Rodney Hide:
End the Treaty gravy train
New Zealand Herald - Rodney Hide
End the Treaty gravy train
New Zealand Herald - Rodney Hide
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| The Waitangi Tribunal. From left, Pou Temara, Timothy Castle, Ron Crosby and Chief Judge Wilson Isaac. Not visible is James Busby's wine. Photo by Mark Mitchell |
New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal is
our Babylonian priesthood. Its members spend their days poring over a tatty old
text seeking guidance for modern-day government.
The funny thing isn't that they do
it. The funny thing is that anyone takes them seriously.
Treaty priests have rearranged New
Zealand's constitutional set-up, redefined our system of government and stopped
government policy dead in its tracks. They've held large-scale projects hostage
to the principles their search has uncovered.
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| James Busby, Official British Resident and New Zealand's first wine-maker |
The Treaty priests are forever
teasing and torturing the 176 Maori words that make up the three articles of
the Treaty. They are greatly assisted by the Maori language being both very
limited and obsolete.
That enables them wide latitude in
translation and enables very creative interpretations to be given to the Maori
version of the Treaty of Waitangi. The priesthood weighs and measures the
"kawanatanga" that Maori ceded in Article 1 against the "tino
rangatiratanga" guaranteed in Article 2.
"Kawanatanga" is an
entirely new word. The early missionaries coined the term to explain King
Herod. The Treaty priests now balance that meaning to determine who owns the
radio spectrum, fish that are a 1000m deep, geothermal resources and plant DNA.
It's an extraordinary achievement.
It's all the more extraordinary that kawanatanga was minted back in 1840 to
explain a King of Judea who lived 2000 years ago.
There are simply not enough words in
the Treaty to provide all the guidance the priests seek. No matter. The priests
have declared the Treaty a living, breathing document. With a spirit. It's at
once sacred and immutable and simultaneously living and evolving. New
principles leap from the Treaty. Old ones are constantly re-engineered.
Parliament, no less, has declared that the Waitangi Tribunal "shall have
exclusive authority to determine the meaning and effect of the Treaty as
embodied in the two texts and to decide issues raised by the differences
between them".
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| Captain William Hobson, first Lieutenant- Governor of New Zealand |
The priests have been spurred along
by Parliament legislating the "Principles of the Treaty" without
detailing what they are and by the courts declaring one principle to be
"partnership". Brilliant.
We now supposedly have a partnership
between Maori and the Crown, even though neither version of the Treaty mentions
it. University of Canterbury law lecturer David Round has succinctly explained
why it's nonsense. If Maori truly are the sovereign's partners then they are
not the sovereign's subjects.
They are instead equal with the
Queen. The only subjects in New Zealand are non-Maori so they must be subjects
both of the Queen and of Maori, her partner.
The partnership deal is nonsense.
But the priesthood don't have to make sense, they just have to be believed and
followed. That's what gives them their power and their force.
Not all Maori can be in partnership
with the Crown. There are just too many and it is not practical.
So in practice, only the Maori elite
get special status in consultation with the Government and a special say over
Government policy. Their agreement to policy is sought and paid for with
Government contracts and policy sweeteners.
Quite how the Maori elite get chosen
is a mystery. But somehow it happens. And behind the scenes they wield
considerable economic and political power.
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| Signing the Treaty at Waitangi, February 6, 1840 |
Imagine it. Queen Victoria is
recently enthroned in her brand new Palace of Buckingham. Her country is the
most industrialized economy the world has ever seen. Her empire stretches
around the globe. Maori number fewer than 100,000. They have very limited
technology and resources. They have been warring among themselves for more than
30 years. They have killed 20,000 of their own. Another 40,000 Maori are
enslaved or displaced. The Musket Wars have overturned traditional tribal
territories.
I know, says the Queen, "I will
partner up with Maori to govern that far-flung corner of my empire. The Maori
and I shall share power. And I will bind my heirs and successors to the
deal."
Nope. Never happened. The clear
Article 3 promise of "all the rights and privileges of British
subjects" was very generous and compassionate. To this day, many peoples
of the world wish and dream that they too could enjoy those self-same rights
and privileges.
But the priesthood have declared
there is a partnership. And Parliament and the Government listen. And so a
partnership of sorts there is. The Treaty claims are destined to be endless.
There is no agreed list of demands that, once accepted, ends the gravy train.
But Parliament is still
all-powerful.
Parliament could simply declare that
the final say on what the Treaty means is the clear-cut English text - and that
the words mean exactly what they say. That would end it. Overnight.
By
Rodney Hide
Peter’s
Comment
Rodney
Hide is a former New Zealand Member of Parliament and former leader of the New
Zealand Act Party. His article on the Treaty of Waitangi, although rather
wordy, is basically correct.
The
Treaty of Waitangi, drafted on February 5, 1840 and signed the next day, should
be recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest enduring document
ever written without any understandable meaning or legal standing.
Let’s
look at what happened. The architects of the treaty were a missionary, a ship’s
captain and a wine-maker. Between them their total legal training amounted to
zilch. But that didn’t deter them and they hastily put together a wishy-washy piece
of written flim-flam and immediately congratulated themselves on producing the
founding document of a new nation.
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Unfortunately,
due to their ineptitude the treaty had no commencement date, no provision for
amendment, no list of interpretations, no expiry date and no means by which it
could be superseded, all normal provisions in a binding contract between
parties.
In
short, it was not a legally binding document.
I
think I can understand how that happened. The sea captain would have been still
trying to get his land-legs again after a turbulent crossing of the Tasman Sea.
The missionary would have been thinking about the bibles he could exchange for
land and the wine-maker would have been making liberal disbursements of his
wares among the parties.
And
so 172 years later the Waitangi Tribunal has the all-expenses-paid task of
sorting out the mess and that may well take another 172 years.
So
what is the answer? The legislative answer is simple but the political
ramifications may require some intestinal fortitude. An Act of Parliament
should be passed revoking the treaty and the revocation should be retrospective
to February 6, 1840, but with no forfeiture of settlements already made.
New
Zealand has a modern Bill of Rights that is well drafted and recognizes all
citizens as equals.
