Her latest rant titled Words matter, published yesterday in E-Tangata, is a jumbled version of the current anti-referendum narrative recited by go-to “experts” on all things Maori whose writings are reproduced in Public Interest Journalism Fund publications.
Seymour calls for a national debate on the treaty.
Moana says such a debate is not possible because the history curriculum has only just been introduced and trolls on the internet are “thick”.
Seymour goes with how the Treaty of Waitangi was understood at the time it was written, which was in 1840, when it was drafted in English and translated into Maori.
Moana says that the treaty merely "granted the Crown authority to govern their own people”, and went on to say that the chiefs never ceded sovereignty because the Waitangi Tribunal said they didn’t.
Moana added that “even international law dictates that, when in doubt, any interpretation must favour the party which didn’t draft it”.
She was referring to the “contra proferentem” rule that was created in Canadian law in 1952.
Moana sourced the “contra proferentem” rule with a hyperlink to a page on the Treaty of Waitangi for Dummies site.
Her narrative, which is jumbled, follows the narrative that appeared in Dame Anne Salmond’s piece titled Why a referendum on Te Tiriti will backfire critiqued at A vote on the treaty?
Are these go-to experts like Moana and Dame Anne following a talking point missive from the Iwi Leaders Group to mainstream media outlets which are still incentivised by Public Interest Journalism Fund dollars?
After all, Seymour in government would help repeal Three Waters, and that would take away from iwi leaders their recently gained control of council water supplies.
Moana does not address ACT’s proposed three-clause act, which would say:
Instead, she attacks a year-old statement by ACT’s justice spokesperson, Nicole McKee, which announced how ACT would define treaty principles. Moana goes on to complain that in the ACT statement words had been ditched, replaced, twisted, and decontextualised.
More than five million of us call New Zealand home. That includes 200 ethnicities speaking 160 languages, according to the 2018 census.
Policy should benefit everyone, not just the 17 percent with some Maori ancestry, which means rights should be based on citizenship, not ethnicity.
Seymour repeatedly asks interviewers, like Moana, to give an example of a successful nation in which rights are distributed based on ethnicity. That question is never answered.
In a democracy such as New Zealand, political power is vested in we, the people, and this power is exercised through voting.
Seymour argues that because we, the people, are being required to live under “the treaty” we should be clear about what the treaty actually says and should have the opportunity to vote on it.
Moana either does not know, or does not want you to know, that the meaning of the treaty was changed in the 1980s, by a Waitangi Tribunal member.
That was while Eddie Durie chaired the tribunal (from 1980 to 2004) and when former Justice Minister and then Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer launched New Zealand into the uncharted waters of historical compensation.
Back then, tribunal member (and treaty claimant) Sir Hugh Kawharu “retranslated” the treaty into his “what the chiefs might have understood” version.
In 11 footnotes, he declared that the chiefs could not understand what sovereignty was, he redefined the word used to translate “possession”, and declared that “taonga”, which translated the word “property”, means “all dimensions of a tribal estate, both material and immaterial.
Kawharu created a treaty which led to the view that Moana promotes, that chiefs only agreed to allow a British governor to control (angry land shark) migrants from Britain living in New Zealand.
A summary written by former Canterbury University law lecturer David Round says: “All the treaty actually says is that the Queen is sovereign and Maori are her subjects, with the rights of subjects, including possession of property. That is all, in both English and Maori versions”.
That was how the treaty was drafted, debated and signed in 1840, confirmed at a meeting of chiefs at Kohimarama in 1860, and reconfirmed in 1922 in a book by Maori Affairs Minister Sir Apirana Ngata.
Round is an expert. Moana likes to quote experts. Or does she only quote experts that she agrees with?
Here’s another expert, American economist Thomas Sowell, who wrote that when people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
Perhaps that is what Moana and the iwi leaders are anxious about.
Sources
Moana Maniapoto, Words Matter, E-Tangata, November 12, 2023, https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/moana-maniapoto-words-matter/
Dame Anne Salmond, Why a referendum on Te Tiriti will backfire, Newsroom, November 2, 2023. https://www.msn.com/en-
Mike Butler, A vote on the treaty? NZCPR, November 6, 2023. https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/11/mike-butler-vote-on-treaty.html
ACT proposes referendum on co-governance, https://www.act.org.nz/act_proposes_referendum_on_co_governance
Sir Apirana Ngata, The Treaty of Waitangi – an explanation, https://www.nzcpr.com/treaty-of-waitangi-by-sir-apirana-ngata/
Moana says such a debate is not possible because the history curriculum has only just been introduced and trolls on the internet are “thick”.
Seymour goes with how the Treaty of Waitangi was understood at the time it was written, which was in 1840, when it was drafted in English and translated into Maori.
Moana says that the treaty merely "granted the Crown authority to govern their own people”, and went on to say that the chiefs never ceded sovereignty because the Waitangi Tribunal said they didn’t.
Moana added that “even international law dictates that, when in doubt, any interpretation must favour the party which didn’t draft it”.
She was referring to the “contra proferentem” rule that was created in Canadian law in 1952.
Moana sourced the “contra proferentem” rule with a hyperlink to a page on the Treaty of Waitangi for Dummies site.
Her narrative, which is jumbled, follows the narrative that appeared in Dame Anne Salmond’s piece titled Why a referendum on Te Tiriti will backfire critiqued at A vote on the treaty?
Are these go-to experts like Moana and Dame Anne following a talking point missive from the Iwi Leaders Group to mainstream media outlets which are still incentivised by Public Interest Journalism Fund dollars?
After all, Seymour in government would help repeal Three Waters, and that would take away from iwi leaders their recently gained control of council water supplies.
Moana does not address ACT’s proposed three-clause act, which would say:
1. All citizens of New Zealand have the same political rights and dutiesThe public would vote for or against the act becoming law, like the End-of-Life Choice Act referendum in 2020.
2. All political authority comes from the people by democratic means including universal suffrage, regular and free elections with a secret ballot
3. New Zealand is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy where discrimination based on ethnicity is illegal.
Instead, she attacks a year-old statement by ACT’s justice spokesperson, Nicole McKee, which announced how ACT would define treaty principles. Moana goes on to complain that in the ACT statement words had been ditched, replaced, twisted, and decontextualised.
More than five million of us call New Zealand home. That includes 200 ethnicities speaking 160 languages, according to the 2018 census.
Policy should benefit everyone, not just the 17 percent with some Maori ancestry, which means rights should be based on citizenship, not ethnicity.
Seymour repeatedly asks interviewers, like Moana, to give an example of a successful nation in which rights are distributed based on ethnicity. That question is never answered.
In a democracy such as New Zealand, political power is vested in we, the people, and this power is exercised through voting.
Seymour argues that because we, the people, are being required to live under “the treaty” we should be clear about what the treaty actually says and should have the opportunity to vote on it.
Moana either does not know, or does not want you to know, that the meaning of the treaty was changed in the 1980s, by a Waitangi Tribunal member.
That was while Eddie Durie chaired the tribunal (from 1980 to 2004) and when former Justice Minister and then Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer launched New Zealand into the uncharted waters of historical compensation.
Back then, tribunal member (and treaty claimant) Sir Hugh Kawharu “retranslated” the treaty into his “what the chiefs might have understood” version.
In 11 footnotes, he declared that the chiefs could not understand what sovereignty was, he redefined the word used to translate “possession”, and declared that “taonga”, which translated the word “property”, means “all dimensions of a tribal estate, both material and immaterial.
Kawharu created a treaty which led to the view that Moana promotes, that chiefs only agreed to allow a British governor to control (angry land shark) migrants from Britain living in New Zealand.
A summary written by former Canterbury University law lecturer David Round says: “All the treaty actually says is that the Queen is sovereign and Maori are her subjects, with the rights of subjects, including possession of property. That is all, in both English and Maori versions”.
That was how the treaty was drafted, debated and signed in 1840, confirmed at a meeting of chiefs at Kohimarama in 1860, and reconfirmed in 1922 in a book by Maori Affairs Minister Sir Apirana Ngata.
Round is an expert. Moana likes to quote experts. Or does she only quote experts that she agrees with?
Here’s another expert, American economist Thomas Sowell, who wrote that when people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
Perhaps that is what Moana and the iwi leaders are anxious about.
Sources
Moana Maniapoto, Words Matter, E-Tangata, November 12, 2023, https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/moana-maniapoto-words-matter/
Dame Anne Salmond, Why a referendum on Te Tiriti will backfire, Newsroom, November 2, 2023. https://www.msn.com/en-
Mike Butler, A vote on the treaty? NZCPR, November 6, 2023. https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/11/mike-butler-vote-on-treaty.html
ACT proposes referendum on co-governance, https://www.act.org.nz/act_proposes_referendum_on_co_governance
Sir Apirana Ngata, The Treaty of Waitangi – an explanation, https://www.nzcpr.com/treaty-of-waitangi-by-sir-apirana-ngata/
10 comments:
A new document has appeared which will need rapid correction.
Claire Charters (lead He Puapua author and now "Indigenous governance advisor to the HR Commission) has written " A fact sheet to understand Co-governance".
A legal rebuttal of errors is necessary ASAP.
e.g. UNDRIP ( non legally binding is equated with the UDHR ( a legally binding treaty).
Moana is Willie Jackson ex wife. Nutshell handled.
Amazing how some thing so simple and so effective and how significant in the context of the times has become so distorted, so corrupted and so polarising.
If some of the Maori and bleeding heart white "experts" are saying that chiefs did not understand or know what they were signing, then surely the treaty is worthless.
On there other hand, to annul the treaty now would create problems beyond what has been threatened at present.
Until such time that minuscule maori blood leeches realise that they are no maori, the BS will go on for ever.
I'm well and truly over it.
The many RNZ programmes pitched at maori comprise a sickening parade of non objective propoganda encouraging, leading, contriving, a relentless pro maori presentation. Most thinking non maori give tedious puerile te reo riddled maori pogrammes a miss. If many non maori troubled to listen there would be significant response to the balatant subversive propoganda.
We should stop.calling it the treaty referendum and instead call it the equality for all referendum. Then ask nzers the questions david has outlined above. Another question that should be asked, is if we want a name change from nz to aotearoa. It cannot be called both and i don't want aotearoa on my passport without a referendum.
Anonymous 13 Nov, UDHR is not a treaty and it's not legally binding. It was a UNGA resolution and those are never legally binding, nor indeed do they come under treaty law.
If you want to understood what the Maori chiefs understood at the time of signing the Treaty, go read the transcripts of the speeches by the Chiefs at Waitangi on the day of the signing, compiled by William Colenso. It’s very clear that the Chiefs understood what they were agreeing to. They were giving up their “chiefly authority” in return for becoming British subjects and retaining their property. Just like all other NZers. Actually many of the early speeches on the day opposed signing. It looked initially like it would not go ahead! It was the older, senior chiefs that turned the debate.
Beg to differ. For the UN, the IDHR has equal status with treaties. It supersedes other non legally binding instruments ( such as declarations or recommendations).
International law comes from both treaty law and rules of what is known as customary international law.
Treaties are written conventions in which States formally establish certain rules. Customary international law, on the other hand, is not written but derives from "a general practice accepted as law".
To prove that a certain rule is customary, one has to show that it is reflected in state practice and that the international community believes that such practice is required as a matter of law.
But a UN General Assembly resolution ain't a treaty, Anon. It doesn't come under the Venna Convention on Treaties.
18 years later came two treaties derived from the UDHR, one on civil and political rights and the other on social, economic and cultural rights; the latter being non-justiciable at the insistence of first-world nations. So it is 'law' but not enforceable...... another sick joke (like so much of international law).
You've got the 'opinio juris' requirement (nominally - mostly lipservice) regarding the UDHR but I think you'd have your work cut out convincing everyone that there is 'consistent state practice'.
Post a Comment