Mike Butler: Treaty settlements – let’s be honest

Let’s be honest about treaty settlements for a few minutes.

The table attached shows that around $4.6-billion has been largely paid in financial redress for alleged breaches of the treaty by the Crown all the way back to 1840 and the Maori Party, rebranded as Te Pati Maori, looks angrier than ever.

That raises the question whether anything has actually been settled.

Mike Butler: Treaty negotiator pay update

A new list published today of amounts paid to treaty negotiators that Winston Peters got from Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson may be compared with a similar list from 2013 to see differences, gaps, with one amount being less than two years ago.

Finlayson provided a breakdown of the amounts paid to Government-appointed Crown negotiators for each year since 2008, in response to a Parliamentary written question from Peters.

Mike Butler: Billion dollar tribe’s slanted history

Did confiscation cause the armed conflict in the Waikato, as the Waikato-Tainui annual report 2014 claims, or was it the other way around? History shows that the Waikato-Tainui version is wrong because government troops entered the Waikato region on July 12, 1863, while a proclamation confiscating land was issued in December 1864, after the fighting was over. The Waikato-Tainui report said on page 27:

In 1863 the Crown confiscated over 1.2 million acres of Waikato-Tainui land and resources spanning from Tamaki Makaurau, through the Waikato Valley to north of the Mokau River. This confiscation resulted in the Waikato Land Wars and led to significant loss of life and property, crippling the welfare, economy, and development of Waikato-Tainui.

Mike Butler: Refund from Ngai Tahu required

While South Island tribe Ngai Tahu is demanding more than the $68.5-million top-up paid this year under the relativity clause of their 1998 settlement, the government could demand return of the $170-million paid in 1998 on the grounds that it was paid in error. Ngai Tahu has entered arbitration with the Crown over interpretation of the clauses that detail how the relativity payment should be calculated, according to news reports. (1)

The Ngai Tahu agreement, like that of Waikato-Tainui, was reached in an environment in which the government argued that all treaty settlements should total no more than $1-billion dollars, with the settlement cap called a “fiscal envelope”.

Mike Butler: De-knighting treaty sugar daddy

While Prime Minister John Key is agonising over whether former National Cabinet Minister Sir Douglas Graham should be stripped of his knighthood, here are a few aspects of the beleaguered knight’s record on treaty settlements, often quoted as his saving grace. Graham, who went down in the 2008 collapse of the Lombard finance company along with Bill Jeffries, Lawrence Bryant, and Michael Reeves, had appeals against their sentences for their roles in the failure rejected on Thursday, and were told that their sentences were “manifestly inadequate”.

Mike Butler: Sir Douglas' role questioned

Bitter investors want convicted former Lombard director Sir Douglas Graham, a National Party man, stripped of his knighthood while Labour leader David Shearer argues that since the honour was for treaty settlements, it should remain untouched. Therefore, what was the beleaguered knight’s role in treaty work?

Sir Douglas was convicted, on February 24, along with former-Justice Minister Bill Jeffries (Labour) and two other men, of making false statements to investors in his capacity as a director of Lombard finance. He faces up to five years imprisonment and a fine of $300,000.