“Democratic government can accommodate Maori political
aspiration in many ways… What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a
separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can
have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty.
They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both.”
He specifically warned about the Treaty of Waitangi:
“The treaty is a wonderful
stick for activists to beat the rest of us with.” He described it as “a source
of alternative authority - the basis of a self-perpetuating industry in
academic and legal circles” and he made the point that “many on the left of
politics who sympathise with Maori aspiration have identified with the cause of
the treaty, either not knowing or not caring that its implications are
profoundly undemocratic.”
