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Friday, January 26, 2024

Michael Laws chats to Gary Judd KC about the Treaty of Waitangi & the Prospect of a Referendum


Gary unravels the drafting and signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in easy to follow discussion.

















Click to watch


Gary Judd KC is a King's Counsel, former Chairman of ASB and Ports of Auckland and former member APEC Business Advisory Council.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...


Legally brilliant and accurate.

The problem is that NZ has moved into the "woke" agenda,
Facts no longer matter - the emotive narrative of grievance and entitlement now dominate.

Only a referendum will now resolve this: do citizens want a democracy or a ethnocracy who are empowered to control?

Simple as that now.

Anonymous said...

The Final Draft and the Maori translation which had been translated overnight from the Final Draft by H & E Williams, were read out at 10am on the 5th February 1840 to the gathering of chiefs, their followers and settlers, about 1000 people in total, and then discussed for the next five hours.

The Final Draft was misplaced and not seen again until 1989.

Governor Hobson never made or authorised an English version of the Treaty of Waitangi to be signed by the chiefs.

The Governments English text of the Treaty used today is NOT the final draft and had nothing to do with the document the chiefs signed at Waitangi on the 6th February 1840.

Hobson’s secretary, James Freeman, who was authorised to make ‘Royal Style’ copies for overseas dispatch, complied the English text from the rejected draft notes. Freeman made several of these English versions, which differed from each other, but none of which had any legal standing as he had compiled them from Busby’s earlier rejected notes.

Then there was Missionary Maunsell’s emergency at Waikato Heads, when Captain Symonds carrying an official copy of the text in Maori, as intended for all occasions, failed to arrive in time for the meeting of chiefs and others who had assembled there.

Missionary Maunsell had a ruined copy of one of Freeman’s "Formal Royal Style" English versions in his pocket. This version had been ruined for overseas dispatch when Hobson had attempted a "left-handed" signature at the height of his stroke (between the 1st and 4th of March).

Five chiefs’ signatures were recorded at the bottom of the printed Maori Treaty Sheet (which had been read out to the gathered Maori chiefs) and countersigned by Maunsell, with Freeman’s ruined Royal Style English version, which was NOT an independent document, being used in this emergency to collect further chief’s signatures. The two sheets of this ONE document were then folded together by Maunsell, the printed sheet on top.

Later, the printed Maori sheet, with Freeman’s ruined Royal style version (carrying the overflow of the Maori chiefs signatures) sitting behind it, were glued together with wax to become one document and Hobson added a waxen seal to render Maunsell's "make-do", Maori language treaty "official".

Maunsell’s “make-do” Maori language treaty document was later torn apart, roughly pinned together; torn apart again by somebody unknown, to go their separate ways thereafter.

The Tiriti o Waitangi was not translated from Freeman’s compiled English text, but is being used today as the official English text and is attached to the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act.

The Tiriti o Waitangi signed on the 6th of February 1840 makes no mention of FORESTS or FISHERIES and INCLUDES ‘all the people of New Zealand’.

Peter said...

And Anonymous@3.16pm the inclusion of "all the people of New Zealand" in Article Second is important when considering this claimed self- determination/sovereignty nonsense.

As you've noted, Te Tiriti says "...nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani" - i.e. "...all the people of New Zealand...". And Busby's English draft of 4 February 1840 (from which Te Tiriti was in all likelihood prepared by the Williams' - aka the misplaced until 1989 "Littlewood version"), again "...all the people of New Zealand..." And then by Judge T E Young, of the Native Land Court, who translated Te Tiriti in 1869, he again recorded "...all the people of New Zealand...". Then Sir Apirana Ngata, in his book published on the Treaty in 1922, again his own translation was "...all the people of New Zealand..." And, finally, Sir Hugh Kawharu, who completed yet another translation in 1988 - again "...all the people of New Zealand..."!

But as always, the opportunist activists jump to the corrupt official "Freeman" version wrongly adopted in Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 to secure those protected property rights ONLY for Maori - along with, naturally, things like the forests, fisheries, foreshore & seabed, airwaves, and all pounamu etc. etc. And should He Puapua come to pass, nothing will be off the table, including the water, the wind, solar energy - anything and everything, including the air that we all breathe.

In all, not a bad score, all because of the timing of an ancestral waka and some inept legislation by the Labour Govt, subsequently aided and abetted by National.

Robert Arthur said...

Nowadays nothing as rational as this appears in the msm. Tthey seem o have given up on what is now demonsratably the majority.