Mike Butler: Domestic terrorism at Kaitaia

The hotheads who threatened travellers, blocked flights, and started fires at the Kaitaia airport last week were not protesting, they were repossessing their land, according to Ngati Kahu treaty settlement negotiator Margaret Mutu.(1)

A 28-hour occupation of Kaitaia Airport by Ngati Kahu, which began just before lunchtime on Tuesday, ended at 3pm on Wednesday in a blaze of tyres and five arrests.

Mike Butler: The permanent wallow in grievance

A key promise of the treaty settlement process is that as a society, we deal fully and finally with past injustices, achieve “closure”, and move forward as one people. The National Party took this further by setting a deadline in saying that this would all take place by 2014 – yes, this year.

However, there are more financial incentives for claimants, law firms, historians, and politicians, to continue to wallow in the past than there are to build a future. Despite around $2.3-billion being paid in treaty settlements little appears to have been settled.