Category: Maori Issues
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.
The report by Fairfax media that Crown negotiators working for Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson on the Treaty settlement process have picked up million dollar fees shows the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry has become an insatiable gravy train not just for the iwi elite, but also for ex-politicians and the ‘in’ crowd. The 14-strong negotiating team has been paid a total of $5.5 million. Michael Dreaver, an Auckland consultant was the highest earner at $1.5m.
As expected, the Waitangi Day conflicts have already begun. This year there is tribal warfare over who will escort the Prime Minister onto the lower marae. Titewhai Harawira, the mother of Mana Party leader Hone Harawira, wants to keep the job, in spite of repeated attempts to replace her. Her advancing years are not an impediment to her fighting for the role either. By all accounts in 2009, when the organising committee decided to give Nellie Rata a turn in honour of her late husband Matiu Rata - a former Labour Minister and leader of the Mana Mutuhake Party - Titewhai Harawira elbowed her out of contention!
The Waitangi “season” is here - that time of year when our political leaders embark upon their political pilgrimages of atonement and appeasement, firstly to Ratana pa, then on to Waitangi in Northland. This annual charade will culminate in the “official” Waitangi Day “celebrations”, when the northern clans traditionally indulge in their offensive, often violent and always insulting behaviour, only this time, it happens where the treaty was signed.
It was a week for political speeches. It began last Monday with the soaring rhetoric of US President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, which included inspirational references to nationhood and equality: “Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people… We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own”.
The latest round of full and final settlements was supposed to put an end to racial issues and let us get on with the serious business of living together and surviving as one people, planning for the future. At the very least, the settlements should surely have given us a breathing space of a few years, before our local Mafiosi turned up again for the next instalment of the protection money. But no.
The start of a new year is an opportune time to reflect on what lies ahead. Parliament resumes on January 29 and will rise for Christmas on December 12, with a total of 93 sitting days scheduled. One of the first tasks of Parliament will be to elect a new Speaker. The partial sale of three state-owned assets will dominate Parliamentary business this year – assuming, of course, that the Supreme Court quashes the Maori Council’s claim for the ownership of freshwater.
In a recent editorial on his Newstalk ZB Breakfast Show, Mike Hosking made the point that in spite of paying out billions of dollars in settling claims and giving numerous apologies over a 30 year period, Treaty of Waitangi grievances are showing no sign of ending. He called the Waitangi Tribunal a circus and the whole process a farce, saying that the public are completely sick of it all.
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