Minister Davis held 20 meetings across the country to discuss with iwi their priorities for the new agency, and invited veteran activist Titewhai Harawira, and Wikatana Popata – the protestor convicted of assaulting former Prime Minister John Key at Waitangi in 2009 – to be part of an advisory group.
The Office for Maori-Crown Relations, Te Arawhiti, is the result of that collaboration with iwi. Among a raft of measures designed to promote Maori interests throughout the State sector, this powerful agency with 200 staff helped develop the Treaty of Waitangi guidelines issued by the Cabinet Office for all ministers and chief executives to ensure new policy is Treaty compliant.
These guidelines prioritise Maori rights through a series of leading questions relating to each article of the Treaty: “Will the policy enhance Maori wellbeing? Should the proposal be led by Maori? Will Maori have a role in design and implementation?”
The guidelines note the Waitangi Tribunal “plays an important role in providing advice to government on the application of Treaty principles.” Since the Tribunal is now having a significant influence on day-to-day Cabinet decisions, let’s examine what we know about this Agency.
The Kirk Labour Government established the Waitangi Tribunal as a permanent commission of inquiry into the Crown’s alleged breaches of the Treaty in 1975, through the passing of the Treaty of Waitangi Act.
Intense lobbying by the iwi elite led the Lange Labour Government to extend its jurisdiction in 1985 to cover historic claims going back to 1840. Even though most claims had already been settled by previous governments, new claims were lodged resulting in some iwi like Ngai Tahu receiving a fourth ‘full and final’ taxpayer-funded settlement – to become the country’s richest iwi with a $2 billion asset base.
Over the next 20 years, as the number of claims escalated, public concerns over the Treaty gravy train grew, leading the Clark Labour Government to announce a final deadline of 1 September 2008 for filing historic claims. Altogether 2,034 historic claims were lodged – up from just three in 1987.
The Waitangi Tribunal consists of up to 20 members, appointed for a three-year term by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Minister of Maori Affairs, along with a chairman – either a judge, a retired High Court judge, or the chief Maori Land Court judge. Between three and seven members are appointed for specific inquiries. Current Tribunal members can be seen HERE.
Under section 6 of the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act, the Waitangi Tribunal may make findings and recommendations on claims, but since it is not a court, they are not binding on the Crown.
The description by Northland orchardist and tutor Robin Grieve, of a Waitangi Tribunal hearing taking place on a Marae near his home, provides a rare insight into the workings of this powerful body:
“With much of the dialogue in Maori, I drew the conclusion the Waitangi Tribunal was some sort of pseudo court… but the law and the process was unlike anything I was familiar with. The Crown was represented by two fresh faced young lawyers who were very restrained and respectful in what were referred to as cross examinations, although they sang well, with all participants required to sing a song at the end of the day…
“After giving his evidence the claimant was asked by one of the many lawyers there representing Maori, to comment on what she described as the ‘inherent racism’ that his evidence highlighted. The claimant had no idea what she was talking about, so she elaborated. ‘Having land taken under the public works act and not given back happened more to Maori than non-Maori, so that must prove racism’ she said. The claimant was not sure what he was supposed to do…‘Do you agree?’ she asked firmly.
“The claimant still seemed unsure but meekly agreed to the lawyer’s racism statement although I am not sure he really understood what he was agreeing to… considering it was never established that this claim had anything to do with the public works act…
“‘Do you have a vegetable garden now that you tend with your own children like your grandfather did with you?’ asked the Crown lawyer. ‘No’, he replied, ‘it would be nice but it is just easier to go to Pak n Save’. That was what it was really all about I thought because much of what they claimed to be lost, was not taken from them, it was given up by them. The Waitangi Tribunal process was just a place where loss had a home, loss of land, loss of independence, loss of ‘the good old days’ and somehow, all be it indirectly, blame the Crown and racist Pakehas for the losses they themselves had given up…
“My impressions were negative. There seemed little merit or logic in any of the claims, any supporting evidence was ill prepared, there was very little probing by the Crown lawyers into the gaping holes in the claimants’ evidence, the lawyers used each claimant to get some point across that was nothing to do with the claimant’s case but everything to do with the lawyers’ anti-Crown and anti-Pakeha agenda…
“The Waitangi Tribunal is … not a place where the merits of a case are thrashed out to their conclusion, it is a show with a script that appeared to me to be to take whatever claims were presented to it, no matter how illogical, and use them to further the rhetoric that Maori have lost a lot and that even that which they gave up freely was the Pakeha’s fault. Two days of hearings were enough for me, I drove home feeling that whether Maori or European, we were all being ripped off by the Waitangi Tribunal’s existence. I began with the impression that the Tribunal might be a questionable entity with a questionable purpose, I know now that it is.”
Professor Elizabeth Rata of Auckland University, who has long followed the attempts of tribal leaders to gain control of New Zealand’s public institutions, observed first-hand how the Waitangi Tribunal was ‘captured’ by the iwi elite and radicalised:
“The Tribunal played a crucial role in legitimating the material and political aspirations of the neotribal elite. The 1985 Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act that allowed claims to be backdated to 1840 established the Waitangi Tribunal as the main brokerage site between the emergent neotribal elite and the government. Political recognition and institutionalisation were extended throughout the 1990s to include the concept of a political equal ‘partnership’ between the tribes and the government.”
This radicalisation is evident in Tribunal decisions.
According to a Ministry of Maori Development policy makers’ guide, in 1988, the Waitangi Tribunal stated, “on reading the Maori text [of the Treaty] we are satisfied that sovereignty was ceded.”
That view is, of course, consistent with Sir Apirana Ngata’s 1922 explanation of the Maori version of the Treaty where he says the first article “indicates a complete cession”: “This was the transfer by the Maori Chiefs to the Queen of England for ever of the Government of all their lands. What was the thing they transferred? What was the thing which they gave away so freely for ever? It was the Government of their lands.”
But by 2014, the Waitangi Tribunal’s report into the first stage of their WAI 1040 northern Maori inquiry, claimed Maori did not cede sovereignty after all: “We have concluded that in February 1840 the rangatira who signed te Tiriti did not cede their sovereignty. Rather, they agreed to share power and authority with the Governor. They agreed to a relationship: one in which they and Hobson were to be equal…”
Auckland University of Technology historian Professor Paul Moon was outraged: “This report distorts New Zealand history and seriously undermines the tribunal’s credibility. I was shocked by some of the statements contained in the report. This is not a concern about some trivial detail, but over the fundamental history of our country, which the tribunal has got manifestly wrong.”
Ngapuhi leader David Rankin, who gave evidence at a Waitangi Tribunal hearing, was scathing – and as an ‘insider’, his views are worth repeating:
“When my ancestor Hone Heke, signed the Treaty of Waitangi, he did so because he knew it was the only option in terms of having a relationship with the British Crown. But the tribunal is now telling us that all those chiefs saw the Declaration of Independence, which a few had signed in 1835, is the basis of their relationship with the British. That is a lie and is not what the tribunal was told by me…
“It may surprise many New Zealanders, but a growing number of Maori are fed up with the Waitangi Tribunal, and the entire Treaty gravy train.
“The Tribunal makes up history as it goes along. Facts are omitted in Tribunal reports, and evidence is shaped in some cases to fit predetermined outcomes. The bias is so obvious, but most historians are too scared for their careers to question the tribunal’s findings.
“In the 1970s, many of us hoped that the Tribunal would be an organisation that would achieve reconciliation. It has turned out to be a body that is bringing in apartheid to New Zealand.
“Treaty settlements make tribal corporations rich, along with the help of favourable tax status and often little or no rates to pay. So with these advantages, it’s pretty easy to become super profitable. But do you think the average Maori sees any benefit from this? None at all.
“The tribunal is a bully. Go against it, and you will be labelled a racist or worse.
“Let’s be clear. The Tribunal exists to make lawyers, and a few elite Maori very rich, and to give the impression that wrongs are being righted. We all know the Crown breached the Treaty in the nineteenth century. But by the time of my parents’ generation, this was behind us as a people… until the Tribunal dragged it all up again.”
David Rankin believes the Waitangi Tribunal should have been shut down long ago.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, the former Judge Anthony Willy also believes the Tribunal should go:
“The Waitangi Tribunal has not only out lived any usefulness it may have once had but has become a focus for unending grievances real or imagined. Increasingly it drives a wedge between those currently claiming some Maori ethnicity and the overwhelming majority of the rest of the population. Not only is this an insult to the many New Zealanders having some Maori ethnicity who have made outstanding contributions to all sectors of our society and economy, it has become a gravy train for greedy tribalists claiming and receiving unearned rewards which must be provided by the rest of society, the taxpayers.
“In the interest of social cohesion, the Tribunal must be wound up. In doing so the document signed in 1840 can be relegated to history, and New Zealanders of all ethnicities can go back to working to return this country to what it once was – the envy of the world and not somewhere from which our young, and not so young are queuing up to leave.”
And that’s the point – unity in this country needs to be restored as a priority.
The division the Ardern-Hipkins Labour Government has created through the recklessness of unmandated power sharing arrangements with the iwi elite has not only damaged the social fabric of New Zealand, it has undermined democracy itself.
After the election, the new administration must not only abolish the Waitangi Tribunal – and remove all references to the Treaty from legislation, but also disestablish the Office of Maori-Crown Relations, which has become the chief purveyor of the dangerous separatism that is now infecting public and private institutions across New Zealand.
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1 comment:
If anything like the above ever appeared in legacy msm I wonder how readership would trend? Or is the support of the super wealthy maori corporations the only consideration? Perhaps if they tried the experiment the Nat/Act coalition would likely be faced only by the Te Maori party for opposition.
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