Robin Grieve: The Waitangi Tribunal must go

The Waitangi Tribunal has recommended the Government enters discussions with the Maori people of New Zealand on changes to the constitutional makeup of the country to give effect to their ‘treaty rights” in the country’s constitutional processes and institutions. This recommendation was made as part of stage two of its inquiry. Stage one of the inquiry claimed that Maori in the north did not cede sovereignty to the Crown.

In making this recommendation for constitutional change the Tribunal demonstrates there is no place for it in a modern, progressive, multi-cultural liberal democracy. It must go.

When the Tribunal was set up in 1975 the legislative preamble stated that it was desirable that a tribunal be established to make recommendations on claims relating to the practical application of the principles of the Treaty.

Any practical application of these undefined Treaty principles in a modern, progressive, multicultural, and liberal democracy would in anyone’s view have to be consistent with principles that are inherent and essential to such a society. Democracy based on equal suffrage, egalitarianism, and respect for individual human rights that are equal no matter one’s ethnicity, to name some.

The Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendation shows it has no interest in working within these principles. It has overreached its original mandate and purpose in making a recommendation such as it did.

I think most of us supported the idea that the Tribunal was a reasonable way to right what wrong it could and set all New Zealanders on a path forward together. Settling historical land claims seemed reasonable and desirable if we were to move forward together, and even more so when a date was set after which no new historical claim could be lodged. There would be a time in the future when all this was behind us was the vision this promised. That was fifty-three years ago though. How long does it take?

Even worse than the fact that settling historical land claims could keep the Tribunal going for over half a century is that, despite the deadline on new claims, the Tribunal has set itself up with a timeline of work on new non-historical claims going forward many decades. The tribunal is now far more than a settlor of historical claims, it has morphed into something that makes it a useful tool of the Maori separatists’ anti-democratic and racist agenda.

This was obvious to me when I attended one of these Tribunal hearings. I wrote at the time that we were all being taken for a ride by a tribunal that was questionable in its processes and its determinations. The Maori claimants I saw were genuine enough in their claims, if not a little misguided at times, but my impression at the time was that they were just pawns in an agenda that was not theirs. Just what this agenda was and who was driving it was not obvious to me at the time. It is pretty apparent now.

The Tribunal has become a political force that is pushing for racial privilege for Maori people. The reason this was able to happen is because the law that enabled the Tribunal to be established has also enabled it to become a law unto itself. The Tribunal makes decisions on claims that only Maori people are allowed to make. Each decision becomes a precedent for the next and the next. Its decisions are not challengeable, so each decision, no matter how precarious, stands and justifies the next. Each decision a little bolder than the one before. Its re-interpretation of the Treaty is ongoing, and its recommendations and decisions have crept over time away from what may have once been reasonable (radio airwaves for Maori people not withstanding) to what is now outrageous.

The recommendation for the Crown to make constitutional changes to allow Maori people different rights is beyond the pale. This recommendation is based on its’ ‘finding’ that the Maori people in the north did not cede sovereignty. This ‘finding’ has been ridiculed by historians and any lay person who could be bothered reading through the 600 pages in stage one of the report and 2000 pages in stage two would be gobsmacked at the flaws in its argument, its banality, and its lack of intellectual grunt. The tribunal’s ‘finding’ is even at odds with itself. In this report it states that the Treaty did not give the Crown sovereignty over the Maori people, but in 1988 it said this, and I quote. “The Treaty extinguished Mäori sovereignty and established that of the Crown”.

The issue of whether sovereignty was ceded in 1840 may not seem important to most New Zealanders because Maori people are obviously subjects of our sovereign nation now. They pay taxes and go to jail etc; but believe me it is. The Tribunal’s finding may have been derided by historians, but it is not challengeable unless the Government decides to investigate it outside of the Tribunal. The Tribunal will treat its finding as a precedent and justification for more outrageous decisions in the future. The idea that the Treaty principles need to be updated on the back of this decision has already been floated. The tribunal is sole decider of these principles and so it can make up any new principle it likes and create even more breaches for the Crown to make. It will just create even more grievance for the perpetual victims it caters for to milk and use to get even more privilege.

The Tribunal in its report states that Maori sovereignty was at hapu level. Each hapu was its own sovereign nation with the Maori people subject to the laws of their hapu. The Tribunal, after listening to exclusively Maori claimants, contends that the expectation of the Maori people who signed the Treaty was that the Crown would rule over the settlers only and each hapu would have equal status to the Crown and continue to rule over its own people. Where the settlers and the Maori people’s interests overlapped, as in who would govern over a mixed-race child one presumes, the governorship would be negotiated between the Crown and the hapu on a case-by-case basis. The Tribunal was not able to give an example of any such negotiation happening at scale, which makes its claims even more fanciful.

Any tribunal that could conclude that the expectation of the Maori people was that each hapu would be on equal status with the Queen of England and that the governing of each mixed-race child would be the subject of some case-by-case negotiation is in cloud cuckoo land. Just as it is away with the fairies making recommendations that are inconsistent with the principles upon which a modern liberal multi-ethnic democracy needs to adhere to.

The 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act which set up the Tribunal is fifty-three years old and is no longer serving the best interests of the people of New Zealand, including the Maori people. Removing it from our legislation is the only option. Outstanding historical claims can be settled by direct negotiation with the Crown and the Treaty of Waitangi itself can be viewed as a treaty that has achieved its purpose and be consigned to history.

The purpose of the Treaty of Waitangi was to enable the settlement of New Zealand and it has achieved that.  This settlement has made New Zealand a country of great wealth.  All Maori people today live a life of prosperity that most of the world’s population cannot relate to, and the Treaty has played a role in that. It should be celebrated for that and acknowledged as having done its job.

If we do not repeal the Treaty of Waitangi Act and get rid of the Waitangi Tribunal and remove all reference to the Treaty from legislation, we will see a continuation of the reinterpretation of the Treaty. The Treaty, once an honourable treaty, has been reinterpreted in to a racist one that assigns different ‘treaty rights’ to people of one race only and drives racial division which will bring about the destruction of this modern liberal democracy that should be so dear to us all.

The belief that one’s race bestows upon one certain rights and privileges that others do not have, is the most vile and evil of beliefs. Yet that belief underpins the Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendation for constitutional change to favour Maori people. The Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 has enabled such vile and evil beliefs to take hold in the Waitangi Tribunal and repealing it is the only option.

The vision and the grand purpose of the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act was for us to get to a point where we can all move forward together as one country with one people. We got to that point a long time ago and the best way to ensure we stay there is to be get rid of what has now become destructive legislation.

Robin Grieve, a tutor, orchardist and retired farmer, is Chairman of Pastural Farming Climate Research HERE.