Category: Maori Issues
Last month the New Zealand Geographic Board announced that it was opening a public consultation process to change the names of the North and South Islands of New Zealand. If the change goes ahead, the main islands of New Zealand could be known by their existing names, their Maori names (Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Waipounamu), or both.
A constitution is an agreement which a people has about some fundamental things ~ about how they are to be governed, and the principles on which they base their government and society.There has to be agreement ~ and the very fact that we are holding this debate is proof that the Treaty and its so-called principles should not be in our constitution, because on that matter there is no agreement.
One only needs look at the present to see what New Zealand will be like in the future. The North Island will be known as Te Ika a Maui, the South Island as Te Waipounamu, and New Zealand as Aotearoa. Those who use water for commercial purposes will be charged “storage” because lakes and rivers will be known as vessels owned by iwi...
According to a survey carried out in 2010, New Zealand ranked first equal with Australia as the world’s most charitable nation. The World Giving Index, published by the Charities Aid Foundation used a Gallup survey of 195,000 people in 153 nations to assess the extent of charitable activities. It showed that 68 percent of New Zealanders had given money to charity during the last month, 41 percent had volunteered time, and 63 percent had helped a stranger.
It’s not often that a government appointment ignites major controversy, but last week’s announcement that Dame Susan Devoy was to step into the role of Race Relations Commissioner did just that. The Race Relations Commissioner is one of six commissioners employed by the Human Rights Commission, an independent Crown entity established in 1977 that currently functions under the Human Rights Act 1993.
New Zealand’s constitution is working perfectly adequately. Nothing is broken; nothing requires fixing. But the government, at the Maori Party’s behest, established a ‘Constitutional Advisory Panel’ to consider (as well as a number of obvious political non-starters) ‘the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitution, and how our legal and political systems can reflect tikanga Maori’
The IT revolution is dramatically changing how we live, in a way that is probably just as profound as the agrarian and industrial revolutions of previous ages. This new revolution has given people control over the way they communicate - in a manner that few of us could have ever imagined. As with all revolutions, change has casualties.
Over the last few years, there has been a growing consensus amongst the leaders of western nations – including the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, and Australia - that policies and practices that divide citizens along ethnic and cultural lines are dangerous. In Holland, the Dutch government decided to abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that had created a parallel society within the Netherlands: “It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands.”
In January 2013 I was asked by the secretariat of the Government Constitutional Advisory Panel to take part in audio and video taped interviews. The invitation was probably issued on the basis that I have written extensively about Treaty issues and that I am a member of the Independent Constitutional Review Panel that has its presence on this NZCPR website. I wish to share these interviews with NZCPR readers and raise troubling issues that emerged for me while doing the interviews.
If history has anything to teach us, it’s that we should never take anything for granted. We need to be vigilant in protecting what’s good about our society. New Zealand has so much to be proud of. We have led the world by ensuring equality of all citizens before the law, introducing universal male and female sufferage, and we’ve largely had great and integrated race relations. So when the Ministry of Education starts demanding that schools give people of one ethnic descent superior rights to all others, the hackles ought to be rising.
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