Category: Maori Issues
The total redress paid under Treaty of Waitangi settlements is approaching $2.5-billion and will continue to increase, according to information from the Office of Treaty Settlements. Eleven settlements with a total financial redress amount of $216.64-million are awaiting legislation and 29 settlements totalling $2.078-billion have been completed. A further 14 agreements in principle totaling more than $220.5-million await progress, and a further 20 in negotiation are moving towards agreements in principle.
Since 1996 our MMP voting system has given New Zealand a series of coalition governments, consisting of a mainstream party – Labour or National – and minor parties. Some minor parties have radical agendas that are not supported by most voters. Having such parties in government becomes problematic when extreme policies that have a significant impact on the country, are passed into law as part of coalition deal making - against the wider interests of the New Zealand public.
Saturday’s release of the Waitangi Tribunal’s long-awaited report on the Wai 262 indigenous flora and fauna claim is packed full of recommendations designed to empower the Maori elite.[1] While the Tribunal is careful to avoid suggesting that Maori should have ownership rights to native plants and animals – something that would evoke a strong public backlash – they have proposed a series of wide-ranging and powerful rights that taken together effectively result in ownership by the back door!
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.
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