I believe co-governance is a strength, not a weakness!
In my entire 50 years of life, I as a Pakeha male have never once been penalised in any way shape or form by any measure to help Māori!
I don’t see co-governance as the faux apartheid some manufacture it as.
Calling He Puapua ‘a secret agenda’ is disingenuous to the words ‘agenda’, ‘secret’ and ‘a’.
The idea that a barely read wish list of indigenous hopes and aspirations that could live up to the promise of the Treaty would ever get fully implemented is Trump like in its delusion of imaginary white fears.
An upper house 50-50 split between Pakeha and Māori to decide Treaty Legislation has been an idea I’ve been arguing for years now!
For a majority MMP Labour Government that could barely build houses to suddenly transform into a super hero for Indigenous rights who manages to overnight re-write the entire constitutional framework of NZ by stealth is so farcical in its possible threat delivery that you may as well imagine a child with a water pistol up against a laser guided Jet fighter.
He Puapua was a wish list of hopes and aspirations, it was not a secret blueprint for the takeover of a country by radical Māori and attempting to frame it as such is bordering on QAnon conspiracy fantasy.
Likewise with 3 Waters and the claim it’s Māori stealing da water.
We wouldn’t be having discussion over who owns the water of John Key hadn’t sold our hydro assets!
Remember how the ruling in that case shaped this issue?
The Court said Māori did have an interest in water and it was up to the Crown to negotiate that.
Labour used the co-governance model built by National and ACT to deliver on that legal obligation!
Māori are a break peddle on neoliberalism and their views can ensure privatisation and foreign ownership stops!
For decades, the Treaty of Waitangi has formed a part of New Zealand’s approach to trade. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta is kicking it up a notch. National Correspondent Lucy Craymer explains.
When the epochal Uruguay Round of global trade talks was happening almost four decades ago, New Zealand’s chief negotiator had a premonition.
Tim Groser reckoned the global trade arrangements being formed might – in ways he could not anticipate – come into conflict with the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1986, with a Labour Government led by David Lange in office, and vast economic and social reforms sweeping change across the nation at a breakneck speed, the modern significance of Te Tiriti was only starting to come into view.
“We could see a potential political problem arising whereby people would want to do things that we couldn’t quite foresee, in respect to the treaty,” Groser says. “We needed to avoid trade agreements getting in the way of that.”
The negotiation brought about the biggest reform to global trade ever and led to the creation of the World Trade Organisation. A clause was included allowing New Zealand to meet its treaty obligations, even if this meant breaching the global agreement.
Groser says it went through with no controversy and little publicity, even in New Zealand.
“I don’t think a single country raised a question let alone an objection. It’s not surprising. Why would they? Countries have bigger fish to fry,” he says.
A version of this clause, which allows the government to deliver on Te Tiriti ahead of its free trade obligations, has been included in every agreement since.
Most Pakeha don’t know that the Treaty is our out clause in free trade deals!
We can side track the exploitation from global corporations by using the Treaty!
For me, I love the Treaty because of the relationship of responsibility it immediately sets up between the Crown and its people.
I believe Pakeha have to actually understand that the Treaty applies directly to them as well because it explains the relationship between the state and its citizens!
The Treaty sets out the obligations of the Crown to protect the rights of its people. We deserve as a nation to entrench the Treaty as the basis of our constitutional relationship so we can force Governments to protect our rights rather than strip us of them.
Treaty’s are to be honoured, not settled!
Pakeha want to gloss over the theft and confiscation of indigenous lands because it’s a shameful denial of the promise of a Treaty between two peoples and when you consider the paltry compensation that has been paid back to Maori via the Waitangi Tribunal, it’s a mere $1.4 Billion.
$1.4 Billion for confiscating the majority of NZ??? What is most egregious is that some Pakeha have the audacity to claim that pathetic reparation is a ‘gravy train’.
One of the problems with NZ politics is that we have a unicameral Parliament, that means we just have one chamber with no upper house. This means NZs Parliament is one of the most powerful Parliaments in the world. It allows for legislation to be read straight into law and is one of the reasons why the neoliberal revolution was so ruthless and impossible to reverse.
I think one solution to the Waitangi Tribunal ruling is to consider a NZ Parliament Upper House that has 50-50 representation between Maori and Pakeha. If Sovereignty was never signed away, then the Government of today has a responsibility beyond paltry compensation for past injustices , it must provide real power sharing solutions on Treaty issues.
Having a 50-50 Upper House with the power to delay legislation that was not in the best interests of the Nation when it comes to Treaty issues would stop Government’s from fire sales of national assets and prevent things like the Foreshore and Seabed legislation from becoming law.
An Upper House would be seen as a guardian of the Treaty for the maintenance of public well being over private gain, it would show real power sharing and for Pakeha, it would represent a political body that protects their public interests as much as Māori interests.
Now do I for one second believe we can have an actual debate on these very important topics?
No. Fucking. Way!
Those who secretly burn crosses will have a field day under the fake veneer of ‘debate’.
This is going to be a cluster fuck of madness that Seymour will not be able to contain once he releases it.
There is a dark part of the NuZilind mindset that is Cracker at his worst and this debate isn’t being held in good faith, it’s being held because the worst angels of our nature were stirred during this election and vomited out at the other with force and toxicity.
Social media timelines are about to get KKK level gross.
The only hope we have is to actually step up and debate the issue in good faith because co-governance IS a unique strength that can build us, but we need the skills to debate without cancelling which will play into the hands of extremists.
Pakeha need to appreciate and embrace the Treaty as our birthright to be here and acknowledge that it demands obligations from the State that protects our rights and self sovereignty.
The whole concept of self sovereignty as agency is the very definition of liberal progressive democratic values.
The problem is we are having this debate not in good faith, but to satisfy the race baiting thirst of the most fringe elements of NZ Society.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
“The Treaty means different rights for different people”. Well whatever it meant it sure as hell turned into the Crown helping itself to the lands owned by only some of the “people” ( the ones that were actually here already). Seymour conveniently forgets all of that ( unless he’s hand ringing over Israel, then apparently history is everything)
An upper house may or may not be a good idea, but more politicians in race based seats making more unilateral decisions will just be more divisive.
My preference would be a citizens forum model. Real people, hashing out real issues, from the perspective of citizens – not self serving political elites. Māori wouldn’t be disadvantaged under this model, because they already have hui experience – so called Pakehā would be inexperienced. It’s also the closest we can get to real democracy.
A 50/50 split promotes cooperation in a way that a citizens assembly wouldn’t. There would be no minority large or small and a 50/50 dplit dies not allow for a draw. A 50/50 split forces pakeha and Maori to “cooperate” to get to 51%.
Yknow if you really wanted to sell 49% or bomb some 3rd world nation back to the stone age or construct some convoluted shadow government or some other online conspiracy then I’m going to need a proper argument with syllogism, facts, studies, forecasts whatever to be able to get a proper majority.
The treaty has become a unicorn, a fantasy with no plausible relation to the original document. Pretending that this exercise in wish fulfillment is law will never have any credibility. But it is a perfect wedge to divide poorer European and Māori New Zealanders, so that the pitifully lazy and inept ‘elites’ who have squandered the wealth of our nation for forty years evade accountability, while a shitstorm of name-calling ensues.
If NZ wants a decent future as a nation, we need a universal position on disadvantage, not special pleading for identitarian groups. And habits like the incredible dishonesty of manufacturing bullshit about Cook need to be eschewed. Cook may not have been a saint, but he didn’t have an oppressive mission in mind, nor did he bring syphilis to Tahiti, there were whalers there before him. What he was, was a highly competent professional navigator and cartographer. And a country awash with economic pretenders and historical revisionists ought to learn to respect highly competent professionals – God knows we could use a few instead of the dregs and sweepings that shamble their way into parliament.
“What he was, was a highly competent professional navigator and cartographer”.
@Stuart Munro: that may well be true but aren’t you missing the point. Cook was of his time, when the New World was being ‘discovered’ and subsequently carved up for colonial powers. Cook’s legacy is part of that legacy, irrespective of what kind of man he was, his professional skills, whether he was responsible for this or that, whatever. History tells the story. Here in the South Pacific we have our own story, albeit only partly told, not fully acknowledged. No amount of push back against so-called historical revisionists is going to alter that fact.
Pfft – Māori should take a long look at French colonies settled in that era. That’s what they’d be, absent Cook.
Lying doesn’t help any case, and the allies Māori will need going forward will be poorer European New Zealanders. We shall hang separately, if we do not hang together.
French colonies … absent Cook?
That’s conjecture. At best a historical guess. What eventually played out in terms of colonial power, settlement, appropriation of land and natural resources, etc, etc is our legacy not what may have happened had the French got a look in.
The English could reliably get their ships around the world, Bozo, because of Cook’s charts. The French desired a colony here, for strategic reasons – part of that was the Akaroa settlement.
The conjecture of a French colonization is a fair rebuttal of the fantasy that Cook carries the responsibility for all the ills that occurred during the colonial period, or that, in his absence, Pacific societies would have continued in an idealized state of pre-contact utopia.
+ 1 Stuart.
Well said.
I’m a white guy from the poorer side of the tracks and I have deep sympathy for those poor Maori statistics on incarceration, health and economic well-being. However I’ve also seen many overcome these factors to break the cycle (ironically by leaving NZ).
I find it abhorrent that the Maori elite use these statistics to feather their own nest, receiving huge amounts of govt money on behalf of those worse off than them.
I do find it ironic that those who shout about how ‘trickle down’ doesn’t work, yet believe that giving the Maori elite govt money that it will trickle down to today in need?
What about Pakeha elites BG (many donated million to help get there govt of choice) And what about the transfer of wealth from the state to the already greedy rich from NZ and the world who are circling like sharks for more bargains namely state-owned assets.
Seymour is elitist. He is claiming that the small group of Maori meeting Political leaders/ MPs this weekend( Seymour refuses to attend) don’t speak on behalf of all Maori yet being a leader of a minority party that seeks to change the principles of the treaty? The irony is laughable. We don’t need the like of ACT or Seymour in this country, they are divisive, pure and simple.
Seymour the puppet for Roger Douglas, and we know how he and his cronies destroyed our great little country.
The treaty was signed nearly 200 years ago. There is a lot of confusion about it. I think a referendum is a great idea
Actually, with a lot of confusion about a refendum would not be a good idea.
Luxon is correct ‘it would be devisive and unhelpful.’
Kia ora Ankar, Maori are not confused, the Te Tiriti facts are there in black and white. Maybe Pakeha need to do a bit of learning – 180 years of Pakeha ignorance may be coming to an end.
The settlement process operates on a different belief system to the one you outline. Bolger could only conjure up 2 billion dollars back in the 90s and that’s the number we have to negotiate over.
BG who are these Maori Elite if you please. Can you name them for us. In my 80 plus years I can’t name one. So please tell us who they are.
What the hell does Cook have to do with land theft? That’s a complete distraction.
The current government is an embarrassment on this issue. They are scraping the Māori health authority because they want no separate treatment for certain groups, but we have ‘ride along’ Reti saying he wants decisions put back to local iwi?? As in treatment decisions, and by default government money, being controlled by Iwi.
This for Reti after he proved he has had his testicles completely removed by fobbing off any questions on the smoking issue to a deputy minister!
National are looking like dicks because they are trying to accommodate Smarmy Seymour and Northlands answer to Gandalf the Grey.
Here’s a timeline staring with Cptn James Cook’s ‘swing to the east’, which drew Australia and New Zealand into the web of British imperialism
-Cook: 1769
-New South Wales settled in 1788, ostensibly to fill the place of the lost American colonies to which convicts had been shipped.
-Musket Wars 1810s and 1830s between Maori in part perpetuated by an increasing colonial presence.
-Wakefield settlement in Wellington 1839, followed by Whanganui, New Plymouth and Nelson (and the rather different settlements at Kororāreka – now Russell – Auckland and Dunedin).
-Britain reluctantly annexed New Zealand in 1840, arguably to head off the French and to keep all the riff raff under control.
-6 February 1840
-New Zealand Wars – 1845 to 1872- with large scale confiscation of land
-Mass settlement followed
No Cook wasn’t directly responsible. How could he have been? But his place in history is very clear to see.
Teti is and will prove himself to be one of the great health ministers. The report after the first year of the Maori health authority is farming indeed. If you think more bureaucrats will do anything to improve health outcomes, you are dreaming. Labour allowed the health workforce to run down to catastrophic levels. Reti understands what is needed
In reply to Stuart Munro, 100%
If you go back to the 70’s the cries at Waitangi were “ The Treaty is a Fraud”
But today it’s “Honour the Treaty”. So which is it? After 50 odd years The Treaty hasn’t changed. Just asking for a friend.
You write @ MB. ” I believe co-governance is a strength, not a weakness! ” Absolutely, totally and completely. They’re coming for the treaty, then they’ll come for the Crown then we’ll become Bully Boy jonky’s other fetish, a republic then our Aotearoa / New Zealand will become The South Pacific State of Israel then we’re fucked.
seymour’s history should speak for itself. Born from the oily loins of traitor roger douglas then nurtured within the halls of neo-liberalism where the mantra is ‘Greed is Good’. Seymour’s predecessors have dragged our AO/NZ down into the sewers of a handful of psychopathic riche guarded and protected by luxon, seymour and peters’s all bought and paid for MSM. The fact that seymour’s now where he is, must be darkly dumbfounding for those who have no knowledge much less understanding of what happened forty years ago.
@ Maori and our farmers SHOULD-MUST have a barbi, play a little Bob Marley and swoon together over a Piha sunset.
Or? Be driven further into poverty and desperation then prison, then to the grave. @ Maori and @ Farmers? Stop doing the same things while expecting different results. Voting for your fair-weather bestie back stabber Natzo’s and their cling-on minions isn’t working now and didn’t work before.
So true Martyn, well said.
I have argued for 50 years that ultimately the Treaty is all that will protect us from total foreign ownership.
In that time, I have come to appreciate that for Māori the concept of ‘elected representatives’ is foreign to their Chieftain based hierarchy. This however is not unique to Maoridom; we have a non-elected Monarch and Governor General and for all its faults IMO it has served us well. We have MMP with Party Lists that the electors do not have a say in ranking or inclusion.
Who amongst us would claim that our ‘elected’ representatives have served us well in providing infrastructure, or affordable home ownership, or sovereignty of our financial system.
If Māori are to have their Treaty rights fulfilled with an equal say at the Table, then it must be on their terms – i.e. non-elected representatives. The biggest challenge I see in that is actually for Māori, they must have a coordinated voice on matters affecting more than one Iwi.
We have been willing to use Māori culture as a gigantic PR exercise for visiting dignitaries and a massive tourist attraction, pretending that we are a multi-cultural society; but when it comes to allowing that original culture to have its rightful place (treaty or no treaty) in the governance of Aotearoa our British colonial instincts take precedence.
We have people upset that te reo is used on National TV and even that Māori place names are used! Why should anyone be surprised, let alone upset, that te reo is spoken and Māori place names used in Aotearoa – such attitudes are very colonial and can only be considered to be a level of white supremacy and racism. The fact that many of us do not understand many of the words, or locations, is a result of concerted efforts over many years by successive governments and colonial administrators to eradicate te reo from our vocabulary.
The continued use of the place names originating from British Lords and dignitaries, many of very dubious character and who never came here, should be a matter of collective shame; to argue against returning to the original Māori place names also demonstrates a level of white supremacy.
Over the past 40 to 50 years tremendous progress has been made in reestablishing te reo to its rightful place in Aotearoa; for politicians from minor parties to be able to put all that at-risk is a failure our current electoral system.
You read my mind Peter. Very well summed up in my opinion.
There’s not much protecting us from foreign ownership now and saying the inclusion of Māori in decision-making is bad, while becoming ever more beholden to USA, China and other foreign powers and having them dictate to us, is utterly crazy.
The King is correct. The rest of the world is watching and although we may be a very small country and not that important, our approach to some things is noted and talked about.
Chris Finlayson, Tim Groser and anyone else on the right with the intellect to match, need to sit David Seymour down and explain how it is that co-governance and our tiny little Treaty are so important.
Seymour isn’t really proposing ‘discussions’. He’s proposing what he wants and we are all going to have to give way. Seymour isn’t into actual good faith discussions. He will only be satisfied by creating more disunity, manipulating his unthinking supporters and grinding other people into the ground. He has a different agenda to what the rest of us think the agenda is.
National naively think they are controlling this process but they will be outsmarted unless Seymour has a mind-transplant.
At the moment he would have us go back to where Australia is now after their NO vote. We have come too far, too painfully, to go back there.
So, what does that make you Stuart Munroe a Leprechaun
I was born here and have five generations in the earth here. You want to erase that? You’d better have a good story if you do.
That’s enough hysteria. We fight genocide not create it.
Five generations in the earth gees you should know better then stop talking a load of unicorn shite.
There are two problems with the Treaty fantasy, besides its risible legal standing. The first is that the definitions the extended versions rely on are not common knowledge, nor conventional legality. It requires specialist interpreters to say anything about it, and thus it cannot become ‘popular’, except by the exercise of state power.
Lacking the ability to debate it rationally. supporters like ‘covid is pa’ are obliged to rely on invective, which however momentarily satisfying, can never win an argument, nor sway a rational doubting citizen.
The second problem is that the world has moved on. England is no longer dominated by a collection of feudal elites cultured to lead their forces in battle. Neither is New Zealand. Nor are Māori. Feudal leadership is defunct. We don’t need it. It is plausible that some Māori retain sufficient liking for their traditional tribal forms of governance to embrace it, but it is absurd to think that non-Māori will cheerfully welcome a renewal of the feudal boot on their collective necks, mere centuries after throwing it off.
NZ wants more democracy, not less. Much more, looking at the lazy, inept, entitled buffoons that crowd out serious solutions to any of the massive backlog of problems our governments faithlessly fail to address.
100% Stuart. Absolutely on the money
And even worse still they’ve now put Goldsmith in charge, someone willing to cede his constituency to Seymour, more irony.
Yet again a non Maori tells Maori how they should behave. The feudal system actually isn’t defunct – our monarchy remains a feudal system and heads a democracy.
Gees five generations Stuart Munroe well wise up and stop talking A load of unicorns matey.
Who wants to erase that? If anything that’s exactly what the Brash/Seymour crowd would like. Brooke Van Halen doesn’t even what you to learn much NZ history, and with absolute idiots like Peters doing his Julian Batchelor impersonation we need it.
Is it possible that NZ has outgrown a sketchy 100 year old document? Has NZ maybe evolved into a country made from many a different peoples, rather than just ‘them’ from back then, and the ‘rest of us’…?
It’s more highly likely given recent events that no, we most definitely haven’t outgrown a document only you see as sketchy. Great conspiracy though.
A wise man once said you can’t change the past.
Other than the connection to political power and control of resources, co-governance has at it heart interpretations of language. Tino rangatiratanga and te kawanatanga for two. And most likely the difference between the two. And te Triti o Waitangi is smack bag in the centre. So little wonder both sides want the matter settled.
Words are slippery however. I think Alice made a comment on this back in the day. The context changes. Meanings shift. No better example than one often sited: Waka Kotahi. When was the last time we saw a sea going vessel on the road, unless pulled by a SUV? But you gotta understand the all language, te reo included, has a metaphorical dimension. Not to be taken literally. Take the Te Rununga o Ngai Tahu – sponsored message on free-to-view Maori TV. Here the narrator is a bit more explicit. ‘Waka’ we are informed means journey and is used explicitly in the message to reference identity. Not that this new meaning has become universal. I suspect a good many in the Hokianga or where I grew up, near Ruapekapeka, may well be scratching their heads. But at the same time perhaps in agreement. Point is that any inquiry into Te Triti of Waitangi (both versions) necessarily entails looking at the language, and that’s no easy task, no less the fact when the outcome is related to matters of co-governance, (the sharing of) political power and control of resources.
https://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/
What is needed in this debate is compulsory education about Aotearoa pre. 1840. This will show how important the treaty is as our founding document. People spout off about the unfairness and separatism and they really have no idea what they are talking about. Take away the principles of the treaty and our mana as a country is gone .
You actually want a debate about the Musket Wars? Great, it explains why maori signed a Treaty ceding Sovereignty .
Now all you have to do is admit we are all equal!
Yes debate debate debate what are you afraid of , half the problem with people who live in Aotearoa is ignorance and Sovereignty wasn’t ceded, protection was required against the marauders and it all turned to shit when the colonists just wanted more .
Yeah but at the same I don’t want history keasons to be some stick we beat pakeha with. Education has to have failures built into it because it is the right of the young and inexperienced to make mistakes and we have allow them to make mistakes in carefully crafted environments so that gravity teaches them in a way that a stick with an agenda behind it never could.
Education about the treaty is truth, why are people so afraid of history, it actually works both ways it shows how people were selling land in Aotearoa without owning it , the treaty didn’t intend to give away sovereignty it was intended so that the rule of law was a legal entity and it was supposed to offer protection to Maori and early settlers from the whalers and traders ( look how that worked out ). People are supposed to learn from history and not make the same mistakes again .
I look forward to Mr Seymour delivering equality before the law…
He might want to start with:
Respecting of contract law – the treaty,
Massive increases in resourcing for contract breaches (again, the treaty),
Massive increases in resourcing of community law and public defense so that all have equal access to legal remedies,
Oh and holding the elites to account for their wanton breaches of the current legal frameworks that come from the current inequalities of the system.
That’s not a problem is it David?
Disappointed my comments are not being published Martin. Your site though