Newztel News: RNZ “Mana News” 6.40 am Tuesday 18 March 2003

(A)

Presenter (Dale Husband): and this morning we look at why a few innocent sounding letters, G.A.T.S. may pose a great threat to Maori. GATS stands for the General Agreement on Trade and Services and it seems a large number of services of key interest to Maori may be included in this international treaty the government is planning to sign. The GATS could override the Treaty of Waitangi and open up to foreign companies a whole range of services from health, education, tourism and broadcasting, to electricity, waste management and water supplies. It may undermine the recognition of mana whenua, protection of tohunga and promotion of te reo Maori and a whole lot more besides. Here’s Carol Archie with that story.

Reporter (Carol Archie): in two weeks the government is due to make an initial response to the World Trade Organization in Geneva about bringing more of New Zealand services under the GATS. It’s very like the M.A.I or Multilateral Agreement on Investment which caused considerable Maori concern back in 1998. The New Zealand Coalition for Cultural Diversity is urging Maori to get up to date with the latest developments. Their chairman, Peter Shannon, has just returned from a meeting in France and he’s horrified by the implications of the gats for Maori and New Zealand as a whole.

Peter Shannon (chairman, New Zealand Coalition for Cultural Diversity): the Treaty of Waitangi is not recognized in international trade agreement and what we’re looking at here is any group that has a definite cultural need to be part of something is not recognized at all. So, if you’re looking at forests and Maori have a particular interest in a forest, or particular area, or in a particular service, say television, that can be opened up internationally if it’s part of the trade agreement and what happens then of course is if there are any preferences being shown to a particular group, that’s actually illegal in these international agreements because all trading partners need to have exactly the same standing and the government cannot discriminate in favour of the local providers.

Reporter: Peter says the treaty of Waitangi must be part of any negotiations with overseas companies and New Zealanders must insist that it’s included in the GATS. He says as an example, even a service like kohanga reo could be at risk.

Shannon: “Anything that is not exactly run by the government can be sold, or bought and run by another organization. For example if an American (I’m just using that as an example), has offered kohanga reo x amount of dollars to take over and run it and showed that well we can run it really efficiently and we’ll be culturally really sensitive and so on, that would be the end of it, because it would be run the way that company saw it running and as long as it would make a profit and that’s the bottom line about the trade, anything that can make a profit is up for grabs if its tabled at these negotiations. So what happens is overseas countries decide that they want to trade with New Zealand and what they do is they put down a wish list of what they would like to have access to within our country. It could be non-government education services like kohanga reo and anything else, say for example the Waitomo Caves.”

Reporter: His major concern is what he sees as the move towards mono-culturalism on the planet, where the big players squeeze out the cultures of other countries. An example he gives is of a New Zealand school book which lost its Maori words and all references to Maori.

Shannon: “There was a book published for primary schools and it was very much a New Zealand book. There was a Maori father, a Pakeha mother and three children I think and that was bought by an American company that redid the thing and when it was published again in New Zealand and once again put in the New Zealand schools, it was an African-American father and all of the spelling had changed. For example colour was “color”. It was Americanized completely and it had no bearing whatsoever on the original book and New Zealand ceased to exist as far as it was concerned.”

Reporter: Peter believes communications such as radio and television are particularly vulnerable under the GATS where he says New Zealand needs to see its own culture reflected rather than reruns of American sitcoms.

Shannon: “There’s lots of different cultures in New Zealand that have been here for a number of years and in another 200 years we might see an actual completely New Zealand culture. Now all our individual cultures are still sacred of course and we’ve got to be proud of our own heritages, but there will be another one where all these cultures are combined and we have a definite New Zealand culture, that is separate from the individual, but with this liberalization of trade we will not have that. We will still retain our own individual cultures but we will not be together and they will have been subjugated by an overseas culture. And it happens to be America at the moment. I’m not anti-America as such, it’s just that that is the culture that is predominantly dominating the world and we don’t need our culture to be dominated by another one. And so really this is why I think we all need to get together on this and Maori have a strong, very, very strong fight and I think really it’s the Maori input into this that will probably solve the problem and save it. But if Maori don’t get on board against this liberalization of trade, we’re going to lose it all.

Reporter: he says the Mexican government didn’t think it needed protection for its Spanish-speaking film industry, but that industry has been ruined because an overseas company bought all the distribution rights and won’t show Mexican movies on the screen. He believes the audio-visual market is the most attractive investment in the world.

Shannon: “It’s not so much the fact that selling records, or selling films. It’s actually having the air waves, because once you control the air waves you’re not only putting your culture out, which is sort of a secondary thing here, but what you’re able to do is you’re able to market your products and it makes it difficult for locally produced products to be marketed because the distribution rights of all the marketing criteria for example, television and radio, are owned offshore. So, the offshore major companies then come in and plant themselves here and we just become a distribution point for overseas products and in so doing we lose our own identity and this is what’s really important and what is rather frightening because once these negotiations have taken place and the agreements have been made they can’t be rescinded by another government coming in.”

Reporter: Peter says the New Zealand government’s response in the GATS negotiations should be delayed to allow time for public consultation with Maori and others, because such a complex set of issues are involved.

Shannon: “These talks are held in secret between the countries and the New Zealand public for example can have only a basic overview of what’s being discussed; not the complete talks and then once those talks are finished, that’s it in law forever.

Presenter: Peter Shannon ending that story from Carol Archie.

Ends