Geoff Parker: One Law For All Is Not An Attack On Maori

A response to Sir Douglas Graham

Sir Douglas Graham warns that ACT’s “one law for all” agenda is foolish and likely to provoke protest.

But there is a rather revealing assumption behind his argument: that seeking equality before the law is somehow an attack on Māori.

It isn't.

The real question is whether New Zealand should continue developing a legal and political framework in which some rights, powers and forms of political participation depend on ancestry — or whether citizenship should ultimately mean equal rights and responsibilities under one law.

Geoff Parker: On the Cession of Sovereignty, the Record Is Clear

Why the Treaty Text and History Leave No Doubt

And the historical record is clearer than Paul Moon allows

Professor Paul Moon argues that the Treaty debate has become ideological, and that history offers a steadier guide than politics. That is true. But history can only perform that role when the record is examined in full. On the question of sovereignty, Moon’s analysis is disciplined in tone yet selective in substance. The clarity he claims emerges only through omission of the most explicit documentary evidence we possess.

History is not constructed from what can be plausibly inferred, but from what was written, said, understood, and acted upon at the time. When those elements are considered together, the conclusion is not ambiguous. Māori sovereignty was ceded to the Crown in 1840 — unevenly enforced, imperfectly realised, but ceded nonetheless.