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Kiwi Values

Entry 2410, on 2025-09-09 at 15:32:00 (Rating 3, Politics)

A minor political kerfuffle has recently appeared here in New Zealand. It involves an idea from the leader of our populist party (I don't necessarily like that description, but let's stick with it for now) who wants immigrants to agree to a set of ideals we value as a country. These have been dubbed "kiwi values".

Superficially, it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but we do need to be careful here, because there are several issues I might have with this...

First, and probably most obviously, who decides what these values are?

I'm sure if we asked a series of individuals what New Zealand values are, we would get a variety of opinions, including some people suggesting we have no values, and others who list mainly those of the native culture. There might be others who place a lot of significance on social, environmental, or other collectivist ideas where others might be more interested in economic, commercial, or other individualistic ideas.

And the division between political parties means that they are very unlikely to reach much agreement. There would be very little the environmentalist (and arguably neo-Marxist) Green Party and the libertarian Act party would agree on, for example, and the same applies to the race-based Maori Party and the populist New Zealand First Party.

It might be possible to find a small set which everyone agrees on, but I doubt it would happen in practice. And if we extend this to the population of the country as a whole, I think it is even less likely. I know people who reject values like democracy and equality, so should their values be part of the regime?

Second, we need to ask: is the idea unnecessarily restrictive?

If we insisted on this as a condition for immigrating here, would we be eliminating some people who would otherwise make a valuable contribution? For example, if we had an otherwise extremely valuable immigrant, like a brain surgeon, who had religious views which didn't affect his work but were contrary to the values, should we reject him?

Third, does this not potentially discourage diversity of thought, and free speech?

Generally speaking, having a wide variety of ideas being discussed and debated is a good idea. Sure, I know that some ideas are dangerous and harmful, but that's an even better reason to debate them, so they can be discredited. Not allowing people with certain values here means we don't get to hear their (good or bad) ideas.

Fourth, would it get hijacked by politcal and other ideologies?

It would be very tempting for "Kiwi values" to be "my values" where "my" is a person with political power at a point in time. For example, if the prime minister happened to be a Christian he might be tempted to make being a Christian a Kiwi value. And it could be argued that this would stop Islamic extremists from living here, but it would also stop moderate Muslims and atheists... like me!

Note that although our current PM is, in fact, a Christian, he seems to be very good at not letting that affect his political decisions, so he gets credit for that, and I'm not suggesting he might be tempted by this, but others in the future might.

Fifth, how would we know a person accepting these values was genuine?

Do we need to monitor a person once they get here to ensure that they are acting according to the values they signed up for?

If a person signs a document or takes an oath that they support the values, what reason do we really have to suppose they are genuine? Could they just say they believe one thing, then go on to act as if they don't? Do we need to check up on them to see if they are being honest? Obviously this is totally impractical, so why go down this path at all?

Finally, why would all New Zealanders not have to agree to the values?

If we are going to ask immigrants to sign up to these beliefs, why not ask all New Zealanders to? After all, there are millions of immigrants here already, and as far as I can see, many of them, and many people born here, do not follow the values that I would consider to be typical of this country. But, of course, this is difficult to say for sure, because we don't know what the values are.

Generally I quite like some of the policies of this party, but I think this one has not been carefully considered. I think the idea comes from the right place and is great in theory, but from a practical perspective it has too many problems.

So, I am not a fan idea of this idea at this point, but I am prepared to reconsider it if or when more details appear, especially when we see exactly what these "Kiwi values" actually are.

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