A few weeks ago, the Hon. Peter Dunne, a minister in the current coalition Government, denounced a pamphlet distributed in his Ohariu electorate as “racist drivel”. The pamphlet was distributed by Tross Publishing and was promoting a book entitled “One Treaty One Nation”. The pamphlet also urged those who are concerned by New Zealand’s steady drift towards a society where those with a Maori ancestor have constitutional rights which rank them ahead of those without a Maori ancestor to support the “Rolling Thunder” campaign of a small political party called 1Law4All.
The Hobson’s Pledge Trust, for which I am one of two spokespeople, has different personnel, leadership and funding from 1Law4All. My only connection to Tross Publishing is that I wrote one of the eight chapters in “One Treaty One Nation”.
But I utterly reject Peter Dunne’s hysterical reaction to the pamphlet distributed in his electorate. Quite frankly, his reaction suggests either that he has not read the pamphlet or that he has swallowed hook line and sinker the nonsense which is being ever more vigorously peddled by those who erroneously believe that the Treaty of Waitangi established a “bicultural society” in New Zealand, or some kind of “partnership” between those with a Maori ancestor and those of us without. Of course, it did no such thing.
Article III of the Treaty made it unambiguously clear that all New Zealanders were to have the “rights and privileges of British subjects”, no more and no less. That was an extraordinary promise for the time. Governor Hobson would have seen himself as the representative of the mightiest Power on Earth, dealing with people who were, by any objective standard, very primitive indeed – who had no written language, who had not invented the wheel, and who still practised cannibalism. Surely we can be honest enough to acknowledge that. Despite that, the Treaty offered all New Zealanders, including of course all members of Maori tribes, the rights and privileges of British subjects.
There is absolutely no reference in the Treaty to partnership, and I would not be the first to offer to donate $1,000 to any charity to the first person to find the word “partnership” in either the English or the Maori text of the Treaty.
In a major speech in 2000, David Lange noted that “the Court of Appeal once, absurdly, described [the Treaty] as a partnership between races, but it obviously is not”. The Treaty, he said, “contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts”, while what he called “the increasing entrenchment of the Treaty” had implications which are “profoundly undemocratic”.
As I read the pamphlet distributed by Tross Publishing to promote “One Treaty One Nation”, it is entirely consistent with that speech by David Lange. What it argues for is a colour-blind society where all citizens have the same rights and the same responsibilities.
The pamphlet highlights a number of principles:
It’s hard – indeed impossible – to see anything “racist” about those principles. Indeed, it is those who argue for some form of special constitutional status for those with a Maori ancestor (always, now, with ancestors of other ethnicities also of course) who are the real racists.
We infantilize those with a Maori ancestor by arguing that they need a privileged constitutional status – entitled to be preferentially consulted by local governments before the latter determine their plans; entitled to some special say over the allocation of water; entitled to separate electorates in Parliament (despite their being three times as many Maori in Parliament now as there are Maori electorates); entitled to half the membership of the Hauraki Gulf Forum; entitled to an Independent Maori Statutory Board in Auckland, with voting rights on most Auckland Council committees; entitled to have the very large and profitable trusts established as a result of Treaty settlements excluded from any obligation to pay company tax; and so it goes on.
And of course those with a Maori ancestor have proved themselves in every field of endeavour on their merits. In politics, the Deputy Prime Minister is Maori: she didn’t make it to that position because she was Maori, but because she was judged the best person for the job. Ironically, the other strong contender for the job, Simon Bridges, now at Number 5 in the Cabinet, is also Maori. Both owe their Cabinet positions to their ability, not to the fact that both have some Maori ancestry. Some of our most successful business people, sports people, and musicians are Maori. They owe their success to their ability.
Interestingly, in Parliament every single political party has at least one person with a Maori ancestor – with the single exception of United Future, the party of which Peter Dunne is the leader.
The good news is that more and more New Zealanders are seeing through people like Peter Dunne and others who try to argue that the Treaty of Waitangi created some kind of partnership between two races – one “race” being made up of those who have at least one Maori ancestor and the other “race” being made up, presumably, of those who don’t have a Maori ancestor but rather ancestors who may be European, Chinese, Indian, Pacific Islanders, etc.
The pamphlet to which Peter Dunne objected so strongly promoted the 1Law4All political party. Personally, I don’t see a new political party as being the answer.
Those of us associated with the Hobson’s Pledge Trust (www.hobsonspledge.nz) will be highlighting this issue for the next six months until the election, and will be urging New Zealanders to vote only for a party committed to New Zealand’s being a colour-blind society.
And increasingly Maori themselves are saying that the special constitutional preferences are patronizing, implying that those with a Maori ancestor are in some way incapacitated by that fact and need special help.
Very recently, prominent Ngapuhi elder David Rankin has called for the abolition of the Independent Maori Statutory Board in Auckland, and I urge all those who agree that that board has no justification to sign his petition at: https://www.change.org/p/prime-minister-abolish-auckland-council-s-maori-statutory-board?recruiter=694585883&utm_source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink
Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.