Elizabeth Rata: Two Treaties of Waitangi: The Articles Treaty and the Principles Treaty

There are two versions of the Treaty of Waitangi. The first is the 1840 Treaty – the ‘Articles Treaty’. The second is what I call the ‘Principles Treaty’. It dates from 1986 when the principles were first included in legislation. Astonishingly the parliamentary representatives who inserted the word ‘principles’ did not know what they meant. To include a word estranged from its meaning into legislation is an egregious political failure. At the very least, a democracy requires words to have an agreed meaning otherwise rational communication is impossible. Autocracies that use ideologies to control how people think can dispense with accurate meaning. Democracies cannot.