(The following is in response to Mr Dey's letter in last week's Sun. I'm sorry that it is lengthy, but his correspondence contains both an untruthful statement about what I previously wrote, and also an accusation (of hypocrisy) which is, arguably, defamatory. An adequate reply, by way of self-defence, is therefore warranted and I hope that you can find the space to allow me this).

How I wish that people would read carefully what I write, because I write carefully; I also dislike being misquoted. Peter Dey has stated things that are untrue. Firstly, he has claimed that I accept "much greater privileges for Pakeha" than for Maori; in fact, I accept nothing of the sort (either in the sense of conceding this to be the case, or of condoning such practice), and did not intimate so in my previous letter. On the contrary, I took pains to acknowledge that Maori, as a demographic group (but - and this important - not necessarily as individuals) are disadvantaged socially and economically in comparison with others, and I also made it clear that adverse discrimination is a bad thing. Secondly, he said that it is hypocritical to accept this unfair privilege on the one hand, but to complain about institutional inequity favouring Maori in the other. My point was that privilege has more than one interpretation, and that inequality ought not to be rectified by means of inequity; to make this even clearer, I would add that political privilege and socioeconomic privilege, although linked, are conceptually distinct (and here Mr Dey has made a category error); they cannot be compared, and so there would be no hypocrisy in objecting to the one whilst allowing the other, if one chose to do that (which I don't).

Mr Dey's example of Pakeha allegedly enjoying privilege, through being taught by their own ethnic kind, is spurious - such a situation is simply a function of New Zealand's population profile, rather than deliberate policy; the same may be said for many other social services, such as health care, policing, and so on. Maori are a numerical minority in this country; but, by all means (if the personnel are available), let them be dealt with by other Maori, if they so prefer.

This brings me to a troubling matter. Throughout Mr Dey's running correspondence in these columns, he repeatedly stresses what he perceives as the Pakeha-Maori divide; he describes our society as being "Pakeha dominated", and evidently has a polarised view of our country. The fact of the matter is that New Zealand is now multi-cultural; there are, for example, large communities from the Pacific islands, and also from Asia (including the sub-continent). These people are participating in our nation-building and, quite rightly, want a say in how things are done; the balance of ethnicity will steadily shift throughout this century, and I, for one, of European background, welcome this.

The solution to our differences is both counter-intuitive and (at present) politically incorrect: we need assimilation into a unified "common ethos". This doesn't mean the suppression of cultural identity but, rather, its secondment to being, first and foremost, New Zealanders. There are sound reasons - ethical, psychological, and pragmatic - why this should be so, but the argumentation is too complex to outline here (it's covered in chapter seven of my recent book on civil control and antisocial behaviour). Those favouring Maori separatism will doubtless strongly oppose any such move.

There is, I have to say, rather more to this issue than mere homespun wisdom and sloganising.

Dr Graham Cliff

Katikati