Why did I feel it was interesting to interview Dominic? He is a New Zealand–born political scientist whose work sits at the intersection of democracy, public policy, and Indigenous rights. He serves as Professor of Political Science in the School of Social Work and Arts at Charles Sturt University, where his research focuses particularly on comparative Indigenous politics, liberal democratic theory, and the place of Māori self-determination within contemporary governance. Of Te Rarawa and Ngāti Kahu descent, his scholarship often explores how constitutional arrangements, public institutions, and social policy can better reflect Indigenous political authority and citizenship. He has authored and co-authored several influential books and academic works examining indigeneity, education reform, reconciliation, and democratic inclusion, contributing significantly to debates in both New Zealand and international political thought.
This interview is particularly compelling because it captures Dominic’s ability to bridge normative political theory with lived democratic practice. His reflections move beyond institutional mechanics to consider the ethical foundations of public life — the role of empathy, the management of disagreement, the value of informed speech, and the responsibilities citizens owe one another. By weaving together insights on education, technocracy, Indigenous justice, and the future of democratic participation, the conversation reveals a thinker concerned not only with how political systems function, but with how they ought to cultivate dignity, knowledge, and the common good. The result is an exchange that is both intellectually grounded and morally searching, offering readers a framework for understanding democracy as a relational and evolving human project rather than a purely procedural one.
Here’s our exchange:
Where are you originally from, and what aspects of your childhood there most shaped who you are today?
I am from New Zealand. I was born in Hamilton, in the North Island. My father’s people were Irish — on one side of his family, recruited from Sydney to the Fourth Waikato Militia, which invaded the Waikato region in 1863–1864. The invasion caused considerable economic, social, and cultural harm. Correcting that harm through measures of reconciliation, restitution, and the development of an inclusive and respectful liberal democracy has become my academic interest. I have published widely in this field, and later this year my ninth authored book, Te Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy, will be published by Auckland University Press.
My grandmother married a man who had emigrated from Ireland, and they lived in Auckland. My father, Vincent, was the youngest of their six children. He married my mother, Tui, who was from the Te Rarawa iwi (tribe) in the north of the North Island. Tui’s father was descended from Irish, English, and Scottish immigrants, and he married a local woman with whom he had five children. Tui’s mother died from pregnancy complications with her sixth child. My mother was an infant at the time. This meant that she, her sister, and brothers did not grow up speaking the Māori language.
My mother went to a Native School in Ahipara, a small town on Ninety Mile Beach. These schools, which existed between 1867 and 1969, were supposed to expunge the Māori language and support state assimilationist policies. As the Director-General of Education put it, their job was “lead[ing] the lad to be a good farmer and the girl to be a good farmer’s wife.”
For me, the effect was that the Māori language I have learned had to be learned at university and on the job while I worked as a primary school teacher for a few years in bilingual English/Māori classrooms. These classrooms were a relatively new innovation in the 1990s, and opportunities to learn Māori when I was at school in the 1980s and 1990s were few.
From the Native School’s perspective, my mother was a desperate failure. She won a scholarship to a Catholic secondary school in Auckland and went from there to the University of Auckland, where she and my father met at the Catholic Society. From there, my father became an academic and writer, and my mother a school teacher, then a polytechnic and university teacher.
I was born into a Māori, Irish, Catholic world which was sometimes quite distinct but in other ways fitted together seamlessly and cohesively. My parents had travelled and were educated to a level that was still unusual in the 1970s and 1980s. My world was, perhaps, a bit more expansive and diverse than that of many people I knew, which no doubt continues to shape my thinking and the academic interests I have developed.
How would you describe your family environment growing up, and who were the most influential figures in your early life?
My parents separated when I was five years old. I can remember thinking this was pretty good because I had two houses and two cars and so on, when everyone else had only one. It also meant two sets of social and cultural experiences. My parents both had interesting and sometimes overlapping social networks. They were educated at a time when very few people went to university, anti-Māori prejudice was strong, and sectarian prejudice was still a close memory in both their families.
Many of their friends, colleagues, and acquaintances made leading contributions to the social and political transformation that was beginning in New Zealand during the 1970s and which accelerated during the 1980s. The Māori language and culture were undergoing resurgence, though in many ways they remained on the fringes of public life — which is certainly where the current New Zealand government would like them to be. Political and cultural tensions have always been part of my life and were one of the things that attracted me to politics as an academic discipline.
Apart from a brief period in a public school while my father was Writer in Residence at the University of Tasmania — where the future Queen Mary of Denmark was a pupil at the same time — I did my schooling in Catholic schools in New Zealand. Catholicism was more than just a faith. It was a culture and way of life and led me to a PhD in Catholic social teaching.
It’s not just the people one knows but the people one reads who hold influence. I don’t single out any one in particular, but there is a collective influence that shapes one’s view of the world and imagination of what justice and fairness look like. The research interests I follow continue my early thinking and reading, and through my parents were supported by the people I met. I remember, as a 10-year-old, going to visit someone with my father and engaging in lengthy conversation on some aspect of New Zealand political history. At the time, I thought he was just an interesting old bloke. I later found out he was a distinguished authority on whatever it was we were discussing. People like that, who take the time to talk to curious — but naturally not that well-informed — kids, can have real influence. Taking the time to talk to people and share ideas outside the academic and policy worlds that are my everyday life is a lesson I’ve taken from those encounters.
Were there particular family or cultural traditions that played a lasting role in shaping your values or worldview?
Christmas and Easter, ANZAC Day, St Patrick’s Day, and Melbourne Cup Day were always important, but not necessarily in unusual or distinctive ways. I don’t recall celebrating special events that were unique to my family. These were occasions that brought people together and contributed to social cohesion, though I’ve always struggled with the commercialisation of religious festivals and how, for many people, they have meaning only as secular holidays. Christmas and Easter without Christ — and the stories and messages they contain — don’t make sense to me, and my theological research shows how they influence my values and worldview. A colleague once told me he could see the Christian message of hope influencing my secular work.
Since then, I have been more conscious of that ideal in my writing and thinking. I try to use political theory to think about the possibilities that exist for working our way beyond complex political problems towards “human flourishing” as the purpose of secular politics.
Matariki is a cultural tradition that is becoming enormously important for many families and would be for me if I lived in New Zealand. Matariki was unknown to me and many others until the last few years. It marks the mid-winter rising of the Pleiades star cluster. Colonialism removed it from the Māori calendar as a time of renewal, reflection, and celebration, and as a marker of the Māori New Year. It became a public holiday in 2022, and its cultural significance is undergoing renewal and is an obvious anti-colonial political statement.
In debates about migration, national identity is often invoked. How do you distinguish between legitimate democratic concern and exclusionary politics that undermine pluralism?
Apart from its First Nations peoples, who represent about 3% of the national population, every Australian is a migrant or the descendant of one. In 2024, 31.5% of Australians were born overseas. The most significant contributors were people from England, China, India, and New Zealand. This indisputable fact escapes people who use migration to foster a politics of exclusion. It is a demographic reality that makes the concept of national identity a difficult one.
Australia provides economic security and opportunity for many people. Its economy is large and diverse. Its incomes are high, and its retirement savings scheme is widely applauded as one of the best in the world. Its health and education systems could do better, but if it weren’t for contemporary migrants, they would do considerably worse. Police and education departments actively recruit staff from New Zealand.
On balance, Australia is a comfortable and pleasant place to live, but it is hard to say what exactly constitutes its national identity. First Nations peoples are systematically marginalised from public life, and their cultures are not fully allowed to contribute to a shared nationhood. Political rhetoric is especially disparaging of Chinese and Indian people.
Australia’s Constitution forbids people with dual or multiple citizenship from contesting a seat in the federal parliament. This contributes to a parliament that is not representative of Australia’s cultural diversity. People talk of Australian values without defining them. They are supposed to influence the citizenship test that migrants must pass before acquiring Australian citizenship. However, the test does not concern culture or identity in any depth, and many of its questions relate to the institutions and structures of democracy. Some of these could be answered with reference to many similar Westminster democracies.
Australia’s national day is 26 January. This marks the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet, the British naval flotilla that arrived in 1788 to establish the convict colony that developed into modern Australia. It has only been a national public holiday since 1994, and the appropriateness of this day—sometimes also referred to as Invasion Day—is sharply contested. The argument that a national day should be inclusive, and therefore cannot be held on a day that marks the beginning of First Nations people’s systematic exclusion from political authority in their own country, is clear. Counterarguments do not typically engage with this substantive objection. In short, Australia is unsure about how much it cares about inclusivity and the concept of shared identity. Although many will disagree with this observation, they may struggle to say how First Nations peoples are part of that identity.
From your perspective, what responsibilities do relatively stable democracies in Australasia have toward displaced populations created by conflicts and climate change elsewhere?
I think a greater responsibility than these nations wish to admit. The political pressures to exclude are strong. Australia has recently signed an agreement with Tuvalu allowing a certain number of Tuvaluans to be granted Australian residency each year because of the impact of climate change on that country. There is strong pressure from Pacific nations like Tuvalu, Fiji, and the Marshall Islands for Australia to reduce its own carbon emissions and actively support global emissions-reduction targets and programmes.
There are significant policy differences within governments, and between government and opposition parties, on how seriously to engage with these arguments. There is also a vocal private media arguing against the reality of climate change. While alternative positions are strongly expressed, there is not necessarily, in public discourse, a tradition of serious engagement and policy debate on complicated topics such as this one. Poorly debated policy is the inevitable outcome.
Student engagement in politics is often described as declining, yet moments of intense mobilization still occur. What forms of political engagement do you think institutions consistently fail to recognize or value?
I think there are significant differences across institutions and jurisdictions. Certainly, when I was an undergraduate in the late 1980s in New Zealand, students were well engaged in politics. Political parties had branches on university campuses, and there were many clubs and societies with political objectives. This is still the case in many institutions, and vocal and sustained support for the Palestinian cause has occurred in recent years. However, as is common with this movement in Australia, many vocal supporters associate their objections to Israeli state policies with deep hatred of Jewish people. Anti-Semitism is often quite obvious and passionately expressed in pro-Palestine rallies across Australia.
The undergraduate students I have taught are often scared of politics. It is too hard, too confrontational, and people struggle to connect political decisions to their everyday lives. I teach distance education students, which is an enormously important mode of teaching for the access to higher education it provides to people who would not otherwise be able to enrol in university. However, it is difficult for students to engage with one another at a deep level in this format. The teaching technology doesn’t always support the thoughtful contestation of ideas. The demands of work and family are not conducive to the deep and reflective thinking that serious political engagement requires. People do not sit around in cafés and pubs talking and debating the way I remember as an undergraduate.
I’m not sure that institutions consciously fail to recognise or value political engagement. The student body is what it is, in its diversity of values and aspirations.
Do universities genuinely encourage critical political participation, or do they increasingly prioritize neutrality and risk management over democratic engagement?
Universities, as institutions, don’t seem to me to encourage or discourage much of this sort of activity. Some of their members do, and some don’t. I think it is ill-informed to generalise, but it is important to note the democratic value of education per se. It is also important that in Australia, attendance at a polling booth on election day is compulsory. One doesn’t have to vote, but one does have to have one’s name marked off the electoral roll, and this is often interpreted and talked about as compulsory voting. At least in this respect, democratic engagement in Australia is very high.
High-profile debate events featuring polarizing figures, such as Charlie Kirk, are often justified in the name of free speech. In your view, do such debates deepen democratic understanding, or do they risk legitimizing ideas without adequate accountability?
I hadn’t heard of Kirk until he was killed. Free speech is a democratic necessity, but there are limits, and the extent of those limits has been an important consideration in Australian politics since the massacre of Jewish people at Bondi in December 2025. For the right in Australia, this has challenged its long-standing argument that free speech requires caution about hate speech, inciting violence, and consciously causing harm to others. In 2014, the Attorney-General told parliament that “people have a right to be bigots.” The Bondi massacre has divided and confused the right on this issue. Anti-Semitism concerns the right in ways that other forms of discrimination don’t, and it concerns strands within the left less. This has been quite obvious in some of the anti-Semitic slogans chanted during Palestinian rallies in Australia.
I think debates featuring polarizing figures can deepen democratic understanding because they raise the idea that saying what we like can sometimes challenge democracy. When we test the limits of free speech, we are forced to think about the common good as a democratic purpose. If we are free to hate people, we are then free to silence their voices and exclude them from public conversation — and that is an inherently anti-democratic position.
I wrote about some of these ideas, and the relationship between free speech, hate speech, and academic freedom, in an article for The Conversation in 2019. I argued that academic freedom is distinct from free speech because it protects free inquiry while requiring scholars to be informed, reasoned, and open to debate, rather than simply expressing any view. This means hate speech cannot be justified as academic expression, since it contributes nothing to knowledge and fails the standards of scholarly justification. Academic freedom matters because society relies on researchers to provide evidence-based critique, ensuring that public debate is grounded in reason rather than misinformation. It also carries a responsibility to uphold intellectual integrity, allowing universities to contribute meaningfully to democratic life by advancing knowledge through rigorous and accountable scholarship.
How should universities balance open debate with their responsibilities to protect marginalized students from harm or exclusion?
Universities must be places of free intellectual inquiry. People don’t, on their first day as undergraduates, hold the knowledge and intellectual maturity to apply the tests I have suggested above. These skills and intellectual values develop over time, and it is the university’s job to support this as an ongoing process.
I think it’s fair that people refrain from causing offence just for fun or saying things that are harmful to others, but refraining from ignorance can only happen with time—and with the space to be wrong. The space to challenge and be challenged is essential to effective learning. Universities must equip students to navigate difficult ideas, to question assumptions, and to critically assess arguments without silencing those who may think differently. This balance is central to nurturing informed, responsible citizens.
Is there a danger that “debate culture” itself becomes performative—prioritizing provocation and visibility over genuine deliberation and learning?
Yes, this can happen, but it is rarely the person in the room talking the most who knows the most. Listening is an essential deliberative skill as well as a learning skill. One cannot listen while dominating conversation.
Debate, in the academic sense, isn’t necessarily about proving that one is right. It is about exposing one’s ideas to contest in order to advance one’s own learning. These are also important democratic skills, and there is a growing body of research into deliberative democracy that shows how and why. Lowering the volume and slowing the speed of debate may contribute to more reasoned argument, more paths to common ground, and less political space for fringe and extreme positions to shift toward the mainstream.
You have argued for the value of social work in understanding political life. What insights does direct engagement with communities provide that political theory alone cannot?
I’m not sure that I have made this argument in the strict sense. However, political theory cannot emerge from nowhere — it needs to be informed by community engagement to understand what is important and to contribute to political practice that is responsive and attentive to real people’s lives and aspirations. There must be justification and explanation for normative politics, so the theoretical and the aspirational need to intersect. Theory without connection to lived experience risks abstraction; engagement without theory risks incoherence. The combination is essential for understanding the real implications of policy and governance.
How can social work inform better policy-making without being instrumentalized or stripped of its critical, relational foundations?
I think this is ultimately a question for social workers themselves, but broadly, social work’s critical, relational foundation can guide policymakers to understand the human context behind abstract statistics and procedures. Policies are often drafted in isolation from communities, yet the ethical and practical knowledge embedded in social work ensures that human dignity and agency remain central. Maintaining that integrity means resisting the temptation to use social work solely as a technical tool for policy goals, rather than as a reflective practice that informs ethical decision-making.
In societies marked by growing polarization, what role should educators play in helping students navigate disagreement without retreating into cynicism or apathy?
This is a very important pedagogic aspiration, but I have not seen evidence that it is widely practised. People tend to be scared of big ideas and disagreement. Learning to deal with disagreement well, and to accept it as necessary for the development of our own ideas, is both an emotional and an intellectual process. Most of us are not very good at it.
Learning to disagree presumes that we actually know enough about a topic to have an opinion worth sharing. This highlights the difference between free speech and informed speech. Knowing something is a democratic attribute, yet expert knowledge is increasingly dismissed in debates over climate change, immigration, and vaccination. The marginalization of knowledge and critical thinking is profoundly undemocratic.
Do you think contemporary politics leaves sufficient space for empathy and moral reasoning, or has it become overly procedural and technocratic?
My answer to the previous question is relevant here. Jacinda Ardern was a prime minister who promoted kindness as a virtue that might improve public life. While this was sometimes scrutinized for being too simple, there were times when Ardern used it to political effect.
But the procedural and technocratic aspects are also important. The procedural determines whose voices are heard. The technocratic determines whether ideas are properly tested against human knowledge — knowledge which evolves rapidly and can have much to say about whether a policy might work. Politics requires a balance: empathy and moral reasoning provide vision, while procedures and technical knowledge ensure accountability and effectiveness.
Looking ahead, what would meaningful political engagement look like for the next generation—not just in voting or protest, but in sustaining democratic life over time?
Democratic political engagement is supposed to evolve, especially as new means of communication develop, as people’s values change, as knowledge develops, and as access to knowledge improves. I hope over time people will become better at managing disagreement and less adversarial in their approach to politics — although contestation remains important.
I also hope people become more willing to accept that knowing something before arriving at a definite position is valuable. Marginalising expertise from public debate undermines informed decision-making. Democracy is more than the right to vote; it encompasses inclusive, responsive decision-making. Developments in the United States, putting many democratic institutions under threat, illustrate the importance of understanding democracy as a lived, participatory process rather than a procedural formality.
Has there been a book, film, or work of art that significantly influenced the way you see the world or think about your work?
There have been many. Every minor citation in my published work has influenced me in some way. Some are more influential than others, but rather than a single work, it is the intersection of all these ideas and sources of knowledge that shapes me. Sometimes influences on my work are apparent to others but not to me, which shows how complex the formation of ideas can be. Ideas are not isolated, and the influence of one good book or film doesn’t diminish the significance of another.
Looking at younger generations today, what gives you the greatest sense of hope, and what concerns you the most?
People live longer, healthier, better-educated, and more prosperous lives now than in the past. Life remains hard for many, but it is also decidedly easier for others, and this gives me hope. What concerns me is that when greed and self-interest dominate public thinking, these benefits are not shared and the concept of the common good is diminished. Wealth and good health can lead to complacency, idleness, and failure to make the most of human opportunities — or failure to share them fairly.
If you could spend a full day with any historical figure, who would you choose, and what questions would you want to ask them?
I wouldn’t single anyone out. I might ask Aquinas to apply his ideas on the common good to the modern world. I might ask Hobbes about the limits and purposes of sovereignty, and whether he would change his juxtaposition of arguments against New World “savagery.” I might ask Pope Leo XIII to apply Rerum Novarum to contemporary thinking on work and human dignity. I would ask Jesus what he thinks of his name being invoked by people supporting policies that marginalize, oppress, and hate. I would ask my great-great-great-great-great grandfather why he signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and whether he would revisit that decision given modern developments. I would ask him and his contemporaries — and the British people involved in preparing the agreement — what they make of modern New Zealand.
If you were asked to teach a class on a subject completely unrelated to your profession, what would it be, and what would you hope students take away from it?
I am a primary school teacher by profession, though much of what I have taught connects to this. Primary school teachers do not work in a vacuum; their knowledge is connected to social and political environments. If all knowledge has a social and political context, teaching unrelated subjects can still illuminate these connections. I would hope students take away an understanding of how ideas and skills are interlinked with the world around them.
If you could ensure that one human value is never lost in society, which value would you choose, and why?
The common good — which, in Christian thought, is not a value originating with humans, but I choose it because it usefully guides human purpose and ideally shapes all other values influencing human conduct. It encompasses fairness, shared responsibility, and concern for the well-being of others. Without the common good as a guiding principle, society risks fragmentation, self-interest, and neglect of those who are most vulnerable.
Humanity is facing radical changes. To name just ten: geopolitical instability, climate change, economic inequalities, technological risks, public health challenges, political polarization, resource scarcity, humanitarian crises, misinformation, and disparities in global healthcare access. If, in an imaginative exercise, you had the power to solve one of these problems, which one would you choose first and why?
These challenges are deeply interconnected. Addressing one in isolation is not truly possible because each feeds into the others. Choosing one is, in effect, to choose all of them simultaneously. For example, climate change intensifies resource scarcity, economic inequality, and humanitarian crises. Solving it would have cascading benefits across multiple domains, just as tackling geopolitical instability could improve public health and reduce human displacement. Complex global problems require integrated solutions rather than singular focus.
What do you believe human beings owe one another, both as individuals and as members of a global society?
Respect, dignity, and agency. Every individual deserves to have their humanity acknowledged and protected. Beyond personal interactions, humans have obligations toward one another collectively, particularly in a globalized world. These obligations include addressing structural injustices, supporting equitable access to resources, and fostering inclusive institutions that allow people to flourish regardless of geography, culture, or circumstance.
Interviews often focus on successes. Could you share something from 2025 that did not unfold as you expected, and what that experience taught you?
This one isn’t for public reflection. Some experiences are deeply personal, and their lessons are internal, shaping how one thinks, acts, and engages with the world without needing public exposition. They remind me of the limits of prediction, the importance of adaptability, and the value of resilience.
Are there any personal or professional goals you feel comfortable sharing for 2026?
The publication of my book Te Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy is central. The book aims to introduce new ideas into New Zealand politics and explore ways beyond the polarised thinking that currently dominates public discourse. 2026 is an election year, and the present government is systematically reversing policies it regards as too favourable to Māori people. There are ways of thinking that divide and demonise people, and ways that contribute to fairness and social cohesion. My book argues that solutions lie in adopting democratic structures and institutional values explicitly intended to work for Māori people as well as for all others. This may sound just and reasonable, but it is contested from many perspectives, which I examine and counter in depth.
When you imagine the final moments of your life, what kind of news would you most hope to hear, and why?
That a magician has arrived to make the whole world a happy place. It’s a whimsical way of expressing the hope that humanity might find a path to universal flourishing, reconciliation, and joy — a world where harm, exclusion, and suffering are minimized, and where people can live together with dignity and mutual care.