BY TREVOR AMMUNDSEN
A massive amount of submissions were received, the vast majority being against the bill. There was some objections though as the process was closed one month early which meant many of the Hobsons Choice people, who were supporters of the bill, did not get to make their submissions which does seem a little bit undemocratic.
I suspect the Government felt enough of a sample had been considered and really wanted to get this matter out of the papers before the budget build up commences with the various announcements that will be forthcoming at that time.
The same problem applies to those who wanted to make submissions against the bill.
For the record I did make a submission, in writing only as it wasn’t a major enough issue to cause me to march to Wellington. My submission was, I suspect, like many in that I generally agree that the principles in law need to be clarified, but I don’t believe it is the politicians who have the right to clarify them on their own. The Treaty is an agreement between two parties and if clarification is required it is up to those two parties to get together and agree on any such clarifications.
I cannot see that happening in the short term however, as some Maori interests seem to be quite fond of the current fluid situation where they can largely define a Treaty Principle as being anything they want and get their view supported by the Waitangi Tribunal, unknown bureaucrats and some judges.
It seems to many that a Treaty Principle is anything some Māori want it to be, such as a separate Parliament, separate Justice System, separate Health System and principles are broken if the Government won’t do what this particular group wants.
I realise this is a generalisation and not all Maori think in this way, but these are the headlines that the media likes to thrust in front of us.
This issue will not go away so the question is what happens next. I suspect that the Act Party may initiate a referendum on the issue as this is the path they took on the Euthanasia Bill.
Once they got nowhere in Parliament on that issue they went to the public and with over whelming public support behind them were able to get Parliament to back their bill. A tactic that works once will often be used again.
Changes that sort of relate to this issue are currently being introduced by both the NZ First and National parties. Shane Jones has been quite vocal about the Waitangi Tribunal constantly stepping outside its mandate.
The NZ First Party seems to be heading towards having the Waitangi Tribunal keeping to land settlements and have it disbanded when these are completed.
In addition to this the Government has identified 26 pieces of legislation that will have their Treaty of Waitangi provisions scrutinised. Small changes are afoot.
In a perfect world a group such as the Iwi Chairs Forum would select a team of negotiators who would meet with a Parliament team and together they would thrash out the legal wording to define the various principles. As part of this exercise they would need to work out an extension of these principles to cover all peoples.
