Category: Maori Issues
The Auckland City Council’s plans for a $2.6 billion rail loop to assist in easing the city’s transport woes have encountered, as all Aucklanders will be aware, a perhaps unexpected obstacle. One Glenn Wilcox, a member of the Maori Statutory Board which ‘assists’ the council, has pointed out to its transport committee that the rail tunnel between Mt Eden and the Britomart Centre proposed as part of the loop would trespass on the territory of Horotiu. Many Aucklanders had probably forgotten about Horotiu, but he is a taniwha. The taniwha is the principal monster of Maori mythology, and this one’s territory, Mr Wilcox tells us, evidently runs (how does he know?) from Myers Park to the sea, therefore including the area of the Town Hall and Queen Street. ‘The tunnel goes right through his rohe[territory]’, Mr Wilcox told the committee. He added that ‘[i]t concerns me that they [the council] do not see Maori as a component of the city, and that is where I come from’.
The 70 job losses announced last week by KiwiRail in Dunedin and Wellington, and the 41 from Yarrows bakery in South Taranaki are reminders of how difficult business conditions are in New Zealand at the present time. Herald reporter Simon Collins spelt it out in a story on Saturday that outlined the problems faced in Northland - the region with the country’s highest rate of unemployment. At 9.8 percent at the end of the March quarter, Northland’s unemployment rate is almost 2 percentage points above the next-highest regions of Auckland and Gisborne/Hawkes Bay. With unemployment amongst young people aged 18 to 24 running at 29 percent and amongst Maori at 48 percent, more than half of all young Maori in Northland are on welfare.[1]
Six years ago when the Labour government was planning to abolish minimum pay rates for youth, our organization, the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said the move was certain to hurt the very people it was intended to help. So it has proved.
It has started – Maori tribal corporations are lining up to claim customary title of our coastline. Thanks to National’s Marine and Coastal Area Act, the country’s foreshore and seabed - which has always been the birthright and common heritage of all New Zealanders equally under common law - has now been put up for grabs by iwi.
I wonder how you voted in the last binding referendum. I refer of course to the 2008 election in which we the people decided the mix of representatives for the next 3 years. Of course there is another binding referendum (election) later this year but is one every 3 years enough? I think not. Indeed I suggest that it is time that Citizens Initiated Referendum (CIR) became binding.
Last Thursday, TVNZ’s current affairs programme Close Up asked viewers “Do Maori have a special place in this country?” The result was overwhelming - 81 percent of the 40,000 respondents said “No”, Maori do not have a special place.
There is an old joke, which I am afraid I have used more than once on occasions where speeches may be required to run along very familiar lines, in which one remarks that ones job as a speaker is a little like the challenge which faced Elizabeth Taylor’s eighth husband on their wedding night ~ he knew what to do, but he didn’t know how to make it interesting. Something similar, I fear, must be the lot of those who write on the subject of the Treaty. There is only so much to be said. After that one can only repeat oneself.
Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once quipped, “A week is a long time in politics”. Last week was a long time in politics! Within one week new forces have emerged at both ends of New Zealand’s political spectrum: on the left in the form of MP Hone Harawira with his new Mana Party, and on the right the former National Party leader and reformist Don Brash with the takeover of ACT.
It’s been an odd sort of government, these last three years. The one thing they’ve done really well, namely the slick PR job on Mr Key (and the awful one on the hapless Mr Goff) should be enough to get the National Party back on the treasury benches. Looked at more dispassionately, however, the economic consequences of the Key Gang are pretty disturbing.
The demands by the Maori elite are as relentless as a rising tide. Not content with securing the future ownership of the public’s foreshore and seabed - including invaluable mineral resources which should belong to all New Zealanders not privatised to corporate iwi – Maori leaders are now coming back for more. This time they want $600 million of taxpayers’ money for iwi to pay for something they should arguably be doing for themselves - teaching their children the Maori language.
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