What Should We Be Talking About - And Aren't?

A topic even more inflammatory than gender.

The latest report from the Integrity Institute on the 2025 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer made me think of the final question that Triggernometry podcast hosts Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster always ask their guests: what should we be talking about that we aren’t talking about?

The Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual global survey of confidence in institutions. New Zealand’s 2025 results are not good. Trust in government is down to 45 per cent. Business sits at 54 per cent. And trust in the media has fallen to 35 per cent.

New Zealand’s overall trust index dropped to 47 per cent – well below the global average of 56 per cent. The report describes this as “outright distrust territory.”

The Integrity Institute headed its report: “A Revolt Against Oligarchy.” Sixty-seven percent of New Zealanders reported moderate to high levels of grievance toward institutions, believing that government, business and “the wealthy” actively disadvantaged ordinary people.

The report concluded that we were a country “divided by mistrust” and that such scepticism has deepened into “a pervasive sense that the system is rigged in favour of an elite few.”

So far, so predictable: the old ‘eat the rich’ chestnut, which inevitably leads to debate on whether we should introduce a capital gains tax and/or a wealth tax. Both should be up for discussion: New Zealand is one of only four Western countries that does not have a capital gains tax.

But what I hear on the ground is not a call for the rich to be ripped apart. What I hear are whispers that show a growing disquiet about race. The snapshot of the poster that illustrates this story was taken on my visit to Queenstown a few years ago. It shocks me still, to be honest.

David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill will not get past its second reading, but it has stimulated a conversation many New Zealanders would like to have without having to speak in hushed tones for fear of being tagged racist or bigoted.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon chose not to comment on the bill following its consideration by cabinet this week and he has vowed to prevent it going beyond the first reading. That may seem wise, but it shows how careful our leaders – let alone the mainstream media – are of offending the sensibilities of New Zealanders.

But who is comforted by this smothering of debate? People might not know the details of preferential treatment offered to Māori due to historical wrongs but they certainly know that those details are not up for public discussion.

They may have seen stories of lavish funding of projects such as playing music to sick kauri trees on the basis that they are the mythological cousins of whales. They may know that Māori and Pacific patients pay less for medical treatment than Pakeha. But they may not realise that Auckland Medical School has a quota of 40% for Māori and Pacifica entrants – who may have lower grades than the competition.

People might have clocked that government agencies have targets to award contracts to Māori-owned businesses; that local bodies have unelected Maori Wards; and that there are special Māori seats in Parliament. But they might not realise that the University of Auckland started compulsory Māori courses this year – and that students have a petition going to request a refund because of the low quality of the classes.

Given the huge debate sparked by the Treaty Principles Bill, it seems a huge omission that the Edelman Trust Barometer was not set to take the temperature on race.

If it had, it might have winkled out some of the attitudes displayed by a man who calls himself White Collar Barbarian (WCB) and has just written a Substack titled How I Became Racist.

Fewer than 80 people usually ‘like’ WCB’s posts, but this one has 1.1k ‘likes’ – and counting – because here’s an American Gen Xer admitting ‘in-group preference’. He says he prefers the people, culture, music, fashion and literature of his race – whites. (Boy, it feels weird just typing that!).

The writer says that he was raised to follow Martin Luther King’s dictum that skin colour should be immaterial, but that his experience of other races forced him to conclude that not all races are equal and to notice that no race applied the colour-blind principle – except whites.

One example he gives is that when he dated a black woman he was asked why by black people. It is acceptable for a black man to prefer to date black women but not for a white man to express any preference. White people are expected to applaud other races’ preferences for their own group – but not show a preference themselves, he says.

He argues that no other race is forced into that position. He lists company departments that are composed solely of Filipinos, Guatemalans or Pakistanis. Could the race of the person doing the hiring have something to do with that? WCB claims that everyone he ever worked with was a racist: they preferred their own group. That is the human condition.

WCB argues that it is immoral to appear to hate one’s own group, describing this as a “level of self-hatred that borders on madness.”

So that is what we should be talking about and are not. The Prime Minister’s refusal to comment, and his promise to kill the bill, says it all.

Maybe it is wise of the Edelman Trust to give race a swerve: the rise in atmospheric pressure as people struggled to answer unaskable questions might have broken the barometer.