"Affirmative Action" or "Institutional Patronisation"?

There is a great opinion piece in Stuff today by Mike Moore - the guts of the article is about the similarities between NZ and OZ, but he then drifts into a review of Lange and Latham's recent books.

In a slightly haphazard way he gets round to observing that "Mr Latham seems to have had a good bullshit detector about politically correct programmes" - and then goes on to write three paragraphs that encapsulate what I don't like about NZ at the moment:

Here's a beaut. A publicly funded book recently advised Maori that modern health methods to tackle the problems of smoking, fast foods and lack of exercise are the white man's racist answer to Maori problems. The government, it says, should make a special pill available to Polynesians.

This is not a piss-take. Taxpayers are funding this stuff. By the way, vaccinations for children are also "colonialism", as is cervical screening, which "contravenes cultural norms".

Mr Latham made a good point about downward envy. In the old days of the class war, envy pointed upward toward the rich and privileged. Nowadays, he points out, the middle class, liberated by access to education and opportunity, hate what they see of special privileges and programmes for the poor, marginalised and indigenous people.

Two points - I love New Zealand and can't imagine bringing my kids up anywhere else.

Secondly - I am a conservative - but as I argued many, many, times on My Right - that does not mean I advocate, or acquiesce, an each man for himself - winner takes all society. I am a strong believer in 'social justice' - I just don't accept that any of the examples that Moore provides above represent a positive step towards achieving any form of equality of opportunity or outcome.

When Plato first defined the concept of social justice he insisted that the ideal state would rest on four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. I'm with him.