Stacked Constitutional Review Panel recommends a written constitution with the TOW (or rather its bogus "principles") front and centre, but says the public needs more "education" about these matters because it is likely at present to be resistant to what is proposed.
John Key starts the process to change the flag, though there is no public demand for this. All designs presented for review in the first referendum don't feature a Union Jack.
New banknotes issue which no longer have the head of Queen Elizabeth in the plastic window. The issuing nation is no longer just New Zealand but the fictional Neverland, "Aotearoa."
The public mind is being progressively conditioned to NZ being taken out of the Anglosphere and into the Maorisphere. The elite agenda is the Republic of Aotearoa with a Treaty-based constitution. Wake up NZ ...
By Peter Hemmingson
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As we all know, the Northland Nga Puhi tribe, whose traditional territory includes the Bay of Islands, are having their day before the Waitangi Tribunal at present. Included in their claim is the argument that when they signed the treaty they never ceded their ‘sovereignty’, and that, presumably, they still retain it.
For a hundred reasons this is an absurd argument, but that is not to say that it will not be solemnly swallowed by the Waitangi Tribunal. As a matter of strict logic ~ not that logic has much to do with these issues ~ the Tribunal would be cutting its own throat to find that Nga Puhi still had ‘sovereignty’. Even leaving aside the well-known point that the Treaty itself is of no legal validity ~ a point which we should always bear in mind ~ but even leaving that aside, the Tribunal itself is created by the New Zealand Parliament, an institution which by its very existence proclaims the sovereignty of the Queen and the end of any other possible sovereignty. For the Tribunal to find sovereignty still in Nga Puhi would be to find that the Tribunal itself does not or ought not to exist, because the sovereignty of the Queen and her Parliament, which created it, is of no effect.....
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May 30, 2010
Last week I offered some arguments as to why any claim to ‘Maori sovereignty’ was absurd. Those arguments had a legal flavour to them; they centred on the actual words of the Treaty and their meaning, and the understandings and intentions of the signatories at the time. I did add, of course, that the Treaty was not the vehicle or instrument by which British sovereignty was acquired over New Zealand. The generally-accepted day when sovereignty was acquired was, until recently anyway ~ it is not impossible that fashionable cutting-edge revisionists have decided to question it ~ the generally-accepted day was the 21st of May 1840, when British sovereignty was formally proclaimed, and New Zealand became one country instead of a divided land of warring tribes. The Treaty was no more than a preliminary political proceeding, and in recent years the High Court has dismissed any claim that the Crown might not have sovereignty over part of New Zealand because a particular tribe did not sign the Treaty.
In terms of ceding sovereignty, then, the Treaty is still a legal nullity. It does not matter what precisely it said. As I say, the words of the Treaty, considered last week, in fact meant and must be taken to mean that sovereignty was intended to be ceded. But even if that were not the case, we would have to answer ~ so what?........
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June 7, 2010
What might Maori sovereignty mean in practice? We will have to speculate, of course, but we will be assisted in our speculations by glancing at the possibilities raised in a very informative little book, Maori Sovereignty, The Maori Perspective (ed. Hineani Melbourne, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland 1995), from which I shall next week offer liberal quotations. We should not expect to find therein any coherent consistent guide as to the implications of Maori sovereignty; there is a jumble of many different views. All of them, however, point in the same general direction, which is the disintegration of our country. Those arguing for Maori sovereignty are not just wanting a little more local involvement in the delivery of ‘services’. Some of them might perhaps be satisfied by more genuine local self-government, and we might well hesitate to criticise that in principle. The general idea of ‘subsidiarity’ requires that decisions should as a matter of principle always be made at the lowest level possible in any hierarchy of decision-making, and that is not unreasonable. Subsidiarity might of course even mean decisions not being made by anyone at all, or at least leaving them to be made actually by the concerned individuals and communities themselves. When we hear people speaking of sovereignty we should listen carefully to what they say, for if they are only talking about a little more local self-determination we might have little cause to worry. Our state was not always as centralised and bureaucratised as it is now, and a good case can be made for some decentralisation and dismantling of expensive and cumbersome bureaucracy.
But most of those wanting ‘sovereignty’ want far more than local self-government. What they want, if their statements are any guide, is nothing less than the dismemberment and destruction of our country as we know it. Arguments over sovereignty are not like arguments over other items of property, or even ones over the foreshore and seabed. This person or that person may own this or that piece of property, but nevertheless the general legal and constitutional arrangements can remain exactly the same. But a change in sovereignty is more fundamental. Sovereignty is the question of who is actually in charge. Who, in the last resort, makes the decisions? Remember always that once sovereignty has changed, there is no going back. Once someone else is in charge, we will never be in charge again. A change in sovereignty is the first step down a slippery slope up which there is no returning.........
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June 13, 2010
For several weeks now I have been writing about current claims to ‘Maori sovereignty’. A generation ago anyone of education and good sense confronted with such a proposition would have burst out laughing. This does not happen now. The Waitangi Tribunal has not indicated to Nga Puhi that their claim to sovereignty is one which the Tribunal is not prepared to countenance. Sundry ‘scholars’ argue learnedly in its favour, and I do not hear laughter echoing through Wellington’s corridors of power. As far as our politicians and public servants are concerned, it may happen or it may not, but nothing is completely out of the question.
How did it come about that we are now even prepared to consider such preposterous possibilities? It did not happen overnight, but one step at a time. Ask for one thing ~ the righting of historical injustice, real or alleged, even if previously settled ~ then, if you succeed with that, ask for something more ~ and then more ~ and eventually we find ourselves in the situation we are now in, where already our government flies the Maori sovereignty flag, recognises special rights in indigenous peoples declared in a United Nations charter, and where, in the words of the Otago Daily Times speaking of foreshore and seabed, it ‘seems a new class of property owner is to be created with superior rights, as well as unlimited opportunities for the courts to create precedent exclusive to one ethnicity. ‘One law for all’ has thus been abandoned on the cusp of indigeneity.’
And now Maori want sovereignty as well. As no more than the absolutely logical and inevitable next step, the key to our entire country, everything your ancestors and mine and we ourselves have laboured to create over a century and a half is at least on the table and liable to be given away by our enlightened governors. It is the old story of the frog sitting in the pot of gradually warming water, not noticing the heat and eventually being boiled to death. It is Hitler making one last, and then another last, and then another absolutely last territorial claim in Europe. The first claims may be reasonable, the last are anything but. And all our leaders do is wave pieces of paper and promise us peace in our time.......
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June 21, 2010
Here are some of the ideas about Maori sovereignty as expressed by various Maori leaders in Maori Sovereignty, The Maori Perspective (ed. Hineani Elder, Hodder Moa Becket, Auckland 1995). I mention many of these people in the chapter on sovereignty in my 1998 Truth Or Treaty? Do not think that in the years since then the talk has become moderate or reasonable. It may sometimes now be expressed a little less angrily ~ the ideas are placed before the Waitangi Tribunal now, and are supported by a Maori academic ~ but the policy is still exactly the same. It is just that because now they seem to be making a little headway, there is, for the moment anyway, no need for the aggro. It will still be applied now and then when it looks as though the victim shows any signs of reluctance.
Note several things. This agenda has been around for quite a while. It has been the setting in which all other negotiations so far have been conducted. Other settlements have not been the end of the Maori agenda, but just steps on the way, just softening us up one step at a time. Note that many of the speakers are familiar to us; some are very prominent within Maoridom, and although we may dismiss some others as rabble-rousers, we cannot deny that they do have a following. Note also that some of the real firebrands in this movement ~ Moana Jackson, Annette Sykes, Titewhai Harawira, Tama Iti and Ken Mair are conspicuously absent. Would that have been because their views were even more terrifying?
Just to mention several of those last five, if I may, for a moment. Moana Jackson maintains that by the Treaty ‘Maori allowed for a house of Pakeha culture to be built alongside their house.’ It is not enough to have bicultural room for Maori in the Pakeha house. The Treaty guarantees both peoples the right to house their cultures adequately, and Maori people therefore need an entirely separate independent house. The Maori race ~ whatever that is these days ~ must be entirely independent of Pakeha. In advocating dual sovereignty Jackson observes that ‘at the very least there are more than twenty different sovereignties in the land area of Europe and they seem to operate without too much bitterness or debate’. Does he know the first thing about European history, which, like the history of the rest of the world, is full of bloodshed? The Maori Battalion went to Europe ~ has he never heard of them? Is he actually unaware of Maori history’s dreadful record of war? I find that hard to believe. So why does he say what he does?
At other times Jackson has gone beyond this ‘separate but equal’ view and maintained that ’the Treaty says that people are permitted to live in peace in this country under the mentor of Maori rule’. His English is not perfect, but we understand his message.......
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June 28, 2010