Books
The New Zealand wars
by Alistair Bone
The phrase “visualise world peace” is a new age bumper sticker. The notion of the suburban velvet skirt brigade staying the hands of Rwandan psychopaths via happy thoughts is a monument to the unreal. But clichés become clichés for a reason and war really does start, and end, in the heads of men. So, the furious reaction when harmless civil servant Haami Piripi warned of possible civil war after the Labour government’s panicked nationalisation of the foreshore and seabed is understandable. In truth, his statement was only nudging the first of many substantial barriers that stand between us and ruin. But it also represents the faintest pulse in a monster most thought long extinct. Piripi was slapped around by politicians and shut up. But, with Civil War, David Slack has dived into the grave, picked up the idea and named his book after the unspeakable.
Slack chattily has three scenarios: war, where we tear each other apart; famine – financial meltdown, where others do it for us; and plague and pestilence, which is about spirituality and morality, not superbugs.
He holds it together well. For Slack is an informed, popular and engaging writer. That skill set is a rare joy to behold, echoing the accessible Michael King, reminiscent of the pointed fun of John Ralston Saul and a million miles from the elliptical tedium of Noam Chomsky. Slack puts questions you want to ask, to the people you want asked, and gets from them answers you can understand. But, like Saul’s, Slack’s editor-ial tone can be wearisome. Smart-arse undergraduate flippancy maintains pace and breaks up the heavy tone of some passages and that is fine for the blitzkrieg of a column or feature, but it runs out of puff in a substantial book.
Slack’s best is unleashed when he uses a grown-up voice. A superb section explaining why he teaches his daughter at her Sunday school is destined for the truest literary accolade of being photo-copied and pinned on office walls. His worst shows up in the blanket condemnation of Queensland as some kind of redneck bolthole. Fun at Australia’s expense is okay, but he never explains exactly what shade of red are the thousands of Maori necks that thrive there.
Good questions are asked about the loyalty of armed forces that contain a high proportion of Maori and are shot through with Maori culture. The often brilliant Chris Trotter points out the craziness of putting religion, or “spirituality” (anyone’s), back into law after all the bother it has caused and after we took all that trouble to get it out. As to the likelihood of civil war, the answer is “probably not”.
Some of the interviewees seem to have been successfully goaded into being provocative. The proposition of Margaret Mutu standing behind and urging on human waves of whanau is revolting. The blithe comment by Trotter that we may need a racial clash as a sort of political sneeze to clear our heads is unworthy. It is indeed a strange place where representatives of the working class can so casually assign it to a meatgrinder.
The second section covers the chance of financial disaster. The pick ’n’ mix bag of commentators is upbeat. But the conclusion that it’s all going to be fine is unconvincing. There is scant separation between the comforting conclusion, warnings of increasingly sharp competition in primary production and an IQ deficit as the bright kids get the hell out.
The last section could have profitably dealt with disease or earthquake, these being the most likely New Zealand killers, but there is not much you can do about them through the ballot box and this is a thoroughly political book. Instead, it’s about the moral direction of the dominion. Slack has an understanding of Christianity, so refrains from putting the boot in, even recognising some value in that easiest of targets, the Destiny Church. We are very liberal Christians in deed, if not word, is how it finally shakes out.
Slack is not one for grand calls to action – all told, his is a “she’ll be right” message, if we work smart, love our neighbour and visualise local peace. Let’s hope it’s that easy.
CIVIL WAR (… & Other Optimistic Predictions), by David Slack (Penguin, $28).
