When, in 1962, as a 23 year-old Rhodes Scholar, I boarded the Northern Star to sail to Britain where I was to study for a post-graduate law degree at Balliol College, Oxford, I took with me an LP (yes, we had those funny bits of vinyl in those days). It was a recording of the St Joseph’s Maori Girls Choir, singing Maori love songs and starring their lead singer Wiki Baker.

Over the next few years, as I completed my degree and stayed on in the UK for a decade or three, I was surprised to discover that nothing made me feel more homesick, or more like a New Zealander, than listening to those beautifully sung Maori melodies. The only comparable emotional charge came from watching the All Blacks do the haka.

I had a similar rush of affection for my homeland in the midst of the media coverage of the terrible mosque attack in Christchurch. The television news was showing a gathering of London-based Kiwis who were seeking comfort from each other at that dark time; I wasn’t really watching but I suddenly heard the strains of E Papa Waiari and Whakaaria Mai being sung.

I was suddenly transported to be there with them – my compatriots – and once again I realised that the music had powerfully stirred me and I was again struck by the fact that it was Maori music that had reinforced for me my sense of my own identity. I recall being similarly moved by the performance of E Papa Waiari by Fiji at the One Love Concert in Tauranga in 2018, when the crowd joined in and would not let the music end.

These experiences lead me to reflect on my cultural heritage and on what makes me a New Zealander. I am of mixed Scottish, Welsh and English descent and proud of it. My forefathers came to New Zealand in the very earliest days of European settlement. But I realise that I am, today, not just a Brit who has been transplanted 12,000 miles away. I am proudly from the Pacific and I am the product of a unique cultural environment. I feel that I understand and share the concepts of both tangata and whenua.

My heritage is a doubly rich one, drawing not only on my British antecedents but also on the cultural environment into which I was born and in which I grew up and still live. Although, as far as I know, I have no Maori blood, I feel that, perhaps through osmosis, I have a particular response to and awareness of Maori culture – that I am a man of my time and place. It is that unique cultural hinterland that makes us Kiwis different.

I would like to think that other pakeha New Zealanders may feel similarly. We are all entitled to feel that we are building something unique here in Aotearoa/New Zealand; we are not talking about integrating two cultures (that would do justice to neither of them), but recognising the debt that is owed by each to the other. The acknowledgement of that debt can, in my experience, produce a sense of enrichment and an aid to identifying exactly who we are.

At a moment in our history when we are compelled to ask ourselves who we are, and how we should respond to those of different cultures in our midst, we should not only reinforce our commitment to welcoming diversity and treating each other with respect, whatever our cultural, ethnic and religious identities, but we should also think a little more deeply as to the answer we should give when we are asked “Who are you?” and “what is the future for New Zealand?”

My answer is that a New Zealand identity should express the truth of the Maori whakatauki or proverbs, that “with your basket and my basket, the people will prosper” and that “we are all in the same canoe”.

It is hard to credit that those responsible for the Herald’s news coverage – the editors, reporters, and commentators – can feel satisfied at producing what has become just a propaganda sheet – a publication in which each item is assessed and given prominence according to its ability to skew the political debate to one side rather than another.

It is one thing to allow political prejudice to colour the selection and presentation of every news item – but why must they spew the result out over the rest of us?

There are moments when one despairs – and those moments have come with increasing frequency over recent weeks.

They have arisen as Christopher Luxon – with the apparent support of the Herald – has ventured into “dog-whistle” politics, and has sought to play “the race card” in his efforts to win the general election.

There was, first, his ruling out of a coalition with Te Pati Maori. Then his ambivalence over bi-lingual traffic signs, as well, of course, as his emphasis on the supposed “co-governance” aspects of what one might have thought was the long and obviously overdue reform of our water administration.

Alert Kiwis will no doubt be quick to recognise other notes on the “dog-whistle.”

And what are we to make of his urging his supporters to “have more babies”?

We have to conclude, sadly, that he is assuring voters that, like his predecessor, Don Brash, he has decided that the path to victory lies in cutting those “pesky Maoris” down to size. “Vote National,” he seems to be saying, “and government’s ears will be closed to Maori interests.”

It is extremely troubling that National has decided to set one group of Kiwis against another in order to win power. We can only hope that voters will recognise it for what it is – a cynical attempt to put a National victory ahead of the national interest.

We have no future, after all, as a divided country.

These days, I make a point of reading the Herald for a particular reason – not, in order to get an accurate account of the day’s news, but to gain some insight into the mentality of those whose guiding principle is not accuracy or rationality but, rather, visceral hatred of those who oppose or differ from them.

In this quest, I naturally turn to those contributors in the Herald’s pages whose stock-in-trade it is to denigrate and rubbish those with whom they disagree, but I also take note of the efforts of the editorial staff; I like to identify the bias they show in story selection and in their use of various devices, such as repetition, misleading headlines and the positioning of those headlines to amplify that bias.

But it is not just the output of the Herald itself that engages my attention. Of even more interest is the “Comments”column that usually follows a tendentious item in the Herald’s pages, and to which readers are invited to contribute.

These ”comments” tell me so much about a particular section of Herald readers and – even more valuably – go a long way to explaining exactly for whom the Herald thinks it is writing. I get a clear idea of who these commenters are and, even more tellingly, exactly who it is that the commenters dislike so much.

The answer to that inquiry is not particularly surprising. What is guaranteed to fire them up, to new heights (or, perhaps, depths) of anger, hostility and hatred, is anything that – in their invented terminology – can be described as “woke”.

“Woke” (which, as far as I can gather, was a term first coined and still widely used as a term of abuse by the far right in the United States) apparently means any person, attitude or policy that sees any merit in taking account of other people’s interests, and any attitude that recognises that we are each of us individuals but that we also live in society ; and, further, (and here, I really do risk treading into “woke” territory) that we are all better off if we live in a society that pays regard to the interests of all its members.

The Herald, perhaps regardless of its own prejudices, presumably finds it necessary, by highlighting what keeps us apart and downplaying what brings us together, to pander to the prejudices of this particular section of its readers. In the long run, however, they risk doing damage not only to their own reputation and claim to independence and impartiality, but also to New Zealand’s cohesion as a society that is happy with itself.

Encouraging the rise of the “anti-woke” sentiment is a sure recipe for national decline. Sadly, that price would be paid not only by the Herald but by the rest of us as well.

The Herald is usually keen to promote Mike Hosking. But, in today’s issue, they could hardly have made him look more ridiculous.