Category: Maori Issues
The absurd Treaty of Waitangi claims being made by iwi leaders for the ownership of pubic good resources that are the foundation of life itself are driving New Zealand towards a race relations tipping point. In spite of the general goodwill of the public towards finally settling all genuine Treaty claims, naïve and self-interested politicians have instead taken the country down the path of appeasement. Appeasement is based on making concessions, but the problem is that over time demands incrementally become more unreasonable.
Our crisis is one of character. We are in the situation we are in because of the sort of people we are. Any solution must spring out of our own energy and faith in ourselves, out of a shared understanding of the world and of our hopes for the future, and out of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood which impels us to care for each other but which also impels those who are cared for to desire that they pull their weight in striving for the common good. ‘Without vision the people perish.’ Most of all, we must have faith in ourselves.
Last week it was water. This week it is wind. Having successfully taken ownership of the foreshore and seabed from the Crown - and with the embedding of the Treaty of Waitangi into a new New Zealand constitution well under way - Maori leaders are casting around for new public resources to claim as their own.
In recent years iwi have been extremely successful in pursuing their demands for public resources and political power. The intriguing question is how to explain such total success given that many New Zealanders, both Maori and non-Maori, are increasingly concerned about the run-away juggernaut of iwi ambitions.
The Waitangi Tribunal finding that Maori have property rights to water was predictable, but is nevertheless a reminder of how well organised the tribal elite have become. They have their own political party, with political leverage through a coalition agreement with the government. They have the taxpayer-funded Maori Council, which is able to organise activists into substantive claimant bodies. And they have the taxpayer-funded Waitangi Tribunal, to re-write history and deliver quasi-legal deliberations in favour of tribal claimants.
“Just say no,” was a famous catch phrase sponsored by former US presidential first lady Nancy Reagan to persuade American children not to engage in violence, premarital sex, and illicit drug abuse. We could well revive that campaign here in New Zealand, but applied to the government’s response to Maori tribal demands for water rights and ownership in the lead up to partial privatisation of mining and energy state-owned enterprises.
As you will be aware, ever since the New Zealand Centre for Political Research was first established in 2005, we have been fighting against racial privilege. We firmly believe that all New Zealanders should be equal in the eyes of the law. There should be no special treatment based on race. With the Maori Party spending $4 million to convince New Zealanders that a new "written" constitution based on the Treaty as supreme law, is in the best interest of the country, we are taking a stand.
We have come to be divided by a new racial bitterness that will soon be incurable. A vocal racial minority continues to make increasingly extreme demands upon what remains of our national resources and possessions, and even the appeasement of those demands does not satisfy the appetites of those who see every act of generosity as a sign of weakness, and who then demand yet more. To continue in these courses is very short-sighted, for that path leads inevitably and all too swiftly to an apartheid nation, national bankruptcy and civil strife.
Masquerading as servants of their peoples, an elite group of tribal leaders, assisted by advocates in many different areas of public life have persuaded governments to give them public riches they do not deserve. Today they are claiming the ownership of New Zealand’s water. Last year they were given the right to make secret deals for the ownership of our publicly held, mineral-rich foreshore and seabed
There is deep disquiet throughout the country about iwi claims for water rights. However by focussing on the resource itself; previously the foreshore and seabed, this time water, next time airwaves, geothermal energy, and so on, we are in danger of overlooking the source of the issue, of overlooking why such claims can be made in the first place. To find the fundamental flaw in the tribes’ case for the ownership of public resources such as water we need look not only at what is to be owned but at who is claiming ownership.