MICHAEL BASSETT: MAORI PARTY THUMBS ITS NOSE AT DEMOCRACY

Have you noticed how contemptuous the Maori Party’s MPs are of democracy? After all, people who self-designate themselves as Maori are only 17% of the population. And amongst them, only a small proportion vote for the Maori Party. The brutal reality is that much higher numbers of Maori support Labour, while the Greens, Act, New Zealand First and National also had many Maori supporters at the last election. What that means in reality is that extremist policies advanced by the Maori Party are never likely to gain majority support amongst New Zealanders. Kiwis accept Governor Hobson’s pledge at the time of the signing of the Treaty in 1840 that “now we are one people”. By that, he meant that all people, irrespective of their ethnicity, are bound by the same laws, systems and privileges. As time ticked on, that meant that a parliamentary democracy emerged where everyone is represented and the majority rules.

That’s what irritates Maori extremists. There will never be a majority for their craziness unless they can devise some kind of backdoor way of getting their hands on the levers of power. That is precisely what the Maori Party’s Takuta Ferris is up to with his private member’s bill aimed at giving the Waitangi Tribunal the power to by-pass Parliament and to make its decisions binding on the Crown. Since careless governments have made so many second-rate appointments to the Tribunal over the last twenty years – both with its members and its leadership – Maori radicals have aspired to take control of it. The body has become a plaything for extremists. But the Tribunal’s findings at present aren’t binding on the Crown. The Tribunal makes recommendations to be considered by democratically-elected governments. It cannot dictate. Change that, and “hey presto”, what extremists describe as the “tyranny of the majority” over a tiny minority of the population can be turned into a tyranny by the minority over all the rest of us. We’d become just like apartheid South Africa.

The Waitangi Tribunal wasn’t always so one sided. Its initial three members, appointed in 1975, were augmented by four more in 1985 when the body began studying Maori grievances going back to 1840. Further appointments followed, yet after 2008 when new historical grievances were no longer allowed to be heard, the Tribunal was not scaled back in size. It was soon looking for work to justify its continued existence. It moved into areas that were never envisaged in the Tribunal’s empowering legislation. The Treaty of Waitangi, both its Maori translation and its English translation, was set out in the original legislation, and Sir Hugh Kawharu’s widely-respected modern translation was being used in my days on the Tribunal (1994-2004). Inadequate oversight of the Tribunal enabled the radicals to embark in 2014 on a huge expensive study that concluded that the first clause of the 1840 Treaty had been translated incorrectly, and that Maori had never ceded sovereignty over New Zealand to the Crown. This, despite the specifics of the Treaty set out in the Tribunal’s legislation that said “The chiefs…give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government over their land.”

This new finding by the Tribunal in effect announced that Maori still controlled New Zealand. But at present the Tribunal’s findings don’t become law. That’s where Takuta Ferris’ proposed legislation comes into play. Pass his bill, and so long as the current government fails to remove the radical pro-Maori majority on the Tribunal, the radicals could put the minority of the minority of New Zealanders into power using the Tribunal as a back door.

What is badly needed is a government with guts. While a handful of new appointments have been made to the Tribunal, the total numbers should be fined right down to about five, which is all that is needed to fulfil the ongoing original purpose of the body – to ensure that New Zealand honours the principles of the Treaty. And that doesn’t include the Tribunal’s demonstrable nonsense about sovereignty not being ceded. The original purpose of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 should be restored. The body’s chairmanship should no longer remain with an appointee from the Maori Land Court. The future of Crown-Maori relations is too important to be left to the current lot with their misunderstandings of our history.

Takuta Ferris’ bill should be rubbished by all the other parties in Parliament. But with Labour and the Greens desperate to return to office, I predict that their leaders will weasel over Ferris’ bill. If they do, their failure to uphold the fundamentals of democracy for the overwhelming majority of Kiwis ought to be hung around their necks from now until election day.