Spaniard: Yellow-eyed penguins on Ngāi Tahu’s menu

Ngāi Tahu killing and consuming endangered yellow-eyed penguins is now okay in the eyes of the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust. It’s also okay, apparently, with the Department of Conservation. Treaty religiosity drives the organisations’ extraordinary loss of compass.

In a DOC-published recovery plan, Te KawekaTakohaka mõ te Hoiho 2019-2029, created by ‘partners’ including Ngāi Tahu, the Trust, and DOC, the tribe cites its former consumption of yellow-eyed penguins and its interest in returning to the practices it says are “responsibilities as kaitiaki”, with no demur from those partners.

Spaniard: Schrödinger’s Citizen

Enabling some New Zealanders to be citizens of both a democracy under the Crown and a pre-feudal grouping alongside the Crown is as ludicrous and dangerous as it sounds.

In a famous 1935 thought experiment, Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger hypothesised a cat simultaneously dead and alive. Schrödinger’s Cat exposed fancifulness of a then-idea in quantum mechanics: that things can exist in more than one state.

That imaginary scenario showing a scientific caprice’s absurdity was well and good; it made a point, cost little, and no felines were harmed.

Spaniard: Opportunity Party: what of our conservation estate?

At present, New Zealanders have equal stakes in our open-access public conservation estate … Those settings would be ended by the work Kingdon-Bebb fronted for the Options Development Group. Kiwis’ equality in the public conservation sphere, certainty of access, and the science-driven focus on nature’s good health would be over.

Spaniard: This is kaitiakitanga

There’s a place for everything. Customary matters should receive stewardship, empirical science should lead in technical arenas, and standover behaviour has no place in a modern democracy’s processes.

Ngai Tahu failed, catastrophically, as guardian/kaitiaki of Central Otago’s environment before other settlers arrived. It’s rich that, in response to the Santana Minerals Bendigo-Ophir Gold Project proposal for Central Otago, Ka Runaka, a local tribal sub-grouping, is now claiming a kaitiaki role.

Spaniard: Provisions of the Treaty - all the ‘principles’ ever were

Originating in the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, which set up the Waitangi Tribunal, the notion of ‘Treaty principles’ refers to the provisions of the Treaty.

Neither the Act itself nor the Hansard record, nor the wider public record, suggest otherwise, and indeed it’s unthinkable that the 37th New Zealand Parliament would have blithely, and without a special process, substantively altered the compact that started our nation in 1840.

The carelessness of the wording is a flashpoint in the ‘cock-up theory’ of New Zealand’s history.

Spaniard: Tikanga plays third rail in public land changes

Tikanga is creeping into much of our nation’s life, with control passed to iwi underhandedly. One mostly unnoticed area is conservation. When Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka recently redesignated 513,042.2 hectares of West Coast public conservation land, he did it on the basis on tikanga.

His decision-making legitimised Ngai Tahu’s leveraging of lore and law in interpreting the Conservation Act and other legislation, serious conflicts of interest, and dominance of Ngai Tahu tribal rhetoric.