The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
There can be no doubt that the British Government of the day was acting from the highest principles of international law and practice and goodwill in despatching Captain Hobson to New Zealand in 1839 with the express objective of establishing British sovereignty over New Zealand with the free consent of the native population.
She seems to forget that Seymour is in fact a senior member of Parliament who happens to be a deputy Prime Minister and free speech being not quite dead yet in this country, he has every right to make this challenge to church leaders – or anybody else for that matter. Equally, those church leaders have every right to reply to him should they wish to do so. All good, surely when the topic is quite an important one.
It is generally credited to the citizens of Athens, Greece and indeed the very word “democracy” is derived from Greek origins. However classical Greek democracy was very different from the practice as we understand it today. While it is true that all free men did have a vote, the majority of the population were slaves and it is doubtful if Greek civilization could have functioned without that. Women of course, did not count.
Well, yes! A report along those lines would be appropriate for the essay entitled “An introduction to Te Tiriti o Waitangi by the New Zealand School Trustees Association”, last revised in June 2024 and presumably to be used within schools for the indoctrination of the children of New Zealand. Here's why.
All very well perhaps but surely it is fair to ask just what are those “Treaty rights” and why indeed do they need “defending”? Let us refer to the officially authorised 1869 translation of the treaty by T.E. Young of the Native Department.[1]
William Bernbach.
William Hobson was not a free agent. He was appointed by Lord Normanby, Colonial Secretary, on behalf of the British Crown to negotiate with the Maori chiefs with the prospect of a British colony being established in New Zealand. A 4200 word brief was issued to him before his departure from England.
There Godfery claims that “the Māori language version reaffirming Māori sovereignty” which is profoundly the most utter nonsense. The entire point of the activities of early February 1840 was to ascertain whether the assembled Maori chiefs assented to the transfer of such sovereignty as each possessed to the Queen in return for the undoubted benefits to the Maori people of becoming British subjects.
Amongst those individuals bestowed on Captain Hobson by his superior, Governor Gipps of New South Wales, keen to be rid of them, and “selected for their known incompetency”[i] was one JS Freeman who was to be Hobson’s personal secretary.
Signing the Treaty “Ja Stuart Freeman Gentleman”[ii], Freeman was a product of Eton and Oxford with his head full of the “royal style” jargon used in treaties with European nations and, to put it bluntly, a snob. This style he was determined to use in an English draft of a treaty with Maori chiefs and in sharp contrast to the plain and straightforward style of naval officer Hobson, accustomed to plain speaking at sea to men of little education, sometimes with their very lives at risk.
We HAVE to get the story straight; our Country depends on it!
“The confounding of all right and wrong, in wild fury, has averted from us the gracious favour of the gods” - Catullus
Now, I am amongst the first to assert that dear Anne does not “practice to deceive”, but as the same time it is fair to say that some of what she writes has a very similar effect.
She writes in “Newsroom” for 15 December 2023 that “Maori and Pakeha think differently.”
It is followed by a picture of the recently defaced document in Te Papa being studied by two police officers and the caption “Protest group Te Waka Hourua deface a Te Papa exhibit displaying the English text of the Treaty of Waitangi.”
And now we have it ‒ in his view anyway ‒ from Morgan Godfery who has got himself a job
as a senior
lecturer in the law faculty at Victoria University of Wellington as reported by
“The Post” for 30th November 2023.
While I emphatically do not identify with either the “radical left” or “libertarian right” to which he refers, I do agree with the point on which, Godfery says, they “probably agree”: emphatically the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are a sham.
What I tell you three times is true - Lewis Carroll “The Hunting of the Snark” 1876
That in itself appears to me to be a response to what could indeed be a loaded question. Why, for instance, was the question not asked – if indeed it was worth asking at all:
For a hotbed of racist propaganda and dubious history one need look no further than a publication called “E-Tangata”. And for an extreme example from it, one need look no further that the article by Moana Maniapoto dated 12 November 2023.
As I read between the lines ….
Charlie Martin, published in “The Press” 10 September 2023, tells us a story about Julian Batchelor, a man he describes as having romped over New Zealand with the spirit of a doomsday preacher warning about the apocalypse. Well? In brief, Martin’s style is florid, personal to the man and tone deaf to the message delivered.
The observation by French philosopher Jacques Ellul which we quote above could hardly be more accurate than as a description of the relentless fabrication about the Treaty of Waitangi and New Zealand’s history by many a part-Maori commentator so freely featuring in the news media today. Such a one is “treaty educator” Te Huia Bill Hamilton with a long article in E-Tangata for 27 August 2023. In it he starts by claiming that “Opposition to co-governance is fuelled by racism, ignorance and fear. And it continues the colonising which asserts European superiority over Indigenous peoples.”
During the late 1700s and early 1800s, incessant intertribal wars, led by the various tribal chiefs, were decimating the Maori population, nearing the point of total extermination.[1] A number of Maori chiefs, unable to resolve the matter between themselves, and for fear of the French, appealed to King William IV of Great Britain to protect them and bring an end to this situation.[2] At first, the Crown was reluctant to intervene,[3] but finally it was agreed to establish a government in New Zealand to assume control of the situation and to establish law and order for Maoris and British alike. This was only possible if the Crown was granted superiority by the chiefs, that is, recognized as sovereign.[4] In the event, the British took control by invitation not by conquest nor by stealth.
