The 2010 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture: Annette Sykes

Helen Clark labeled her as one of New Zealand’s ‘haters and wreckers’; she’s friends with Hone Harawira; in 2008 the Listener declared her to be the third most powerful New Zealander in the law field; she’s represented Tame Iti against police charges such as terrorism; she’s the darling of many leftists, anarchist and liberals; she’s a strong critic of Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed legislation, and this year she will be presenting the prestigious Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture at the University of Auckland. Annette Sykes' lecture topic will be ‘The Politics of the Brown Table’. This sounds like a very appropriate topic for analysis in 2010, especially with the Treaty Settlements supposedly coming towards an end, the foreshore and seabed issue being ‘fixed’, and the Maori Party’s internal contradictions being resolved in favour of a Maori elite. Unfortunately, Sykes is actually more of a nationalist than a leftist, and so her analysis will not be a progressive one, but a Maori Nationalist one, which has little real connection with anything leftwing, and certainly nothing that Bruce Jesson would have had anything in common with. [Read more below]

 

When the Listener promoted Annette Sykes as one of 2008’s so-called ‘Power Listers’, I blogged that she is actually an interesting mix of radical and conservative. While she is sometimes feted by everyone on the left from socialists to liberals, her politics don’t actually have a lot to do with leftism. Despite Sykes’ radical rhetoric, her anti-Establishment poses, and her occasional critiques of Maoridom, she’s actually seems mostly about trying to create a new Maori elite based on business and private property rights. It seems a bit strange therefore that she’s giving this year’s Bruce Jesson lecture. Because, although in many ways a nationalist himself, Jesson was strongly opposed to much of what Sykes stands for.

Sykes has been labeled the ‘respectable face of Maori nationalism’ by fellow nationalist Mike Smith, but it seems that he only means ‘respectable’ in the sense of her playing a leading part in diverting the Maori protest movement into a legalistic and Treaty-based vehicle for social and political change. Back in the 1970s a truly grass-roots protest movement was rising and groups like Nga Tamatoa were a real challenge to the status quo (with a strong socialist current), but the movement soon got sidelined into biculturalism and Treaty politics – and most significantly a new-found appreciation for using the ‘respectable’ route of the legal system to bring about change. Sykes became a key part of this elite-direction.

Property rights became the rallying cry, and the politics of equality was largely left behind, along with any other meaningful anti-capitalism or desire for total social change. This route ended up in the absurd dead-end of nationalism, which means that Sykes now talks endlessly about iwi as ‘tribal nations’ that should enjoy ‘government-to government relationships with the New Zealand Government’ (see: Annette Sykes: The Sovereignty Debate? Has it been silenced?).

When she’s not being a lawyer - she's a Partner in a law firm, as well as a director for numerous companies - these days Sykes seems to put much of her political energy into promoting Maori business. For instance, during the Matariki festivities this year she was the host of the ‘Leading Maori Businesspeople Front Economic Sustainability Forum’ dealing with the fruits of the Treaty settlements in helping Maori business. Of course, she’s also been involved in the Maori Party, albeit aligned with the more marginal Hone Harawira.

This new-found ‘respectability’ doesn’t necessarily mean that Sykes has ‘sold out’ or become part of the Establishment. Nor does it mean that she has nothing interesting or insightful to say. She is, after all, a useful critic of the mainstream of Maoridom. For instance, she has been the most severe critic of the powerful new Iwi Leadership Group. This is what she’s recently said about the group:

The [Iwi Leadership Group] are corporate Maori. They're not ordinary Maori. They're the corporate entities, so what they [the Government] are doing is they're setting up a sounding board of corporate Maori. That is by no means an inclusive approach to the Maori position.

See: A new power in the land

Sykes actually also advocates a democratic alternative to the Iwi Leadership Group – one that would involve ‘delegates to be elected from within Maori seats - largely drawn on tribal lines - at each general election’. So, I’m sure there will be some useful and interesting elements to her analysis.
But overall it seems that Annette Sykes’ Bruce Jesson lecture on ‘The Politics of the Brown Table’ will concentrate not on the whole problem of Treaty politics and the model that is creating a Maori business class and middle class (and keeping most Maori impoverished), but more on the fact that the ‘wrong’ Maori are being elevated to the elite. There will of course be a lot of radical rhetoric and leftwing symbolism thrown into this conservative mix, but in the end her lecture is likely to offer no significant alternative to the status quo. Bruce Jesson would surely be disappointed.

Details:

• 2010 Bruce Jesson Lecture by Annette Sykes
• 27 October 2010
• 6.30pm
• Maidment Theatre, Alfred Street, Auckland