking about 350,000 people. THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND people. That's bigger than the population of most Australian cities, and is not the insignificant number that "2%" sounds. So like I say, if you're reading this in Aussie, check out the website and maybe give a little hand, if not only because getting involved in a party is better than donating money in a do-gooder fashion, and the more articulate Aboriginal people out their taking the fight to government themselves, the better.

I was in Piedmontes, a local supermarket that is a bit of a Fitzroy icon, the other day and waiting in line and I spotted a bloke buying razors, but rather sheepishly for what is a pretty mundane item. I realised the problem when he quickly snatched a packet of trojans and snuck into line, probably with the intention of getting them through the checkout with minimum fuss.

Not wanting to miss a chance to take the piss, I waited till he was looking less nervous and commented that all he needed was a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates and he's set. His reply? "Yeah, you know she's special when you bother to shave."

Ah. Blokes. The salt of the earth.

This moment of mutually respectful masculinity was interrupted by a person behind us in line FREAKING OUT because the line wasn't moving fast enough. Behind her was another woman who was happy just to wait, but this old biddy was totally losing it.

As it happened the woman in line in front of me was using a credit card, but the EFTPOS machine was kaput (which happens at Piedmontes all too often). The cashier was doing the best she could, but it being Monday afternoon there were few staff rostered on and things were moving pretty slowly.

Why in the hell a person like that comes to 'the legendary Piedmontes' and expects fast and efficient service, or even a well organised shelving system is totally beyond me. That little explore through the over stacked, overpriced and chaotic aisles is part of the experience.

So, while me and this geezer were joking around about his purchases this lunatic was literally yelling at the person in from of me, the cashier, the lady behind her, slamming her shopping basket down, decrying the difficultly of finding anything at all in on the shelves (very true), letting out sighs of exasperation, waving her arms in the air like a muppet and generally acting like a damn nut._And then I produced a Visa to pay for my purchases.

You can tell she wasn't very British. While the rest of us were standing in line like well-trained citizens she simply refused to act with calm reason. Or maybe her medication wore off. Who knows.

Anyhow, you can guarantee the Pope would put her in her place. In my oh so humble opinion the sooner that codger seeks to talk with his maker the better for all of us. But then, being as old as he is his mum probably passed many years ago.

Like most conservatives the old boy seems to suffer that peculiar amnesia about what things were like before the PC revolution. I saw a great button on Tony Blair in a cartoon the other day that said, "kill a 60s liberal for Christ". Maybe since Muslims are proving too difficult to pin down and screw that 'liberals' have become the target of choice. We'll have to put that down to the old us-them dichotomy that makes 'tradition' so attractive.

Back on the home front and in a further exposition of ground already covered by Russell and David, my initial reaction to Trevor Mallard claiming he was indigenous was 'buffoon'. This goes to show two things though. One that Mallard obviously has no idea that it would be the only byte in his speech to go public, and second that it pays to read the entire content of something before you jump to conclusions.

Sure, Mallard is actually about as native as pinus radiata or Watties tomato sauce, but I can understand his point. With the matrilineal and patrilineal lines arriving in '39 and '42 respectively I can relate to the idea of actually being from New Zealand, and probably have as good a claim as most to feel attached to the nation. But indigenous? No.

It's a good thing that the rest of the speech wasn't too bad an outline of a coherent Treaty policy, because otherwise Mallard has opened himself to criticism of aiming to undermine Maori by taking away the one thing that gives the minority society its distinctiveness in the New Zealand political debate.

In a nutshell for those of you who haven't read the speech despite Russell pointing it out to you, he outlined four points that are good and coherent. Number one is that the Crown is the sovereign entity. Stability on this point is good for both Maori and majority. Even if you disagree with government, its good to know its there and at least some of your rights are protected.

The second is that Maori have the right to control or influence things Maori. This is no different to other interest groups contributing to their area of concern. For example, no one would presume to dictate to the Churches what is and is not legitimate for Christians to contribute to New Zealand society and then be able to force them to come to heel.

The third is that Maori are citizens and have the rights and obligations of all New Zealanders. One of the great furfies about Treaty politics is that it gives Maori extra or more rights that everybody else. This simply isn't true. What the Treaty relationship recognises is that Maori have interests in their affairs, and prevents this interest from being taken away. If Maori have received any extra rights it was equality as British subjects, something actively and deliberately denied Australian Aboriginal people up until the 1970s.

The fourth is that there is a system of mutual obligation in place of joint responsibility for both parties, Maori and Crown, to determine what is and what is not within the parameters of 'things Maori', and what is of general or common concern (i.e. everybody's business).

The really tricky thing is to politically determine what these interests or concerns are. Much of what alarmists are labelling the 'grievance industry' is actually an ongoing effort to restore some of the interests taken from Maori unjustly. This means for instance that the 1860s confiscations of Maori land had to be addressed. And to prevent this type of happening in future Maori have to be able to make demands about things that effect their society.

In a practical sense this means people in Wellington making demands as Maori about things Maori. It's pretty easy to skew the picture and depict this as some kind of back-room deal-making or elitism, but to do so is close to scare mongering. Anyone who seriously thinks these types of things can be settled by plebiscite is probably completely naïve. Instead, it's necessary to have leaders running things.

I don't know what it is about Kiwis that makes them freak about the dreaded 'elites'. Maybe it's some of kind of hangover from the not-so-distant days when British nationals were running things, but maybe its time we moved on, because the last time I was in Wellington it was Mallard's definition of 'indigenous' people running things. What this suggests to me is that if you work hard and have an iota of common sense or intellect you too can be part of the governmental chaos.

These mysterious 'elites' in Wellington are instead just people who've found themselves holding the reins of power because they can do the job. Whether we can trust them is another matter. The catch-22 is that you have to be an expert to prove they aren't up to their game (and that's the same if you're a lay or trained expert).

It seems to me that the idea we can all deal with difference and move on to a new and glorious future is a misnomer. In fact, I'm suspicious that it is an unconscious desire on the part of public figures like Chris Trotter or Philip Temple to simplify politics by undermining Maori difference.

The tricky thing is that the two separate issues of historical grievance and ongoing difference are collapsed into one issue of Treaty-gravy-train. To my mind there is an active cult of forgetfulness in New Zealand that wants to remove difference, because it considers difference as being nourished by the Treaty settlement 'industry'. Remove grievance, and Maori will lose political traction, remove Maori political traction and we can all get on with the business of just being New Zealanders.

But the truth of the matter is that this isn't ever going to happen. The PC revolution made sure that the voices in Maori society were finally listened to in Wellington, and no matter how much it's opponents try to manoeuvre it out of the way the Treaty will ensure that it isn't forgotten.

Anyone who's done their OE knows that there is a real sense of being kiwi, and it's much bigger than a lump in the throat. And Maori society, whether you participate in it or not, is a vital part of the experience that makes you and I New Zealanders.