Professor Jane Kelsey must get some credit for admitting a "longstanding antipathy to the concept of Treaty ‘principles’" but her statement that it "provides the wriggle room to avoid applying a more direct interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and He Whakaputanga (the Declaration of Independence 1835)" shows her true colours.

By any honest assessment, any little authority "He Whakaputanga" ever had was extinguished when the majority of its adherents signed the Treaty of Waitangi and "interpretation of Te Tiriti" has been a harmful and unnecessary exercise done to death many times over since.

She proceeds then to never-never land (all too present in New Zealand these days alas) by stating that "the principles, as enunciated by the courts, government agencies, and then the Waitangi Tribunal, effectively reconcile the conflict between Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which affirms Maori rangatiratanga, and the Treaty of Waitangi, where Maori cede sovereignty to the Crown, in favour of the Crown.'

She is blithely unaware that there was never any "conflict" since there was never any "Treaty of Waitangi" (in the sense that she uses it). There can be no honest doubt that the chiefs ceded sovereignty (kawanatanga) when they signed the treaty document as their recorded words at the time made clear and the Waitangi Tribunal decision that they did not is yet another in their long and predictable line of false "judgments".

Her claim "Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which affirms Maori rangatiratanga" is a further delusion. She is presumably referring to Ko Te Tuarua (Article Second) of Te Tiriti in which "tino rangatiratanga" was used for "full possession" of property (but never of "treasure") assured to "tangata katoa o Nu Tirani" which she cannot understand means simply "all the people of New Zealand".

It is a gruesome thought that anybody with so twisted a view of these matters should ever have been appointed as a professor. It is even more chilling to note the poison she is pouring into impressionable young ears amongst students of law at the University of Auckland.