Drear reader, 

Every now and then we get a missive from a part of the world that’s not the near or middle distant north. This-un comes to us for the North Island of New Zealand. We regret, as we’ve sub-contracted our typing and collating staff to twitter, it’s taken this long to get the issue in print. 

So bear with us. It may be stale, but the message is interesting and compelling. .And points to some profound differences between what the Kiwi’s do a little better than us. Perhaps massively better? But we don’t want to, (now our editing staff have been sub-contracted to Newscorp) indulge in hyperbolic exaggeration. 

A Great Australian. Captain Cook proclaims Australia for King, Real Estate and Mining.

It goes like this. 

 

You had your Australia Day recently, I understand renamed Invasion Day and we had Waitangi Day yesterday – which used to be called New Zealand Day.

Are our situations similar or different? I actually reflected on this yesterday especially as our new PM is about to present his credentials to your slightly older PM. I actually thought on this topic we maybe were more different than similar. But that’s just a perception and I’m no expert.

Competition and objections from non-compliant “realtors” was quickly snuffed.

The first difference is the Aboriginals have been in Australia for 60,000 years and can be said to be truly indigenous, whereas Maori arrived in the fourteenth century and conquered the Moriori, notably in the Chatham Islands where they had settled some time before. So are Maori indigenous or immigrants (like me but a few hundred  years earlier)? That maybe a technical point.

But we did both sign up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), in our case somewhat casually by John Key, which has come back to haunt the National Party. From what I read last year Australia is doing stuff around the fringes but the Labour Government here is still serious about creating more and more co-governance, which term is open to interpretation and misinterpretation. As has now our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, which in 1840 was a very simple document where Maori tribes with no law or constitution of their own ceded sovereignty to Queen Victoria in return for the protection of the Queen (they had some concerns about the French lurking off the coast) and full rights of British citizenship. There was also an important clause about the preservation of their taonga (treasures) and essentially fairness in the buying and selling of Maori land.

 New Zealanders welcomed Cook’s arrival as they had a better understanding of synthetic collateral futures and bracket creep.

New Zealanders even got as far as a treaty.

There’s little doubt NZ Governments often honoured the Treaty in the breach and Maori have been hard done by. There is a Waitangi Tribunal which rules on injustices but has no legal authority but on the other hand successive Governments have negotiated “settlement” deals with successive tribes to compensate. Meantime liberal judges have made judgements on disputes which have progressively looked at Maori perspective and one notably in the 1990’s in an “obiter dicta” referred to the need for New Zealanders to regard the Treaty as a “partnership”. And Maori activists have begun to question the original Maori translation of the Treaty document to claim that the Maori Chiefs never ceded sovereignty. The strong Maori caucus in the Labour Government have seized on this by the way comment to justify supporting a road to co-governance which in fact most of them see as self-determination. We already have a separate Maori Health Authority and local Government is moving to add Maori representation and voting power to co-opted Maori representatives on the elected local councils (although in fact Maori is over represented in local Government by full elected Maori Councillors). The nationalisation of water, a process well underway already includes processes to create Maori oversight of the new regional water boards. Maori have long sought control of water and the foreshore, seen by many as a step too far – including the former Helen Clark Labour Government.

In Australia, a treaty is still a source of debate and rancor. Natives unimpressed with ” the Voice’ white paper are encouraged to see reason.

So here, as ordinary people are beginning to pick up the rhetoric from the Maori Caucus and the strong opposition mostly from the right wing parties, we have the recipe in election year for racial division and all the half-truths and propaganda that will create. The Waitangi Day celebrations tried to steer clear of making political statements about co-governance, with both the PM and the Leader of the Opposition being pretty restrained and inclusive. But the underlying tension was there – such a shame as for most of us, Waitangi Day should as New Zealand Day have focussed on what we have in common and what we can do to improve systems and reduce the palpable gap between Maori health and overall achievement and non Maori, which is obvious and a drag on the economy. The Marae has so much potential to be a place for reasoned debate but year after year it gets undermined by those who want to grandstand or protest.

A recurrent issue is the lack of gratitude by Australian First Nations after all we’ve done for them. A possible sticking point on a treaty.

Meantime you have your “voice referendum”. Or you don’t? Not sure if it’s been confirmed or not or what it entails. Some seem to say it will create another house of parliament and some of what I’ve read seems to grant the indigenous people a voice but in the end not much power if any to veto or impose their will. If I’m right that seems to be the essential difference.

What I do know is that I’ve always regarded NZ as being one of the better colonists and treaters of indigenous people, our regard for Maori culture to be positive not negative (the Haka being a notorious example!). I’ve no problem with Te Reo being one of the official languages (English isn’t, the other official language is sign language). But I don’t like it being imposed on us. Overwhelmingly Maori and Pakeha live in peaceful tolerance and most of the time, with mixed marriages, you wouldn’t know who was which and wouldn’t care anyway. It’s a real shame if our highly successful community interaction (also with Pacifica and to a lesser extent the Asian community) were to be destroyed by a new means of division and rancour. I do hope you get your formula right in Australia.

 The one thing that binds Maori and First Nations Australians, the care and integrity of an all loving, cohesive Royal Family.

Meantime the Aussies start off in India. I’m much looking forward to the TV coverage even if Michael Clark has been dropped from the commentary team after an unfortunate incident with his girlfriend (or was that two girlfriends). Who’s the favourite? Sorry, my money’s on India. Then next week we take on the Poms in two test matches with  Bazball touring New Zealand. Unfortunately I think Bazball may come out on top – again.