Anti-1080 sentiment in New Zealand is symptomatic of a deeper problem, writer Dave Hansford says.
Hansford is the author of Protecting Paradise: 1080 & the Fight to Save NZ's Native Wildlife He has researched 1080 in depth and believes it has become an emblem for groups who view the government, and government agencies, with suspicion.
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
“When I started researching 1080 for the book a number of things struck me, but most importantly was that I found it difficult to understand why I was sitting there debunking the same old myths that had been in circulation then for roughly two decades and why those myths are so persistent and so intractable.
“Why, in the clear presence of so much evidence - 60 years’ worth of research that so clearly refutes those myths - why people still insist on chanting them.”
Hansford says it occurred to him this was a symptom of some “broader disquiet”.
He says much anti-1080 commentary on Facebook groups has a strong anti-government strain and often 1080 itself is barely mentioned.
So why aren’t the facts sticking? He says it’s a battle between belief-based thinking and critical thinking.
“Some people prefer to think their way through some of these quite tricky issues rather than believe the last meme they saw on Facebook, for instance.”
He says it may be because people either don’t understand the science or choose not to believe the evidence.
“And that’s a very, very different thing. What we’re seeing now is you have people out there who are not just ambivalent to science and evidence, they are openly hostile to it.”
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Hansford believes this hostility is rooted in a “growing mistrust, a growing disorientation, if you like, a growing resentment at governance and all its forms of authority.”
The Rogernomics of the 1980s, Hansford says, sowed the seeds for this anti-government feeling, much of which flourishes in regional New Zealand.
Author Dave Hansford. Photo: Supplied
“What we saw in keeping with that neoliberal agenda was the inexorable withdrawal of the state from really important public functions and the infrastructure.
“In the regions, there is a very real abandonment by the state. People started to wonder, quite rightly, just how much these governments actually cared about them.”
The “long tail” of Rogernomics has come back to bite in many ways - including the "apparent rise of science denial and conspiracy belief".
“A lot of the anti-1080 sentiment you see on Facebook pages very often doesn’t make any reference to 1080, it often talks about government and in particular DOC.
"DOC is the last visible face of government in so many of the regions where this sentiment is hottest,” Hansford says.
Hansford says the “social phenomena” of anti-science 1080 opposition needs to be need understood if Predator Free 2050 is to have a chance of succeeding.
“There’s actually quite a lot riding on it. We’re already working flat out on the kind of technologies that might deliver that for us, all the while blissfully unaware whether we will be given the social licence to do it.
“I would suggest it would be a tragedy to have the means to achieve predator free and yet not secure the permission.”
