Dame Susan Devoy has just been appointed the
new Race Relations Conciliator. She
succeeds Joris de Bres, who has always known what it is like to be part of a
minority – and who is known as a thinker, researcher and humanitarian. Dame Susan is known as a brilliant former champion
squash player and as having adopted some worthy charities. I believe she is about to receive an honorary
doctorate from Waikato University, but it’s difficult to know what that is actually
for. Waikato University will no doubt
make a good job of the citation on the day.
I once heard Dame Susan give the main address
at a university graduation ceremony. She
was egocentric and insightless. She
informed us at length how she got to where she is today. In its setting it could scarcely have been
more inappropriate. I do not know why
she was damed, except that we always have some odd decisions in the honours
department.
New Zealand’s Race Relations Conciliator has to
be someone of wisdom, education, keen sensitivity and experience of ethnic
issues. Our population is increasingly
mixed, with citizens and residents from all over the South Pacific, Asia,
Africa and Europe. The Maori-Pakeha
interface does not get less challenging.
People whose origins are in the British Isles are fewer proportionately.
Today I learned that Christchurch is
approaching its annual demonstration in the streets by the Right Wing
Resistance, an event of which I had not previously heard. The Right Wing Resistance has a website, with
photos. They turn out to be a sad, male,
overweight, ignorant, utterly pathetic bunch of racist simpletons, all decked
out in black tracksuits and heavy black boots and caps. On stage they would be a great comedy
item. But parts of their website are
sinister. There is a video of Hitler
amid much approval, and even clips of Jewish people being dragged around. They claim to have branches all through the
country, but Christchurch appears to be their centre at present. That has to be an embarrassment.
There is to be a counter demonstration by
people outraged by this. But what is the
point of that? A lot of shouting and
abuse, placards, and the police having to be deployed to keep people
apart. The best counter, it seems to me,
is utter ridicule. Our best humorists
and great names should be deployed to get everyone laughing at these ignorant clowns. Otherwise, ignore them.
I am sad if I do Susan Devoy an injustice – and
maybe she should be given a chance – but I don’t believe she is up to this
stuff. I find it hard to believe she
would ever begin to understand the roots of all this in history, or the mental
state of those who behave with racial hatred and Nazi salutes, and want to
dress up in imitation of Hitler’s fascists.
Joris de Bres was one generation away from his family’s personal
experience of all that in The Netherlands.
But will Dame Susan instinctively know where the seeds of racial hatred
lie? What makes people afraid of
difference? The thought of Dame Susan
trying to conciliate in some of these conflicts… oh no.
We could have had a properly trained Samoan,
Chinese, Indian, or South African Race Relations Conciliator. We could have had someone learned in history
or sociology. But our Minister of
Justice, Judith Collins, who seems to have learned her public service in the
Margaret Thatcher School of Charm and Management, appointed Dame Susan
Devoy. When this was questioned, she
switched on her excruciating and ingratiating smile and said, “Dame Susan will
do very well…” OK, I guess it’s
possible.
