Having closed, or at least announced they are closing off, the absurd deals between local councils and Māori, once they get the new RMA laws up Hipkins suggests that this will lead to a lot of renegotiation of Treaty settlements.
It will do no such thing.
You know why? Because it might just be that this Government has had enough of court interference of Māori issues, and the Mike Smith mess might just have been the final straw.
I would like to think the interventionist nonsense from the Waitangi Tribunal was the final straw. But the Government seem happy enough to continue to foot that bill, while ignoring pretty much everything they say.
The really important bit of the Hipkins intervention is that he has not explicitly said they will reinstate said council deals.
Why would he not have said that?
Could it possibly be because he too realises that the whole Māorification of this country has gotten wildly out of control, and not even he can bring himself to buy the inevitable fight that would be required in an election campaign if it was him vs Luxon, and one had killed said deals and one was left to defend the indefensible.
The headache Hipkins doesn’t need of course, is they aren't his deals. It's the councils that should be called out and held to account. It’s the councils who are taking the proverbial.
That is not to say the Māori caucus won't get to Hipkins. But for now, at least, he takes what most middle-of-the-road New Zealanders would perceive as a moderate, sensible stance.
And it's exactly those sorts of stances that win elections. Elections are won in the centre and the Māorification of the country is nowhere near the centre, a place the Labour Party once stood fairly solidly and fairly successfully.
Yes, the original Treaty deals have clauses for renegotiation, but they are more about income than local-level dabbling.
If any council or iwi want to dabble in a court the court should be ignored.
You get the sense that like a lot of ideas not well thought through, any original goodwill was well and truly shot to bits as councils and local Māori, to put it bluntly, took the piss.
Well that game, thank goodness, is up.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
I would like to think the interventionist nonsense from the Waitangi Tribunal was the final straw. But the Government seem happy enough to continue to foot that bill, while ignoring pretty much everything they say.
The really important bit of the Hipkins intervention is that he has not explicitly said they will reinstate said council deals.
Why would he not have said that?
Could it possibly be because he too realises that the whole Māorification of this country has gotten wildly out of control, and not even he can bring himself to buy the inevitable fight that would be required in an election campaign if it was him vs Luxon, and one had killed said deals and one was left to defend the indefensible.
The headache Hipkins doesn’t need of course, is they aren't his deals. It's the councils that should be called out and held to account. It’s the councils who are taking the proverbial.
That is not to say the Māori caucus won't get to Hipkins. But for now, at least, he takes what most middle-of-the-road New Zealanders would perceive as a moderate, sensible stance.
And it's exactly those sorts of stances that win elections. Elections are won in the centre and the Māorification of the country is nowhere near the centre, a place the Labour Party once stood fairly solidly and fairly successfully.
Yes, the original Treaty deals have clauses for renegotiation, but they are more about income than local-level dabbling.
If any council or iwi want to dabble in a court the court should be ignored.
You get the sense that like a lot of ideas not well thought through, any original goodwill was well and truly shot to bits as councils and local Māori, to put it bluntly, took the piss.
Well that game, thank goodness, is up.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
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