If opponents to the Treaty of Waitangi Principles bill would take the time to read it they would see that it is no more than the principles of law which have applied in New Zealand since 1841 and in England since the Magna Carta of 1215. They are not new.
I don’t know if the bill – as currently written – is the right solution to the uncertainty created by the application of undefined principles of the treaty, but the status quo is clearly untenable in the long term. We can read whatever we like between the lines but reading the actual lines will be less confusing. Whatever we feel about the bill it should have been an opportunity for a civilised discussion instead of a catalyst for hatred, political grandstanding and division. The antics of some in Parliament will serve only to alienate more and more people from genuine Maori aspirations.
As a nation we are better than that.
Certainly time for Korero n debate . Tend to agree with Winston Peters who doesn’t believe there were any principals in the original document..The elephant in the room is the Waitangi Tribunal which was set up to sort out land claims…most of which have been processed.
Correct. The terms of reference for the Waitangi Tribunal need to be reset to bring them back to what they were originally set up to do.
The main issue with this bill, is that at no time in its creation and during its presentation to parliament have the two original parties (The Crown and Ngā Rangatira o Ngā hapū o Niu Tireni) been consulted with?
There are assumptions being made that Māori ceded sovereignty… this did not happen… Māori did not cede to the Crown, they were greeted and treated as equals to King George IV… when Rangatira Hongi Hika and Waikato visited the King, they were greeted and treated as equals… with the King acknowledging them as King Hongi & King Waikato.
Māori host their own sovereignty, as promised in Te Tiriti (there is only one version, the Māori, as recognised by the courts and the UN Convention of Indigenous Rights).
This was never ceded, as in 1840 the population was approx. 40 Māori to 1 Pākehā, and we all know the outcome if the Crown asked Māori to Cede their mana and their Tino Rangatiratanga.
This bill is an attempt to nullify indigenous rights, so that the land and its resources’ can be open to corporate raiders to rape & pillage the natural resources in this country… Te Tiriti ensures that this will not happen, as it guarantees the protection of Māori rights
The public submission process to a select committee is the most important public consultation process we have and that is what Seymour is trying to do. Not sure he has got it quite right just yet. The treaty is a New Zealand issue not an exclusively Maori issue as it affects all of us. Agree that Maori never ceded sovereignty to anyone as there was no sovereignty to cede but they did want to be equals with everyone under British law as they affirmed at the Kohimarama Conference in July 1860
The issue is one of context. In 1840 Maori owned most of the land in native title, but were disunited, both by intertribal take, and by the incitement of Pakeha who played one group off against another- such as the conflict between Waikato’s hapu Te Hikutu and Noa’s hapu Ngati Maru over kauri and land at Whananaki. Pakeha represented new materials, new opportunities, and arbitrrated peace. As Hugh Carleton said in the 1880s, in his view “the true cause of Maori agreement to the treaty was the desire for peace”. Maning, a Pakeha-Maori of Irish descent at Hokianga, witness to the Mangungu signing, and a shrewd observer, put it thus in his fictional account of Heke;s War: Maori eagerly signed the Treaty in the hope of blankets, and in the promise of increased trade, of towns of Pakeha in every harbour, and an endless supply of muskets and axes. maori were eager to engage with Pakeha, toward a shared prosperity.
Trade of course required security of possession, which the queen would secure through the Governor and the Protector of Aborigines. Maori were assured that their lands and assets would remain theirs at the time of signing, OR they could sell parts to the Queen. Land was now a tradeable commodity: in Auckland, Ngati Whatua sold the empty lands of Henderson and Swanson and their kauri forests to Hendeerson and Macfarlane, in exchange for the schooner Lucidan, in order to get into coastal trading.
The important point to note is, that tino rangatiratanga of land and its appurtenant assests was transferable. Either they could keep the land in aboriginal title, or they could sell to the Queen, in which case the land came under her rangtirratanga as chief over chiefs, and was thereafter in Crown title.
Fast forward to today and the current reality is this, that virtually no land remains in aboriginal title. The situation is no longer one of Pakeha minority ssettlement in a Maori frontier, but one of a fully integrated nation in which Maori and Pakeha are inextricably admixed. All citizens, Maori and pakeha, hold land under Crown title: freehold, leasehold, or partitioned maori land, is all held- with whatever conditions attach- under Crown title. Thus all title to day to land, is held and exchanged under the Crown, and the rangatiratanga of possession- landowner rights- is subject to and comes under the overall Rangatiratanga of the Crown.
The point is this, the Treaty commenced a process of change. You cannot fix its provisions as immutable and apply them to modernn society, any more than the Bank can claim that the mortgage on your land remains at the same balance as it did when you signed the deed. And this is where juridicism and the Waitangi Tribunal falls over, it looks at things from an anachronistic lens, and tries to apply modern meanings to a past situation wholly out of context.
This is a discussion that we urgently need to have. The Treaty Principles Bill is not changing the interpretation of the Treaty but is restoring the interpretation and intention that it originally held.
Why Kill the Bill” Because it threatens fifty years of Waitangi Tribunal spin and revisionism . You dont correct a land boundary by refusing access to a surveyor knowing full well that he will discover you have shifted the pegs.
Ignorance of our history combined with fifty years of juridical revisionism under the Waitangi tribunal has done irreparable damage to race relations in our country. It has caused a division, a shifting of the boundaries that is now being challenged.
Shouts of racism and breach of the Treaty are simply mud thrown to splatter the window so that we cant see the reality. Ad hominem slurs and outcry usually mean only one thing: that there is something to hide.
Bring on the discussion.