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Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Ele Ludemann: Would Victoria be amused?


In all discussions about the relationship between the Crown and Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi, has anyone thought to ask what Queen Victoria would think?

The idea that she would enter into a partnership with anyone, perhaps with the exception of her husband, let alone people she would have regarded as being of a different – and surely in her eyes lower – class and race, is ridiculous.

She would not be amused at that idea nor the idea that she was giving up sovereignty. That wasn’t how monarchs thought in the 19th century.

Whether or not the Māori who signed the Treaty understood the idea of sovereignty is debatable but the idea that the Crown isn’t sovereign in New Zealand today and that we’re not all equal under, and subject to, the same laws should not be.

Anything else is a recipe for division and separatism.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.

2 comments:

Robert Arthur said...

Lange is on record as having observed that the Queen of the then most powerful nation on earth was unlikely to share soveriegnty wth or enter into any partnership with a bunch of only partially reformed mostly illitereate stone age cannibals, or words to that effect.

Anonymous said...

This sovereign and partnership business has gone on far too long. It has been pointed out so many times that is nonsense, but perpetuated by those with vested interests, and those 'useful idiots' in our society; usually academics who overthink everything and are irrelevant but don't like the that fact. Bring on the ACT. referendum