nga korero o te wa

Cullen: Treaty momentum self-sustaining

2008-06-24T12:28:00.007+12:00

Interview conducted by Adam Gifford with the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Michael Cullen, in his office Wellington June 18, 2008, on behalf of Waatea News and broadcast on Paakiwaha June 23.

It started with a comment on the acceleration in settlement activity in the eight months he has been minister, and a question on what was driving him?

Dr Cullen: “A lot of that activity is building on what already being done, picking up on that and trying to move forward.

“It’s not so much what is driving me but for a variety of reasons things came together to create a momentum which is now self-sustaining to some extent. Because there is clearly progress occurring in the treaty area, people are wanting to get into play, to become part of the process of treaty settlements

“There has been very strong leadership from Maori which has worked to bring together groups of people who were previously not cohering to enable a range of issues to be addressed, and that has helped the Crown considerably given a couple of Waitangi Tribunal decisions and rulings clearly indicating the Crown was running into trouble in treaty settlements where there were overlapping claims and overlapping interests, and I clearly think we’ve learned a lot from that and processes are under way which are really looking very positive in terms of achieving outcomes which are enduring in that regard.

“What’s driving me is I think we do need to accelerate the process and we do need to be able to demonstrate we can deliver complex agreements, more flexible agreements, not a simple rigid model around single iwi, and therefore some real hope that we can finish the process of historical treaty claims, and I do emphasise historical in that regard.”

Waatea: Some of the criticisms were very much about the Office of Treaty Settlements (OTS) and its practices. Certainly the criticism of how it worked in Tamaki Makaurau, and Michael Belgrave pointed out, junior officials were ticking boxes to say which tribes had customary interests. That’s the first time since Waitara 1859 that the Crown took that responsibility on itself?

Dr Cullen: “And I think one of the things we learnt from that is where particular overlapping claims, ands that is a common phenomena of course, the Crown’s role is to try to facilitate agreement between different claimant groups rather than to try to pick and choose, and the analogy I’ve used a number of times now is I don’t think the Crown is very good, and certainly as minister I’m not very good, at acting as some kind of historical video referee where people go upstairs to the video referee to say ‘did it get over the line or didn’t it’ when there are arguments between individual iwi-hapu around particular interests, and what we’ve seen I think is the ability effectively to facilitate better dialogue within Maoridom around some of those issues, to try and achieve outcomes which people find fair and satisfactory. Otherwise what we do is we end up doing what we were doing, we talk to one group, we think we’ve got an agreement, and the agreement comes apart because someone else says ‘what about me?’”

Waatea: That mandating issue though? Very critical. Who should do that? Who should be the video ref?

Dr Cullen: “In terms of the mandating issue, which is somewhat different from the competing claims issues, because mandating is more about when you’ve identified the group, who speaks for the group, I don’t think we’re as well advanced as being secure about that. We haven’t had big difficulties, we’ve had some difficulties, but not big difficulties in that regard. And I there is there potentially a role for the tribunal or the Maori Land Court in that respect. I think the Crown if it becomes a really difficult issue around mandate recognition, can’t be the final decision-maker in that respect.

“We go on the best evidence we can but if people want to take us to the tribunal, we will.”

Waatea: Though in some areas, I’m thinking in particular Ngati Porou, you have made a call with a certain group. People are saying that once you get north of Tikitiki that runanga doesn’t have the support you think, that a lot of the support comes from out. But you’ve made the call, saying ‘we’re going to bulldoze ahead with this group?’

Dr Cullen: “What’s happened there is that in Ngati Porou we’ve often got agreements which are actually about the individual hapu. While it may be negotiated at runanga level, in effect at operational level it is the hapu, and that’s true of the foreshore and seabed agreement. It’s likely to be true of the negotiations around historical treaty claims with Ngati Porou. So those hapu in the end who are not part of that agreement aren’t part of that agreement. Now in one particular case there’s an argument even within that who speaks for the hapu. We go on the best evidence we can, but if at the end of the day people want to take us to the tribunal, we will take very careful note of any recommendations the tribunal makes in that regard.”

Waatea: There has also been a problem with Ngati Rangitihi splitting on whether to participate in the CNI settlement?

Dr Cullen: “What has been decided in that case is the obvious common sense solution, that is to take Rangitihi out of the central North Island settlement at this point, to take the allocation which was going to be allocated to them and to add that to the 10 percent reserve the Crown was already holding for any further claims, but also to provide in effect an open entry route back into the deal for Rangitihi if they can sort out clearly their mandating and consenting issues to the collective deal.

“It’s unfortunate what has happened but the tribunal has made suggestions as to the path forward and I hope people pick up on those suggestions.”

Waatea: It looks like the CNI deal is going ahead. The hall’s been booked.

Dr Cullen: “The Bill’s been introduced.”

Waatea: When?

Dr Cullen: “Yesterday (June 17). The first reading is next week, and because we expect hundreds of people for the Deed of Settlement signing, we will have the first reading that afternoon so they don’t need to come back down for it.”

Waatea: Discussing it (with iwi), it appears this is the population-based component of the settlement, with other details to be sorted out later?

Dr Cullen: “First of all it’s only about the commercial forestry land redress. It’s almost a suggestion made to me by (Crown Forestry Rental Trust chairperson) Sir Graham Latimer before I was minister in charge of treaty negotiations that we should perhaps try to settle some of those commercial interests first and then try to get on with non-commercial interests.”

Waatea: Define commercial?

Dr Cullen: “In the sense that this is all about the quantum of money and lands and ongoing commercial interests those iwi will have as a consequence of ownership of those forest lands.

“There’s a lot of other elements that will come into play as a result of those large non-commercial elements like cultural redress, the historical account for individual iwi, any other matters that are brought into discussion because again the shape of settlements have become a lot more flexible over the last few months.”

Waatea: And as I understand it, the current settlements and the company which will run the forests, the percentages are pretty much based on population. The underlying ownership of the land will then be sorted out and go over once this rotation is finished?

Dr Cullen: “Yes, what’s happened here is that the iwi themselves have agreed on the division of the shares in the collective. The Crown hasn’t settled that. Though interestingly enough, their decision was very close to our estimate of what it would be.

“The issues of mana whenua will be sorted out between iwi. The Crown is not going to determine those mana whenua outcomes.”

Waatea: The Waitangi Tribunal or the Maori Land Court have still not answered the question of who should have title, or if there is good title?

Dr Cullen: “But in the interim, and there is not really pressure on the iwi to settle those mana whenua matters, in the interim the iwi and their beneficiaries will have access to the income streams and a clear process around how those income streams are divided so instead of having to wait to settle what are quite difficult issues, the iwi and the beneficiaries are able to actually see through to the stage if you like and using the language again a commercial settlement and the commercial benefit of the ownership of those lands.”

Waatea: Because it is population based, it can be seen as a Labour socialist needs-based thing rather than the O’Regan thing of ‘so what we end up rich, it’s none of your business?

Dr Cullen: (Laughs) “I wouldn’t say that at all. As I say, the iwi themselves have settled that division of the ownership of the collective. The Crown has not tried to impose a model in that regard. We would have had questions had a model been suggested that was wildly different from where we thought things were going but that has not been the case so we’re very very happy with the outcome.

Waatea: Is it as model that may be applicable anywhere else but the central North Island?

Dr Cullen: “I think there are other examples where joint progress can be made, where there are issues, for example there are some issues around some foreshore and seabed claims where it would be very hard to draw a hard and fast line between different iwi claims.

“One is aware of 90 Mile Beach where one iwi draws a line here, another iwi draws a line significantly differently. It is very hard for the Crown to act as an historical video referee, because this is very much about battles that occurred in the 1820s.

“And probably my gut instinct is a solution is going to have to be found whereby we don’t have to try and resolve that if the two iwi cannot actually agree on an outcome, there’s going to have to be some kind of joint arrangement.”

Waatea: People who have had a long involvement in the claim sector that I have been talking to say there are still questions about the stickability of some of these claims, that there is still a perception that you are going in and talking to people who may present best, may have a track record of being around, whether they are representative or not?

Dr Cullen: “Well there are always minorities. One doesn’t expect any group of people to speak with a unanimous voice. What would concern me is if we see lawyers intervening basically to try and collect rents from small minorities in groups, because that is unfair to the great majority in iwi hapu.

Waatea: It’s not all lawyers I have been speaking to, but in the tribunal process there have certainly been suggestions of a certain amount of rent seeking?

Dr Cullen: “That may be true but the issues in dispute are important issues, and therefore the process becomes important.”

Waatea: “In the old days when Maori Affairs would do a lot of this stuff, they would know who was charlatan, who would represent people, so they could work this out?

Dr Cullen: “It’s true to say though that OTS is working more closely with Te Puni Kokiri than was preciously the case and indeed the cooperation between TPK, OTS, the tribunal and the Crown Forest Rental Trust has been at a much higher level in recent times, so there are a lot of people looking over these processes, so if there are really serious flags to be put up, then I’d expect them to be put up.”

Waatea: What do you think you’ve really managed to do by throwing Treasury into the process in the way you have?

Dr Cullen: “A number of things. Some of these issues, the Central North Island, the Waitako Tainui river discussions involve a range of complex matters which aren’t simple treaty settlements. Treasury brings to that process both a wider governmental view, experience across a wide range of governmental operations. It also brings a rigorous analytical view. It brings a lot of expertise around the financial and commercial arrangements where commerciality is involved in these matters, and if you talked to anyone involved in the CNI process, they would probably tell you the treasury involvement has been very helpful in an outcome.

“One thing I’ve learnt from this is it would probably be helpful to have Treasury involved in at least the more significant treaty settlements from an early stage, rather than some second guessing further down the tracks.”

Waatea: “If I could come back to the question I’ve been asking for years, because I think it’s germane to where the process may have gone off the rails. What are treaty settlements for? Why do we do them?

Dr Cullen: “Because we have a clear process for settling the historical grievances of iwi hapu who will be able to argue that they have been badly treated by the Crown in the past and that ranges from the extreme end of massive land confiscation, as obviously Waikato Tainui is one of the clearest examples of that, through to a range of rather dubious dealings by the Native Land Court and elsewhere where land was acquired, not always from people who were the proper people to make those decisions, through to a range of other slights and injuries and grievances around matters of language and culture and so on, all of which should be settled if we are to move forward in this country. We can’t move forward on a proper and honest basis unless those historical issues have been properly addressed.

“The great virtue of the Waitangi Tribunal process and the subsequent treaty negotiation process is we have a very clear method for achieving those outcomes in New Zealand.

“I think the hard thing to explain to many Pakeha is that the treaty remains however a living document and that contemporary issues will continue to arise in quite new circumstances, as they have for example round the emissions trading scheme and forest allocation units. Therefore we can’t say this is over and done with. What we can settle is the past. We can’t settle the future because we don’t know what it is.”

Waatea: In the past I have heard people, politicians, talking about the outcome of treaty settlements as being part of an economic development policy or a social development policy and I’ve always though they may not quite get what they’re hoping for there?

Dr Cullen: “No, but what settlements can sometimes do is provide a much stronger economic base and a social base for iwi and hapu moving forward and indeed what we’re looking for in a range of current treaty settlements for a variety of reasons may be trying to reestablish the base of that iwi in terms of its ability to deliver to its membership.”

Waatea: One of the things I look at is the process instigated by Labour under Matiu Rata, the 1975 Royal Commission on Maori Reserved Lands, which kicked off the process of returning blocks from Crown management back into Maori hands. That was a billion dollar transfer of wealth. Has that done much for the Maori rank and file?

Dr Cullen: “I think it has done a lot, because I don’t think we can underestimate the strength of the Maori renaissance in the last 25 years, and how much those kind of processes have contributed to that in a large variety of different ways, and certainly when you see what’s happening with Tainui, what’s happening with Ngai Tahu, you can see that their treaty settlements have been a very important part of creating a much stronger base for those iwi moving forward.

“There’s a new breed emerging in the management of iwi, and we’ve seen that very clearly in some recent negotiations which haven’t been very public around things like the forest allocations in terms of carbon credit units etc where we have seen people coming to the fore, taking on a leadership role and arriving at really excellent solutions from a broader New Zealand as well as a specifically Maori perspective.”

Waatea: This is of course not the first time you’ve seen treaty settlements from a Cabinet perspective because the previous Labour Government, the initial fisheries settlement was on your watch. What do you remember of that and how things differ now?

Dr Cullen: “I think that was sort of grasping in the dark for the broad shape of principles moving forward, a much different kind of process. What we’re dealing with now is the fruits of that work in terms of a clearly defined set of processes which can be followed – always new challenges, always new issues, but a much greater confidence about how to go about trying to settle those issues and meet those challenges.”

Waatea: What that government had to put up with is be in court every week with Matiu Rata ands Graham Latimer and Sian Elias and David Baragwanath throwing rocks at you?

Dr Cullen: “Yes, that’s right. Rocks still occasionally get thrown but luckily they tend to be a somewhat smaller size these days, I think as I say because we’ve got a clearer process.

“There will always be difficult issues that come up and the contemporary issues can be particularly difficult. It will be a great challenge I think for the Government when the tribunal finally produces its report on the WAI 262 claim, that’s going to obviously create some significant political interest, but I would hope that we’ve matured enough that we would be able to deal with those issues in a thoughtful manner moving forward.”

Waatea: There’s a perspective George Habib put to me once that if you look at New Zealand’s economic history, it was built on taking Maori assets by whatever means, and building a society, a country, an economy on it. When the government decided it was no longer in that business, the assets needed to go back to where they came from?

Dr Cullen: “Certainly New Zealand’s colonial history is a classic colonial history. Settlers came from outside and the losers in that were very largely the indigenous peoples.

“I think what’s different in New Zealand is not that we were much better or much worse in the 19th century – I think our claims to be much better have largely fallen apart under closer historical analysis – I think what we can say is we have developed much better processes in the last quarter century or so for resolving the consequences of that period of colonisation.”

©Adam Gifford 2008

Never trust a politician

2008-03-06T09:31:00.002+13:00

Plans for a long overdue overhaul of the Maori Trust Office could come unstuck because of a combination of political ineptitude, ignorance and gamesmanship.

It’s been clear for more than 20 years that change was needed in the Maori Trustee. In the 15 years after the 1975 Royal Commission on Maori Reserved Land, economically viable block were transferred out of Crown management back into the hands of owners – who now make up the membership of the Federation of Maori Authorities. That left the trustee looking after about 2200 blocks totalling 105,000 hectares for 186,000 owners, many of who couldn’t be found. Changes were needed to take account of the office’s changing role.

The proposals the government took out for consultation last year were sensible. The Maori Trust Office was to be split out of Te Puni Kokiri to stand alone. There would be changes to the way interest was paid in the Common Fund, ie, money held for landowners, in a way which would be to their benefit.

But when the Maori Trustee and Maori Development Amendment Bill was snuck into Parliament late last year, it included a major new proposal that had not been presented to the consultation hui. The trustee’s General Fund, which is accumulated profits from fees and investments, would be raided to the tune of $35 million to set up a statutory corporation, Maori Business Aotearoa New Zealand, “to further Maori economic development by utilising the potential of resources available to Maori.”

The board of this corporation will be chaired by the Maori Trustee with other members appointed by the Ministers of Finance and Maori Affairs.

The Government wanted to fold some other Maori funds into MBANZ, which it is keen to stress is not a bank. But the trust deeds of the Crown Forestry Rental Trust and Poutama Trust blocked those ambitions.

Interestingly, the Poutama Trust, which works to encourage small and medium size Maori business development, is funded with the residue of another failed development agency, the Maori Development Corporation. It is not clear that the current generation of policymakers is aware of or learned any of the lessons of that sad story.

The preamble to the Bill says the MBANZ fund would include “a significant contribution from the Government”, the Maori Trustee’s $35 million and “potentially, future contributions from other organisations”. Yeah, right.

The Government refuses to say how much it will put in or where it will come from – is it new money or a reallocation of putea already set aside for some Maori purpose? That has encouraged damaging speculation about its source.

The fund has been the rallying point for opponents of the Bill, and meant what should have been a relatively uncontroversial and essentially administrative move was challenged on its first reading.

Unfortunately, the challenges show that despite the high salaries MPs are paid, they don’t seem to be able to do the basic reading – in this case, the Bill in question and the Maori Trustee’s annual reports, tabled each year for their edification and available in the website.

National and the Maori Party tried to claim the moral high ground by saying they were standing up for beneficiaries whose money was being taken from them.

That is reprehensible. Tau Henare is a former Minister for Maori Affairs (who did nothing about this problem on his watch). Georgina te Heuheu was a member of the 1975 Royal Commission. The Maori Party claims to know everything there is to know about things Maori.

The key phrase is General Fund. According to the latest available annual report, for the year to March 31, 2006, that stood at $60 million.

It made up of $12 million in shares (representing its investment in Quantum Ltd, which owns and manages Copthorne and Millennium hotels), another $2.5 million in a joint investment company with Lake Taupo Forest Trust, $23 million in local authority and commercial bonds, plus government stock, commercial loans to Maori businesses, mortgages, cash and other assets. A conservative portfolio, as befits a trustee. While there may be arguments about the whakapapa of some of that money, it’s the Maori Trustee’s to do with as he likes in the continuance of his business.

Some 81 percent of his revenue came from investments, including $4.2 million in interest payments from the hotel investment, with the balance from commissions and fees. Income outweighed expenditure by $1.4 million, leaving a surplus to go into the, wait for it, General Fund.

The Maori Trustee also has what is called the Common Fund.

To quote from the report: “All money collected by the Maori Trustee from various sources on behalf of Maori owners is administered within the Common Fund. Sources of funds include rental, royalties, interest and income from primary sector activities.”

In March 2006 the Common Fund stood at $38.8 million. That’s the landowners’ money. It gets paid out every year to those it’s owed to. If the owners can’t be found, it sits there collecting interest until they or their successors turn up.

The Common Fund, the landowners’ money, has nothing to do with Maori Business Aotearoa New Zealand. But by saying it is, National and the Maori Party have dealt their credibility on this matter a major blow.

There are no unclaimed moneys going into MBANZ. All that money lives in the Common Fund. In fact, unclaimed money and money from what used to be called “uneconomic interests”, which were taken out between 1963 and 1993 and given to the Maori Education Foundation, Maori Purposes Fund and Maori Council, were put back on the balance sheet in 1994. There is still a $7.6 million contingent liability to cover any claims that may be made.

The Maori Trustee is an obscure and arcane institution, but one of immense importance to Maori, and the politicians could be doing a much better job of tackling the issue of reform.

For starters, it could be argued the issue of independence from the Crown is mishandled in the Bill. The Maori Trustee is a statutory Maori, a status she or he shares only with the Maori Council. That means the trustee is able to act on behalf of any Maori, perhaps to stand up to the Crown in court the way the Maori Council has. That is unlikely to happen while the office is under the thumb of the Crown.

There is no way the Public Trustee would be treated in the paternalistic way the Maori Trustee is being treated by this Government. The precedent has been set in broadcasting, spectrum allocation and fisheries for Maori to choose their own representatives on national bodies, so why is members of the trustee’s governance body totally at the whim of the minister, without even representation from the trustee’s beneficiaries?

Is Maori Business Aotearoa New Zealand needed? Romantic cant about furthering Maori economic development doesn’t tell us much. Which Maori? Why can’t they go to bank like other businesses? That’s where FOMA members go. What will make it succeed where the Maori Development Corporation (and Mana Enterprises) failed? What will is do that Poutama can’t?

There’s also the fundamental question of why the Government thinks it can carry out this raid on the trustee’s putea.

The Maori Trustee is a senior executive of Te Puni Kokiri, the Ministry of Maori Development, at least until this Bill is passed, and the staff of the Maori Trust Office are also Ministry staff.

Technically, there is supposed to be a money go round, with the Maori Trustee reimbursing the ministry for expenses incurred.

Back in 1994, the last time any serious attempt was made to do something about the Maori Trust Office, it was agreed that reimbursement up to June 30, 1994 be deferred, and that he use his best endeavours to pay expenses after that date.

No payments have been made while the future of the Maori Trust Office has been under review, and the amount owed the Crown by 2006 totaled $52,824,394 – most of the General Fund.

But is this debt real and justified? The argument the going on before 1994 was that the Maori Trustee provides a whole lot of highly specialised services which allow the Crown to meet legal and moral obligations to Maori, which otherwise it would have to pay someone like the Public Trust Office to perform.

The Maori Trustee, as an independent statutory being, may want to present the Crown with a bill for past services rendered.

Those are the sorts of arguments the Opposition could be having, rather than going off on wrong-headed attacks on behalf of the trustee’s existing beneficiaries – who will in fact be better off from the bill as it stands.

Locking up sea wrong answer for Ngati Toa

2007-04-05T00:43:00.000+12:00

Ngati Toa Rangatira chief executive Matiu Rei says alternatives to be found to marine reserves.

The Porirua-based tribe has seen many of its traditional fishing grounds eyed as potential reserves.

Mr Rei told this week's Maori Fisheries Conference in Napier that reserves fail to take into account the longstanding relationships between Maori people and the sea.

He wants to see serious discussion on alternatives to the Marine Reserves Act.

“It's quite a draconian piece of legislation and it offers very very little options except to lock everything up. I don’t think that is about sustaining the resources of Tangaroa at all,” Mr Rei says.

CHLAMYDIA RATE THREAT TO MAORI SURVIVAL

A kaupapa Maori sexual health worker says the high chlamydia rate among Maori is a threat to whakapapa.

Karanga Morgan, the executive director of Te Puawai Tapu, says it's cause for alarm that Maori have the highest teenage fertility rates in New Zealand, making this country second in the OECD for teen pregnancies.

Ms Morgan says the rate of sexually transmitted infections among young Maori is even more alarming than the unplanned pregnancies, because chlamydia can lead to sterility.

“If our young people are not encouraged to have protection, to take protection, to make use of protection, condom and lube go hand in hand, that sort of message, we will see a population decline within Maori within the next 20 to 30 years,” Ms Morgan says.

HUI ARANGA HELPS CATHOLICS HANG ON TO CULTURE

Maori round the country are on the move for the Easter weekend of festivals and hui.

Ngai Tuhoe will be heading for the bi-annual Ahurei festival in Ruatoki.

And Maori Catholics are off to Wanganui for the 60th Hui Aranga, a weekend of speechmaking, sports, kapa haka and of course prayer.

Kaiwhaiki kaumatua Morvin Simon says such festivals were started as a way for Maori communities to hang on to their culture.

“This was with a view to ensuring that in the same way Tuhoe makes sure their peole know their karakia, their waiata, and all that sort of thing, it’s the same sort of thing here with our faith as well. People are trying to get around some of those things they are able to enhance a bit better,” Mr Simon says.

Between two and three thousand performers and supporters are expected a Cullinane College for the Hui Aranga.

STUDY NEEDED ON TERTIARY GENDER GAP FOR MAORI

Victoria and Waikato Universities are launching a three year research project to find out why more Maori women are going into Tertiary education than men.

Paul Callister from Victoria University's Institute of Policy Studies says the pattern of behaviour starts at primary and secondary schools, when Maori pupils are more likely to truant and to leave without qualifications.

Dr Callister says the gender gap in education has a knock on effect on the labour market and the Maori economy.

“And the problem is in a society where increasing skill levels are needed to get even the basic jobs, if the men are not going into tertiary education at those levels or increasing pretty dramatically, then quite a few of those men are going to face life long problems in terms of work,” Dr Callister says

The $1.7 million study will also look at how male educational achievement could be improved.

FISH POLICY RIDES ROUGHSHOD OVER MAORI RIGHTS

Indigenous rights lawyer Moana Jackson says the government still doesn't understand the nature of Maori fishing rights.

Mr Jackson says the proposed shared fisheries policy seems to put recreational fishers above other users of the resource.

The issue dominated much of the discussion at this week's Maori fisheries conference in Napier.

Mr Jackson says the assumption is that all New Zealanders have a right to fish, but in fact that is a privilege that is dependent on Maori rights being upheld.

“In order to increase the take for recreational fishers, effectively the Crown is taking away some of the hard fought quota that our people have regained in the last 20 years. There’s a fundamental injustice in the proposed process in that the Crown is robbing Maori to allow other recreational fishers to do what they like,” Mr Jackson says.

He says the phrase "all New Zealanders" doesn't seem to take Maori into account.

URBAN DRIFT WEAKENS FAITH

A senior Maori Anglican cleric says Easter has lost its relevance for many Maori.

Hone Kaa from Saint John's Theological College says only 6 percent of New Zealanders regularly attend church, and that lack of interest is being felt in Maori congregations as well.

Reverend Kaa says churches used to be centres for Maori community activity, but the drift to the cities has led to a drift away from the churches.

“Circumstances have all changes in that 40 or 50 years. Whereas at one time we were 90 percent rural people, now we are 90 percent urbanised. People have struggled to survive in the city. There are so many things they have to do in order to live. Religion kind of gets set to one side, and it only ever pops its head up when it’s what they call the hatch ‘em, match ‘em and dispatch ‘em department, and that's about it,” Reverend Kaa says.

Tame Iti arms conviction dismissed on appeal

2007-04-04T23:53:00.000+12:00

Tuhoe activist Tame Iti says a Court of Appeal decision overturning his firearms convictions is just one more step in a lifelong battle for indigenous rights.

Mr Iti had been found guilty of two counts of possessing a firearm in a public place after he fired a shotgun during welcomes for the Waitangi Tribunal at Ruatoki in January 2005.

The court said the prosecution failed to prove any criminal harm from Iti's action.

Mr Iti says the case was brought because of the grandstanding of former ACT MP Stephen Franks, and he has no grudge against the police for taking it.

“Tuhoe tikanga or any other iwi hapu tikanga always will be in conflict. As long as the judicial system continues to marginalise indigenous people of this country, we always will be in in conflict with it,” Mr Iti says.

He says over the past 15 years he has discharged shotguns on Tuhoe marae in front of a prime minister, a governor general and a police commissioner with no complaints.

FISH FIGHTING TALK FROM JACKSON

Maori lawyer Moana Jackson says recreational fishers must understand taking fish is a privilege and not a right.

Mr Jackson, who specialises in international indigenous rights, told this week's Maori fisheries hui in Napier that pressure from the recreational sector for increased catches would be at the expense of Maori customary and commercial interests.

Mr Jackson says the recreational sector is unwilling to accept that Maori customary rights should have priority.

“So any right to fish recreationally must be subject to a similar right of Maori to exercise their preceding rights over a particular fish bed or whatever, and it’s in that context that recreational fishing in my view is a privilege subject to the pre-existing rights of Maori,” Mr Jackson says.

He says the Government's proposed shared fisheries policy will reinforce recreational privilege rather than uphold treaty and customary rights.

NGA RAURU HIT BY WAVERLEY SCHOOL CLOSURE

A Waverley High School board spokesperson says closure of the South Taranaki school will be a blow to the area's tangata whenua, Nga Rauru.

Mike Niho says up to 40 percent of students whakapapa to the iwi, and will now have to travel through to Wanganui or Paatea to finish their secondary schooling.

Mr Niho says the local Maori community fought for the school to remain open.

“For Nga Rauru as a whole, we’re disappointed in the closure, given that we now only have the Waverley Primary School, the Waitotara Primary School are the only educational facilities in Nga Rauru,” Mr Niho says.

EDUCATOR VERN PENFOLD DIES AGED 82

E te koro, moe mai moe mai takoto mai ra...

Te Aitanga Hauiti hapu of Ngati Porou today buried long time educationalist and race relations advocate Vern Penfold, who died this week aged 82 after a long illness.

Mr Penfold did much of his early teaching at Ratana Pa, before become a lecturer in Maori studies at Auckland teachers training college during the 1960s.

He moved into the inspectorate, and at the end of his career was working for the Race Relations Conciliator developing education programmes.

Fellow educator and friend Turoa Royal says Mr Penfold was an inspiration to generations of teachers.

“He from my point of view was a really professional tutor who cared passionately for his students. He would have matched any professional in terms of his dedication, his understanding of children, and a special place for Maori, because of the difficulties they were having and still are having, with the education system at the present time,” Mr Royal says.

Mr Penford was buried by the sea at Tologa Bay.

ACC SIGNS UP NGATI HINE FOR INFORMATION ROLE

Ngati Hine Health Trust today signed an agreement with the Accident Compensation Commission to improve the way Northland Maori access its services.

It's the second of six such partnerships the commission plans to announce over the next few months.

Hemi Toia, the ACC's director of Maori and community relations, says Maori lag behind non-Maori in using rehabilitation services.

“The key reason is simply a lack of knowledge on the part of Maori communities abut the entitlements under the ACC umbrella. Our entitlement take-up rates would suggest that Maori are uncomfortable with accessing the resources of this agency, as opposed to non Maori,” Mr Toia says.

ACC will help Ngati Hine train kaiawhina to raise awareness of services.

SHARED FISHERIES PLAN DOMINATES IWI HUI

The Government's plan to cut commercial quota to make more fish available for the recreational sector dominated discussions at the second Annual Maori Fisheries Conference this week in Napier.

Matiu Rei, the chief executive of Ngati Toa Rangatira, says the hui was a valuable chance for some the main players in the industry to look at the environment ahead.

Mr Rei says the fisheries ministry hasn't been clear enough about its plans, but from what they have seen, Maori are worried.

“It was an opportunity for us to consider the shared fisheries proposal which was coming, which actually hasn’t been too widely defined by the government but it’s certainly raising concern in Maori circles,” Mr Rei says.

The hui was also an opportunity for iwi to strengthen their economic links.

Settlement process on trial in Tamaki

2007-04-04T10:20:00.000+12:00

I’ve sat on this post for a couple of weeks ruminating, which is wrong for blogging, so now I’m spitting the cud.

Nothing of what I’ve seen subsequently has made me change my mind that the Office of Treaty Settlements has no business conducting business the way it does.

The Waitangi Tribunal was in Auckland last month to hear the Tamaki Makaurau Settlement Claim, an investigation into the process by which the Crown developed by direct negotiation and Agreement in Principle to settle the claims to Auckland lands of Ngati Whatua o Orakei.

It follows a similar hearing into an Agreement in Principle with Nga Kaihauto o Te Arawa, which will settle about half the claims to land around the Rotorua lakes, with no timetable or process on the table for settling with the 50 percent or so of Te Arawa who refused to join the talks.

Similarly, there is no process to consider interests other iwi or hapu may have in the Auckland isthmus.

Tribunal acting chairperson Judge Carrie Wainwright says it will try to get the Tamaki Makaurau Settlement report out in about a month.

Some impressions and comments.

Pressure has been building for several years for an investigation of the settlement process, and what are seen as the indignities claimants are put through. Tribunal chair Joe Williams seemed loathe to tackle it himself, but with Joe taking time out to finish the Wai 262 indigenous fauna and flora claim, Carrie has taken it on.

What came out under cross examination during the week should make it impossible for the Government to continue the process as it is. It is very clear the Office of Treaty Settlements makes things up as it goes along.

The Government claims the settlement process is subject to internal relativities, so inflated settlements late in the process do not devalue earlier settlements – or more to the point, the ratchet clauses in the Tainui and Ngai Tahu settlements, guaranteeing those post-settlement corporate entities 17 percent each of the total settlement putea.

These relativities have never been made transparent. Claimants can’t go to a table in the OTS annual report and discover they are entitled to x percent of the total. It is only after years chiselling that discover what the Crown negotiators think they are worth. The negotiation process is all about reducing expectations, nothing about a fair or even an economically viable settlement.

In fact what has been happening is that with land values increasing faster than the rate of inflation, those relativities are shot anyway. So what OTS is doing to get the settlements it is giving priority to – those where claimants are willing to essentially give up their rights for a full investigation of their claims by the Waitangi Tribunal and enter direct negotiations – is it is using accounting tricks to keep the reported quantum in line with the relativity structure.

In the case of the Auckland settlement, two examples of fancy bookwork are immediately obvious.

The value of the right of first refusal for surplus Crown land in the settlement area over 100 years is given a zero value. It should be known by now what such a right is worth. Ngai Tahu has had it for a decade, and being the middleman in every surplus land sale has provided a handy cashflow. It hasn’t been such a boon to Tainui, because there is less surplus land in the Waikato to clip the ticket on.

Ngati Whatua gets the right to buy land the navy is using in Devonport for its base and staff housing. It is said to be worth $80 million, but Orakei doesn’t need to pay anything up front because the navy is getting a rent holiday (on land it currently owns freehold) for 35 years. That means a generation or so hence, Ngati Whatua will start collecting market rents on a big tract of extremely valuable land.

Setting aside the question of whether Ngati Whatua o Orakei’s historical association with the North Shore is greater than that of say Marutuahu iwi, who sold the land, this is an extraordinary gesture to make to a relatively small hapu. As one lawyer confided after the hearing, everyone will want to negotiate with this team, because they are clearly the easybeats.

Judge Wainwright asked team leader Rachel Houlbrooke a series of questions designed to determine whether the OTS had any idea of the complexity of the history of Maori Auckland.

Houlbrooke listed a series of historical accounts OTS relied on (in addition to the overview written by Brice Stirling, which was kept secret until well after the agreement in principle was signed and want never peer reviewed or subject to any expert critique in a public forum). Wainwright’s response was that she would not have used any of that material, such as Russel Stone’s book on early Auckland, if she wanted to find out about Maori Auckland.

Wainwright also asked whether OTS had any second thoughts – did Houlbrook think there might have been things it could have done differently. After an evasive answer, Wainwright asked if Houlbrooke could not or would not answer the question. “Maybe both,” Houlbrooke said, bringing questions to a close.

One obvious way to determine a major issue like who had interests in the various maunga or volcanic cones around the isthmus would have been to hold a hui and thrash the issue out. Oh no, said Houlbrooke. It wouldn’t do to have people without a mandate to make those kind of concessions.

There is no institutional capacity within OTS to make judgments on Maori customary matters, no idea how to ask the questions let alone find the answers, and not even any sense about why this could be important.

In 2007, it should be completely unacceptable that a Crown agency responsible for dealing with Maori on such an issue has no institutional capacity for moving in tea o Maori.

Aroha abducted by aliens

2007-02-07T09:57:00.000+13:00

As a political stunt, the abduction of Aroha from the underclass by aliens must rate as one of the most bizarre and ill judged of recent times.

Let’s break it down.

John Key makes a state of the nation speech to mark his ascension to the National Party throne, mindful of the boost his predecessor Don Brash got from the Maori-bashing Orewa speech.

He talks about an underclass, singling out McGechan Close in the Auckland suburb of Owairaka as an example of its habitat, a place where "rungs on the ladder of opportunity have been broken".

He then dashes off to McGehan Close for a close look and a photo op, and there his eye falls on 12 year old Aroha Ireland.

That’s where the code breaks down immediately. There may have been Somali kids, Tongan kids, whoever, but he picks on the Maori kid. We’re back on the Brash script already.

He offers her opportunity – come with him to Waitangi Day celebrations in the Bay of Islands.

On the day he pulls up in a Crown limousine and whisks he away. On her own. Not with her mum, or auntie, or big brother. On her own.

Chaperone for the day is to be another National MP, Jackie Blue, who it seems had been Aroha’s grandmother’s doctor.

That’s the overclass. They have this sense of entitlement that tells them they can take away other people’s children and do what they want with them. It’s paedophile grooming behaviour (not that we’re accusing Key of that – he’s just unmindful of the consequences of his actions). It’s the kind of thinking that gave Australia its Stolen Generation, that Aboriginal children were better off being brought up in white-run institutions than among their wild kin.

Write off the parents – they can’t be saved – but inculcate the children with the values of their betters, ie, rich white males.

As a symbol for Key’s views on what the Treaty of Waitangi means, Labour MP and former fisheries commission chair Shane Jones saw it as harking back to the kiwi nationalism of 1960s National prime minister Keith Holyoake (and the gesture of his successor, Labour’s Norm Kirk at the 1973 Waitangi Day commemoration) which places Maori as "a junior partner, represented by a child who needs to be led by a white father".

Tapu Misa nails down that McGehan Close and Aroha aren’t particularly good examples of the underclass anyway, and details the agenda behing the use of such pseudo-sociology.

So is this what we can expect from a Key-led National? More coded Maori-bashing? Policies which promise choice, but only if you’re not poor? Abusive social relationships?

Key is looking as coming out of the same mold of Jenny Shipley and Ruth Richardson, that the poor are people you can experiment on, for their own good of course, because it’s all their fault anyway, the lazy thieving underclass.

Ngai Tahu reports on troubled year

2006-11-22T12:06:00.000+13:00

Ngai Tahu’s ride as the success story of Maori claim settlements seems to be hitting some choppy water.

The South Island tribe’s 2006 annual report (here eventually)reveals a bottom line loss for the year to June 30 of $10.92 million, compared with a $15.657 million profit the previous year.

Kaiwhakahaere Mark Solomon says that was driven by a tough year in fisheries, its largest operating division, including a $20 million write down in assets, which Solomon said was a decision by the new board of Ngai Tahu Holdings Corporation to reflect "honest" value.

He said a structural review helped lower operating expenses.

Distributions to tribal purposes, constituent runaka and whanau doubled from $6.2 million to $12.5 million, including the set up costs of its Whai Rawa subsidised savings scheme.

There was a $35.7 million net outflow from operating activities, compared with a $2.8 million net inflow in 2005, and a $16.2 million net inflow from investing activities, compared with a $15.5 million net outflow last year.

Most of the investing inflow came from the sale of forest land at Tapanui, Otago Coast and Berwick.

Solomon denied the sales were designed to prop up the balance sheet, saying the process was kicked off 18 months ago.

Given that this report comes after a review and restructuring, and in the middle of a long drawn out battle between the half of the board which supports Solomon and the other half who lean towards chief executive Tahu Potiki (who yesterday announced he would depart in March).

Dr Robin Pratt, an experienced executive brought in to run Holdings Corporation, quit (or was pushed out by the restructure process) in May. Salary band disclosures in the report show that Pratt’s golden handshake took his final year’s pay above $1.1 million. Some 42 other executives earned over $100,000 – good pay for Christchurch.

His departure might have also affected how the corporation’s results were reported.

Ngai Tahu Holding Corporaiton’s net profit before tax was $9.336 million, down from $31.560 million the previous year.

It made $14.427 million from ongoing trading operations, almost $10 million less than 2005, and made a $17.261 million profit on asset sales. That was all knocked out by its $22.352 million write down in assets, $20.722 million of which were in the seafood operation.

Given that Ngai Tahu will in the current financial year bring into its books the fisheries settlement assets received from Te Ohu Kaimoana Trust, it is good policy to ensure valuations are correct. What will raise eyebrows though is the fact that $15 million of the write down was in the goodwill in Cook Strait Seafoods, a Wellington-based company bought in 2003.

Former Ngai Tahu chair Sir Tipene O’Regan has been critical of that deal. Give that he would have looked the company over during his time as chair of the fisheries commission, his view the price paid was too high now seems confirmed.

The justification for the deal was contained in a 2003 Unlimited article on the tribe: Ngai Tahu Seafoods’ acquisition this year of Cook Strait Seafoods and 50% purchase of fishing fleet Pacific Trawling doubles Ngai Tahu Seafoods’ turnover to $90 million and will take its export earnings from $35 million a year to around $65 million. The two acquisitions give Ngai Tahu 50% ownership of four inshore and deepwater vessels, retail and wholesale outlets in Wellington and Auckland, plus quota. In the past the company could not get enough product to sell in Europe without dropping customers in other markets. The acquisition of Cook Strait gives it the volume to have a good global spread and less exposure to the US dollar, chief executive Gavin Holley says. 

Fast forward three years and the Pacific Trawling joint ventures were dissolved, the Albany Pacific Catch store sold and some deep sea vessels were sold or laid up.

A planned expansion of the Pacific Catch chain of retil stores was suspended while the company tries to bring existing stores into profit.

The seafood division made a $3.833 million loss on its trading operations, with revenue dropping $7.6 million $73.9 million.

The report blames the high dollar, high fuel prices and poor profitability for large volume wetfish species like hoki.

Of note is a decision to treat $6,531,650 in costs related to allocation of fisheries settlement assets – in other words the accumulated legal bills for years of litigating for a larger share – as an investment pending allocation, rather than an expense.

Also of note is its decision to join the rest of the industry in processing fish like orange roughy, oreo dory and monkfish in China, meaning fewer jobs in New Zealand.

Problems in the tourism businesses over summer, especially Shotover Jet, affected profits, which were $3.3 million after asset write downs.

Ngai Tahu’s total assets now stand at $561 million, up $40 million over the year, and shareholders’ equity is $411 million, up $33 million.

Tribunal caves in before settlement steamroller

2006-05-17T11:01:00.000+12:00

A very important piece in today’s New Zealand Herald, hidden behind its premium content wall.

David Williams, who has been involved in 14 Waitangi Tribunal inquiries starting with assisting Joe Hawke of Ngati Whatua back in 1977, is warning of the rush to settlements under current negotiating processes.

Some of this rush came out of the Government's post-election support arrangements with the New Zealand First and United Future, who have never shown much support for Maori aspirations.

Williams says the Waitangi Tribunal “has sought to avoid further marginalisation by tailoring its inquiries and their outcomes as closely as possible to the Crown's settlement policies.”

The evidence is two papers published by the Tribunal in December, The Waitangi Tribunal and the Settlement of Historical Treaty Claims and The new approach revisited: a discussion paper on the Waitangi Tribunal's current and developing practices.

To quote: "The short point is that the Tribunal is ready, willing and able to facilitate negotiation in line with Government and claimant aspirations for all Treaty claims to be settled as soon as possible."

“The Tribunal's new approach as now enunciated is profoundly disturbing. The Crown's settlement policy was adopted in 1995, despite an immense wave of opposition following the Hirangi hui of that year,” says Williams.

“It was adopted before the hearing of claimants' or Crown evidence in most districts of the country, yet allocated a ballpark figure for redress payments to hapu and iwi in the whole country and created a template for cultural redress remedies. This was akin to a court deciding on damages payable to plaintiffs, and other possible remedies available to them, in advance of hearing the evidence.

“All crucial elements of that policy were reaffirmed by the new Government in 2000 and continue to be implemented to this day.

In my view, the outcomes of Tribunal hearings should depend on the nature and the strength of the evidence put before it.“

Williams says the tribunal is now recommending claimants negotiate settlements in a single district-wide negotiation process for a comprehensive settlement.

He urged the tribunal go back to offering specific recommendations, as it did in reports back in the 1980s.

“The recommendations should relate to the proved strength of the claimants' cases in a hapu specific and location specific manner. The remedies recommended should bear some relationship to the evidence and the need for resolution of specific grievances. The Tribunal should do more than act as a conveyor belt that moves claimants along an orderly, lawyer-prescribed pathway towards acceptance of the Government's template for the settlement of historical claims.”

He says fast tracking is weakening the whoe settlement process, and are no more likely to bring an end to historic claims than the processes adopted by the first Labour Government in 1944 and the Muldoon National Government in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“If Maori of this generation are again offered a ‘this is as good as it will get so take it or leave it’ settlement package, then neither they nor their mokopuna are likely to feel that the Tribunal and Crown settlement process has succeeded as an exercise in seeking truth and reconciliation,” Williams said.

Well said. It is clear many claimants are starting to consider the penny ante settlements currently going through as down payments, and iwi will get what they can and wait for another generation to get true justice.

Maori news service online

2006-05-12T11:34:00.000+12:00

A searchable archive of Waatea News is now available online at http://waatea.blogspot.com

Ratcheting up the Treaty bureaucracy

2006-05-07T20:10:00.000+12:00

The bureaucrats in the Office of Treaty Settlements have put their hands in the government’s pockets yet again and pulled out another plum - $5.2 million in the next Budget, to be spread over four years.

That means more bright young things marching down Lambton Quay to write papers and play at being the "Crown", just like a 19th century land purchase officer, and more money for the high priced consulting firms who are actually doing much of the talking.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Mark Burton says it will allow the Government to meet its deadline of requiring all historical claims to be lodged by 2008 and all historical settlements to be concluded by 2020.

What this government won’t do is give the Waitangi Tribunal the resources it has been crying out for to ensure claims are fully heard and reported on in a timely fashion, so the settlements can be negotiated on a proper basis that claimants can be happy with.

Nor does it do anything about the fact that many claimant groups are now reluctant to enter into the fray, because the amount they are being offered is so insulting. Unless Labour is prepared to put in more real money, that will get worse.

This is why the Maori Party refused to vote on the Rotorua Lakes settlement last week. Almost two decades of talking, and the only reason Te Arawa finally bit was Labour sweetened to pot to have some good news to announce just before the last election.

This is money for the bureaucracy, not the claimants, and bureaucracies are self serving, and self perpetuating.

Labour still has not come to grips with the claims arena. Its first minister for treaty negotiations, Margaret Wilson, ignored the portfolio for her first year in the job, because she was immersed in rolling back National’s attacks on industrial relations protections. OTS used the break to dig in a set of processes which were already failing then.

Mark Burton is also obviously not in charge. Settlements mean transfers of capital, both financial and political, and that means Michael Cullen and Helen Clark respectively. If either of those took on the portfolio, it would be a far better signal the government was taking it seriously.

The government is fearful that offering better settlements will trigger the ratchet clauses, by which Tainui and Ngai Tahu are each guaranteed 17% of the total settlement quantum, the ridiculous $1 billion fiscal cap.

I said years ago that Labour should have bought out Tainui’s ratchet clause a few years ago when it was in a cash crisis, and paid Ngai Tahu the same. It was fair enough the clause was in the Tainui settlement, given the political risks taken by Bob Mahuta et al, but there was no justification for Ngai Tahu getting it. It just means that Ngai Tahu hold the rest of Maoridom at ransom, as it tried to over the fisheries settlement.

So what relevance are the ratchet clauses to Labour’s current policies? Or its timidity.

There could be a way around it though. A question for Cullen etc, if anyone is asking.

When tribes buy Crown or SOE assets with their settlement funds, should that be at today’s valuations, or at their valuation in 1992, when the fiscal envelope was introduced?

Kite flying by the number

2006-05-04T09:37:00.000+12:00

The Gerry Brownlee comments about the National Party's stance on the Maori seats is fascinating, not for what it tells us about National's policy but for what it tells us about Brownlee’s relationship with party leader Don Brash.

Brash today told Radio Pacific that Brownlee’s statement that National could reconsider what happened to the Maori seats "created some confusion and he's apologised to the caucus for that".

Brash said the National Party wants “a democracy where everybody is on the same roll. So that means that we want to get rid of the Maori seats."

Setting aside questions of why one roll means democracy, particularly in a proportional voting system, Brash has reiterated the policy.

In the process, he made the National Party caucus sound like some sort of Maoist self-criticism session. "I apologise for creating confusion.” Sounds like weasel words to me.

Brownlee is right. His statements over the weekend were a mix of scaremongering – "Martha. There may be 10 Maori seats after the electoral option. Head for Queensland!" – and realpolitik.

As long as the Maori Party retains seat in Parliament, and as long as Tariana Turia is one of those MPs, the Maori Party will not support a Helen Clark-led Labour government. That means their votes are available for a National-led coalition, if the price is right. Given the current state of the New Zealand electorate under the MMP system, making such an accommodation may be National’s only hope of regaining the Treasury benches.

Brownlee can do the numbers better than the former Reserve Bank governor. He is probably picking that Brash won’t be the one leading National into the next election campaign. He wants to make sure that whether it is John Key, Bill English or Jackie Blue leading that campaign, Gerry will still be in the number two slot. Or maybe even number one. So he is setting himself up as the go to guy, the one you need to talk to to get a deal.

The Tohunga Dialysis Act

2006-05-03T09:35:00.000+12:00

A century ago a group of Te Aute old boys formed themselves as the Young Maori Party, whose aims included the improvement of Maori health and welfare.

As well as doing work at the village level, members like Apirana Ngata, Peter Buck and Maui Pomare sought political office, either as independents or as members of the existing Liberal or Reform parties. Ngata entered Parliament in 1905. Buck was given the Northern Maori seat in 1909 and Pomare took the Western Maori seat in 1911 with the Maori King’s backing.

It was Pomare, even before he entered Parliament, who instigated the Tohunga Suppression Act. As a doctor, like Buck, he had seen the way charlatans invoked tradition as a way of filling their own pockets, to the detriment of fellow Maori who took their medical advice.

Now Te Aute has given up another parliamentarian, the not so young Pita Sharples (not a medical doctor, but a doctor nonetheless). His co-leader in the (not Young) Maori Party is Tariana Turia, who ran a Maori health organisation in Whanganui before entering the House on the Labour Party ticket.

Their prescription for one of the most critical health issues facing Maori, the number of people whose organs fail because of diseases like diabetes, is to oppose National MP Jackie Blue's members bill setting up a national organ donors' register. The bill will stop family members overriding someone's wishes that their organs be donated after their death.

The Maori Party says it put the issue to party supporters at consultative hui during the break. The response was Maori do not believe in organ donation after death because the body is considered tapu.

Tell that to the Maori hooked up to dialysis machines for hours ever day waiting for a secondhand organ. Tell that to Maori health worker Phil Heremaia, who is giving up his job as a case manager at Counties Manukau District Health Board to mount a national education campaign on the issue.

It is Heremaia who is the descendant of Buck and Pomare, not today’s neotraditionalist Maori Party.

Politics is about leadership, not bowing down to ignorance and superstition.

White cliffs barrier to Dover

2006-03-28T09:39:00.000+12:00

In case you missed it when it flashed by on National Radio’s Waatea News this morning (declaration: I am currently working in a production capacity for said news feed, which is why my energy hasn’t been directed to this blog in recent weeks), a dis to the Maori caucus from Chris Carter.

Two weeks ago in Caucus Dover Samuels, the former MP for Te Tai Tokerau and now a list MP, savaged Carter for vetoing a marina project at Whangamata on the Coromandel, as he has the power to do as Minister of Conservation. While Maori are somehow expected to be pro-conservation, they also have important but at the moment mostly theoretical economic interests in the coastal zone. If something isn’t done to create streamlined and transparent regulatory processes, the 20 percent of aquaculture space Maori are to receive under the aquaculture settlement (the concession prize for losing the foreshore and seabed stoush) becomes just another liability. Labour Maori MPs have been giving a lot of thought to this.

News of Dover’s tongue lashing leaked out (alluded to first on Waatea News, then in the Independent), and Dover was forced to say he and Carter were great mates etc.

This week Carter is in Brazil representing the country at a United Nations conference on biological diversity. He delegated all his ministerial portfolios to Rick Barker, the Minister for Internal Affairs, Justice etc.

Left twiddling their thumbs were not only Samuels, who is associate minister of housing, but Te Tai Tonga MP Mahara Okeroa, the associate minister for conservation.

If Labour wants to win back the Maori electorates it lost last time, it better show it can have a good relationship with the Maori in its own caucus, let alone those voters out there.

Price put on wananga plunder

2006-03-06T11:08:00.000+13:00

The Maori Party is finally asking some of the right questions on Te Wananga o Aotearoa, zeroing in on how much Trevor Mallard’s takeover of a Maori-developed institution is costing.

Party co-leader Pita Sharples asked Tertiary Education Minister Michael Cullen how much Brian Roche, a senior partner with accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, is being paid as Crown Manager of Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

Cullen said it is not just Roche but six others from PWC feeding at the trough, which for the 04/05 financial year cost $545,223 (excluding GST). For the period 1 July 2005 to 31 January 2006 a total of $810,789 (excluding GST) was paid to PriceWaterhouseCoopers for the work. Brian Roche's direct involvement varies over time but represented approximately 23% of the total bill, or just over $300,000, at $2400 a day plus gst and disbursements.

Cullen say Roche will stay in place as Crown Observer "until the Government is satisfied that the level of risk pertaining to Te Wananga o Aotearoa is at acceptable levels."

He will remain as Crown manager for as long the term of the Crown loan currently propping up the wananga's activities, which is likely to be for at least the remainder of this year. "I envisage the Crown Manager will remain in place until the financial issues at Te Wananga o Aotearoa have been satisfactorily addressed and his services are no longer required."

Bear in mind, Roche is in place because Cullen’s predecessor, Trevor Mallard, engineered a financial crisis by refusing to pay over the suspensory loan agreed as part of a treaty settlement, on the pretext the wananga had too many non-Maori students – a pretext the Waitangi Tribunal has said is not justifiable in terms of the wananga’s mission.

Former wananga chief executive Rongo Wetere was ousted because of allegation of financial impropriety which an Audit Office investigation was unable to back up. Now it turns out the Crown’s agents are a far more expensive option, and there is so far no evidence they have the institution’s best interests at heart.

Sharples told the Dominon Post it was ironic a Government minder brought in to cut costs was being paid an exorbitant handout when the wananga's former management had been criticised for its financial largesse.

Cullen's spokesman, Mike Jaspers, told the DomPost Roche had achieved a lot, including improved financial management and organisational practices, replacing the council and was in the process of finding a new chief executive.

Back up. The council has been illegal since Mallard's bullyboy, Wira Gardiner, pressured most of the iwi reps to leave. The council is now being reconstituted to give it some shred of legality and as a result of the out of court settlement with Wetere.

The wananga’s chairman, Craig Coxhead, another Crown appointee, said Roche and his team had cut the organisation's losses significantly and reduced its need for financial assistance from the Crown. Coxhead couldn’t provide any figures backing up that assertion until accounts were done up at the end of the financial year.

Coxhead said PWC had "dramatically improved our ability to track, predict and manage costs and assist in the proper management of our assets". If that is the case, the figures should be available now.

Demonising Wetere has involved lots of accusations, but these highly-paid accountants haven't even been able to release the accounts for the previous financial year. Or perhaps they don’t back up their case for Wetere’s mismanagement without a lot of cooking, such as revaluation practices which might not pass audit.

As for reducing the need for financial assistance from the Crown, that’s not the idea. The wananaga is a publicly funded body. The issue was that Wetere was given three years to grown without a funding cap, a freedom he took advantage of for almost 30 months before Mallard stepped in. He revealed deficiencies in the tertiary education sector which need to be addressed, but instead look like they will again be pushed under the carpet.

As head of PWC's "government relations" team, Roche has done well for himself. Mallard tipped him in to the Correspondence School, Northland Polytechnic and the Open Polytechnic.

The government also appointed him to chair the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. His is a former chief executive of Treasury's Crown Company Monitoring and Advisory Unit and was a chief Crown negotiator for the Ngai Tahu Treaty of Waitangi settlement.

Iwi leaders in secret Love fest

2006-03-03T11:10:00.000+13:00

As the coffers of iwi organisations fill with millions of dollars in fisheries and land settlement assets, they should be thinking of how to be accountable to and communicate with beneficiaries.

Instead, these wannabe rangatira choose secrecy and exclusion. Alarm bells should be ringing.

Invited runanga leaders are meeting at Wellington’s Pipitea Marae for a three day hui to, in the words of organiser Peter Love from Te Atiawa, "discuss the future of Maoridom".

The media was excluded from proceedings, which included a presentation from Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia.

Considering that Horomia is a public servant, public scrutiny of his statements would seem to be a given. The minister should have insisted his speech was open to the media, though he did express his concerns after. "Maori leadership need to ensure it maintains transparency," he said. Kia ora.

Also excluded were urban Maori organisations.

Willie Jackson, chairman of the National Urban Maori Authority, said that was ignorant and insulting.

Also very very stupid.

If these people start holding secret meetings, people will start questioning their mandates. And Love should know how messy that can be.

Love’s constant assertions of his personal rangatiratanga have convinced few over the years, not even his own family,

So what is this hui? Is it an attempt to revive the National Maori Congress, which faded because it could not define a legitimate role for itself? Is it an attempt to create a rival to the Federation of Maori Authorities? Is it a bunch of people trying to make themselves out to be important?

Love said urban Maori authorities were not invited because they were not a traditional Maori group. Maybe not, but neither are the trusts and runanga – they are artificial creations. Or to put it another way, what concerns may these “traditional” groups have to raise which would not also be of concern to urban Maori authorities? While urban Maori authorities may not have an immediate interest in changes to the Resource Management Act (although their members may be as individuals), urban authorities are likely to be in the thick of any Maori response to a bird flu pandemic, as is also on the hui agenda.

These tribal leaders are going to regret this when they go back home. Their members are suspicious enough that deals are cut in secret without fuelling their fears.

Maps and Mapping for amateurs

2006-02-28T11:55:00.000+13:00

I always had former ACT MP Muriel Newman marked out as a nasty crank who liked to patronise the poor (her book How to live on an oily rag etc), but now she has presented the world with clear evidence of her racism.

In this case it is a particular strand of racism, which has many adherents around her Northland base, which maintains that Maori have never amounted to anything and never will, and any past achievements must be ascribed to someone else, probably a white person.

I tend to ignore her rants, but the Tino Rangatiratanga mailing list has just got riled up about Newman’s January 21 article, posted on her Centre for Political Debate site. And it’s a doozy. Or should I say dozy.

Newman cites an Economist article about what is purported to be a map of the world prepared by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He in 1418, which shows New Zealand and Australia. The map is being championed by former Royal Navy submariner Gavin Menzies, writer of 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, a 2003 book which claims Zheng circumnavigated the world, discovering all there was to discover.

According to Newman, Martin and his team of eager volunteers believe Chinese colonies existed in New Zealand "for hundreds of years before the arrival of Maori". Since the archaeological consensus is Maori had arrived and established themselves in the century of so before 1421, There seems to be a clash of timelines.

Newman: "While our government appears to hold tightly onto the view that Maori are tangata whenua (with even the stories of the early Moriori occupation that our generation was taught in school having almost disappeared), local and international research is now painting a different picture of the early history of New Zealand.

"Claims have been made that New Zealand enjoyed waves of exploration from as early as 600BC by Phoenician, Indian, Greek and Arab voyagers. In fact, claims of these visits help to explain the existence in the South Island of the fossilised remains of rats that have been carbon dated at 160 BC - more than 1,000 years before Maori!”

Note the explanation mark! - a clear indicator of crankiness! Next Newman will be putting IMPORTANT words in CAPITALS!

Where to begin? It is fascinating Newman will put so much effort into reading fanciful works of history and anthropology, yet will ignore the work of professional historians whose reputations and income depend on establishing some factual basis for their conclusions. It’s a bit like Creationism. Evolution is a theory. Here is another theory. Since they both are theories, they have equal weight, and you can choose the one you prefer.

The reason the stories of early Moriori occupation you were taught at school have almost disappeared Muriel, is they were wrong. Bunkum. Inventions.

The Moriori myth grew out of a 19th century European belief that race determined culture. It was also a way the European colonists justified the damage they were causing Maori. As soon as scholars started examining facts and not trying to construct racial hierarchies, the myth was exposed.

As Michael King laid out so well in 1989 in Moriori: A people rediscovered, the Moriori inhabitants of Chatham Islands came from the same Polynesian stock as Maori, but moved on from Aotearoa to occupy those remote islands.

So far, there has been no archaeological evidence of settlement before the 12th or 13th century, which conforms to whakapapa records. The 160BC rat (as if carbon dating was that accurate) point to visits, not settlement.

Newman: "There are further claims that before Maori arrived in New Zealand settlements had already been established, by the Waitaha, the peace-loving fair skinned ancestors of the Moriori, by Chinese miners, and by the Celts."

There it is, the white skin!!! Or should that be WHITE?

This whole Waitaha thing strains credibility. Barry Brailsford, another amateur historian, had written a series of lavishly-produced books which fail to stand up to scrutiny. My take on Waitaha, shorn of the New Age hokum, is that it is a normal expression of dissent within Ngai Tahu at the dominance of the Ngai Tahu corporate machine. A common expression of Maori dissent is to ignore that element of one's whakapapa and play up some alternate strand, which can give one an alternate history. A good example is the dispute between Rangitane and Kahungunu around the Manawatu Gorge area. The Maori Land Court concluded both parties had very similar whakapapa, they just chose to identify in different ways.

Gavin Menzies has been eviscerated elsewhere. My concern is Newman.

Despite her commitment to less government, Newman is happy to receive her MP’s pension, which of course gives her the income to pursue this phony think tank business through her website.

Giving her site the stamp of credibility is National's Wayne Mapp, who this week posted his own contribution, a rant on Political Correctness.

Does this mean Mapp is endorsing Newman's racist fantasies? I think we should be told.

Banks adrift again

2006-02-14T18:41:00.000+13:00

Former National minister and auckland mayor John Banks is continuing to show the disdain for Maori which was a feature of his polticial career.

On his Radio Pacific breakfast show, "Banksie" opined the incredible survival of diver Robert Hewitt was all a hoax.

Hewitt, a former navy diver, went missing from a dive charter on Mana Island, and was found 75 hours later by some of his mates who kept looking after the official search was called off.

According to Banks: "There are a lot of Maoris in the Navy. You'll never find a better Maori than the one that's in the military uniform. These blokes must be able to swim at least 400m. They've got to be able to swim with tanks, boots, respirators, and gear, 400m. Mr Hewitt was only 200m off Mana when he, quote, went missing, or found himself missing, or decided to go missing, or just missing. Why didn't he swim to Mana?"

There were lots of reasons, as outlined in the Herald stories, not least that he had hypothermia and was being swept along by tides and currents for three days.

Banks though has a deep antipathy to anything Maori, usually masquerading as a “joke”.

Let us not forget, when John Carter did his “Hone” stunt, pretending to be a Maori dole bludger on talkback radio, it was Banks he was sharing the jape with. And while Carter was banished for a while to the back benches, Banks skated - “That’s just Banksie.”

He is still, as they say in polite circles, a shit, as well as being a hypocritical humbug. Not that we can expect Pacific to take him off the air any time soon.

Not public broadcasting

2006-02-05T14:13:00.000+13:00

National Radio has replaced Mana News with daily Watea Maori news feeds. I've given the new arrangement a couple of weeks before commenting, but my initial impression has remained - another bad decision by Radio New Zealand's current management.

It was a death of a thousand cuts for Mana News, which started with a 20 minute evening magazine programme 16 years ago, wehn Beverley Waken was running the state broadcaster.

That show got shorter and shorter, but it remained a valuable window into Te Ao Maori, offering viewpoints not heard in the mainstream media, and maintaining a style of its own.

Sometime last year Radio New Zealand spoken word manager Paul Bushnell decided things must change. Bushnell, who has no news background, has had a meteoric rise in the state owned broadcaster since coming on board to do an arts programme for Concert FM in the late 90s.

His innovations have included replacing the dull but extremely competent Wayne Mowatt with the soporific Jim Mora in the afternoons, dragging out Checkpoint to an awkwardly padded two hours, and relegating arts programme What's Going On, which was working nicely, to a Sunday slot.

Bushnell decided Maori news should come as bulletins read by RNZ's Maori staff. A content provider was needed to supply scripts and audio for three minute-long items per bulletin.

Despite such a package being more expensive to produce, RNZ offered less money.

Waatea, Willy Jackson’s Mangere-based news service, has the contract to provide news in te reo to the iwi stations. That is a legacy of Wira Gardiner's time in control of Te Mangai Paho when Gardiner, as is his normal operating procedure, changed everything for the sake of change, taking the contract off Ruia Mai. This means Waatea is the only Maori news organization with the infrastructure to provided the service RNZ was looking for at the price.

The result is, quite frankly, drab and uninspiring. Most of the stories seem sourced out of that morning's Herald. There is no surprise. The sound is the same as the main bulletins, even if the items are longer. It sounds like a ghetto slot - "this isn't good enough for the main bulletin, but we'll tuck it in here."

As a public service broadcaster, Radio New Zealand should be reflecting the whole diversity of this country's voices and experience. Instead, the powers that be have decided non-white voices should get the most token of slots, and only if they conform to white norms.

Mana News never accepted that sort of prescription. Founders Derek Fox and Gary Wilson believed Maori broadcasters should be able to find a distinctive voice and a way of telling Maori stories, and they succeeded in this. Their vision was under attack from the beginning, not just from Wakem's successor Sharon Crosbie (who also rid her airwaves of the Pacific Islands vernacular broadcasts) but from Maori broadcast funding agency Te Mangai Paho (whose members had no radio or journalistic experience – go figure).

Because it has so little to offer in terms of programming opportunities for Maori and because it is unwilling to consider Maori listeners of any importance, Radio New Zealand has problems attracting and retaining skilled Maori broadcasters. That seems unlikely to change.

Fortunately, the views of Bushnell and RNZ chief executive Peter Cavanagh are not shared by all staff there, and Fox popped up on Linda Clark’s morning show, offering his usual considered views of the current scene.

However, that is only one voice, compared to the many he used to bring to the air.

An unhealthy disregard for rongoa

2006-01-23T10:16:00.000+13:00

In 1999, after several years of discussion and debate, the Ministry of Health and Nga Ringa Whakahaere o Te Iwi Maori developed and published national standards for traditional Maori healing practice.

The work was in response to a 1995 recommendation to the minister of health by the National Advisory Committee on Core Health and Disability Services that: "Regional Health Authorities purchase aspects of Maori traditional healing, to be provided in conjunction with other primary health services, where there is reason to believe this will improve access to effective services for Maori and lead to better health outcomes."

Today's National Party has no room for more effective services for Maori, if they choose not to accept Pakeha cultural models of health delivery.

A Sunday Star Times hack job on rongoa claimed "the government spends more than a million dollars a year on traditional Maori therapies - and has no proof that they work."

Other alternative therapies, such as homeopathy and naturopathy, receive no public money, it says. Maybe, but the government will shell out for other therapies like chiropracty - maybe that's the test. When there is state funding, it is no longer "alternative".

Reporter Greg Meylan's authority that the therapies don't work? New Zealand Skeptics chairwoman Vicki Hyde, who on one hand admits studies had shown some of the traditional herbal remedies used plants containing active ingredients, and in the next breath "questioned whether public money should be spent on therapies which were probably effective only because of the placebo effect".

So what are they: active compounds or placebos? Are the Skeptics saying health is a chemistry experiment? That is a drug company line, not one the medical establishment would accept any longer.

Not to worry though, National's health spokesman Tony Ryall has the cure.

"There's nothing wrong with alternative therapies but the taxpayer shouldn't be expected to foot the bill," Ryall said.

He said his party worked on the principle that medicine should be proven and that policies should be colour-blind.

Actually, his party brought in this funding, obviously convinced the treatments helped some people.

It took years of study and debate to win acceptance in professional and policymaking circles that medicine was not colour blind, and culture influences health. Politicians pandering to prejudice and shallow reporting could roll back those hard won gains.

As for the costs, $1.3 million a year among 12 Maori health providers - a pittance in the wider scheme of health spending. A major hospital probably spends that every year on latex gloves.

Double Act in Maori land grab

2006-01-22T23:55:00.000+13:00

Deborah Coddington has yet to make the transition from politics back to journalism.

Her Sunday Herald preview of National Party leader Don Brash’s Orewa Rotary Club speech, headlined "National softens tone on Maori", is more spin than reportage.

"The National Party looks likely to repackage its policy towards Maori, fearing its hard-line stance turned off too many urban voters at the last election. Leading up to Waitangi Day, and his 2006 speech to the Orewa Rotary Club, Don Brash told the Herald on Sunday his party needed to reaffirm the policies he outlined at Orewa in previous years 'in a way that does not make us anti-Maori',"

He denied his party was taking a softer line on Maori issues, saying he was never anti-Maori but opposed to "disastrous affirmative action programmes" and claims that the Treaty of Waitangi was "about two distinct groups of people".

Just out of interest, can we have an example of a "disastrous affirmative action programme". Maybe Coddington the former ACT MP takes its as self-evident there must be one.

As for specific examples, Coddington said Brash was considering putting up a private member's bills to "reform" Maori land ownership so it could be used to benefit owners "in the same way as owning land helps other New Zealanders".

That of straight out of the ACT playbook. Everything comes down to property rights, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The excuse, that "Maori incorporations have complained they cannot sell their land and reinvest the money elsewhere," doesn’t wash. A couple of the larger incorporations have voiced such complaints, but that was more to do with the strictures of the Maori Reserved Lands Act. When they want to and can put up a good enough case, incorporations have been able to get the Maori Land Court to change the status of land, allowing sale.

The problem for the white right is Maori land law looks different, so it must therefore be wrong.

Without going into the historical byways which have led to the current Te Ture Whenua Maori Act, Brash sounds like he is looking to revisit National’s 1967 amendments to the Maori Land Act and set the stage for a grab of remaining Maori land.

That '67 Act, opposed by Maori at the time including those in National, led to huge loss of land from Maori ownership, particularly on the coast. Many a holiday property now going for seven figure sums in the current boom was wrested from Maori ownership during those years. The downstream result of that law was of course the 1975 Maori Land March (even though by that time Labour’s Matiu Rata had reversed many of the worst features of the amendment).

Historical frictions

2006-01-17T10:24:00.000+13:00

My holiday reading at the beach was Michael Belgrave's Historical Frictions: Maori claims and reinvented histories (Auckland University Press).

As the back jacket says, this is an "important" book. Belgrave worked for the Waitangi Tribunal during some of its most critical years, so has an insider's understanding of the forces affecting that institution. Since leaving the tribunal he has taught history at Massey University.

Belgrave explains how the tribunal is not only writing history but making history "it is just the latest in a long tradition of judicial investigations of New Zealand's past, dating almost back to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

He says these periodic exhumations, the "points of friction" in the title, are part of the continual process of Maori and the state regularly realigning themselves. While they have never resolved the problems of Maori marginalisation and resource loss, they have reduced tensions and provided opportunities for Maori communities to grab what was on offer.

Don't expect finality from the current round, but "given the time and cost of the current round of claim and settlement, it is unlikely that a new round will occur soon."

The Waitangi tribunal is required to make practical recommendations about resolving grievances, being concerned as previous commissions were about the concerns of the present. "Interpreting the past according to present values and knowledge, rather than in the context of its own time, makes historians uncomfortable," Belgrave says. For an example of that discomfort, look no further than tribunal member Michael Bassett's shrill minority reports.

The tribunal has little option as its second main role, says Belgrave, is to identify Crown breaches of the treaty, "a concept very much rooted in present interpretations of the treaty."

Tahupotiki Wiremu Rata said the treaty is always speaking. Belgrave has an elegant variant on that concept which is a valuable way to frame the debate: that there is no single Treaty of Waitangi that can be argued through the courts in a legalistic fashion, but "it is a touchstone for debates on the place of Maori in New Zealand society." The concept of "principles of the treaty" first raised on the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act is an attempt to create a modern treaty relevant to policy making in the present.

Since 1840 the treaty has had multiple interpretations, depending on which side of the divide you were on. By mid-last century it had become a symbol of national unity and good race relations, an interpretation which was rejected by Maori in the mid to late 1970s as notion of unbroken Maori sovereignty started to emerge.

Belgrave gets into the nitty gritty of debate with his fellow historians, defending Henry Williams ability as a translator and redeeming the reputation of Kemp, who was made the scapegoat for dissatisfaction over South Island land deals. In fact, Belgrave is sympathetic to the missionaries, who he feels were caught out by forces beyond their control and then ruthlessly slandered by George Grey.

His expositions of four claims - Muriwhenua, Ngai Tahu, Taranaki and Chatham Islands - are an excellent overview, though his wrap up chapter on the settlement process screams out for further exploration.

He rightly sees claims as an assertion of mana, which is one reason they reemerge in different guises from generation to generation. He is also one of those who sees the current round descending into a rehash of the Native Land Court battles of the late 19th century, which is why it is inevitable they will eventually be revisited.

Belgrave recognises there is a Maori sphere of operation which is far more complex than the framework of title and limited rights which the state has tried to confine it. "Patterns of interests were much more complex and variegated than the city state model imposed on Maori would suggest. They were also far more complex than assumed by Norman Smith, the Maori Land Court judge whose influential description of Maori land rights reduced them to a formulaic checklist of take (claims), based on discovery, ancestry, conquest and gift and exercised through occupation. As in other Polynesian societies, customary interests were about relationships, partly rooted in genealogical inheritance, but also reflecting present leadership, and economic and military needs. Boundaries between kinship groups were often flexible and blurred, with intermarriage drawing people into different communities... Little in this was permanently fixed, and groups often could form and re-form, sometimes absorbing others and at other times splitting into new rival groups. All of this fascinated European observers, but it was regarded by policy makers as an impediment to progress and an anachronism, to be discarded just as feudal common law rights to graze cattle or collect firewood on common land had been extinguished by enclosure in British custom."

An immensely valuable book and a cracking good read.

Tane Mahuta gets older waiting for settlement

2005-12-19T18:52:00.000+13:00

In the Court of Appeal's groundbreaking 1987 judgment Maori Council state owned enterprises case, Justice Cook described a formula for dealing with treaty issues.

"A broad, unquibbling and practical interpretation is demanded."

When those words were written, the people of Te Roroa had already filed a claim for their lands in and around Waipoua Forest north of Dargaville. Their experience with the Crown's treaty settlement machinery has been anything but broad, unquibbling and practical.

This weekend the 3000-strong Te Roroa finally settled their claim, more than 13 years since the Waitangi Tribunal released its Te Roroa Report, which found the Crown had acted unfairly when it purchased land from Te Roroa and that it had failed to make proper provision for reserves. The Tribunal also found that the Crown had allowed Te Roroa's taonga to be violated and that it had denied Te Roroa the benefits of development enjoyed by other New Zealanders.

The Tribunal recommended that all the land that should have been set aside from the Crown purchases of the Maunganui, Waipoua, Waimamaku, and Wairau lands be returned to Te Roroa.

The settlement returns some of the sacred sites Te Roroa sought, but falls far short of restoring its economic base. The hapu must go into debt to buy farms which the Crown bought because they contained some of main wahi tapu.

"There will be no dividends for this generation," says claimant negotiator Alec Nathan, who persisted through nine teams of Crown negotiators or agents and several changes of government.

The Office of Treaty Settlements and its overseeing ministers should hang their heads in shame over what they have put Te Roroa through, and the miserly settlement they finally doled out.

The case was so clear cut the parameters for settlement were laid out in 1942 by Judge Acheson.

There was a firestorm of contrived outrage when the Waitangi Tribunal led by Judge Andrew Spencer reiterated Acheson"s finding that "the circumstances of this case ... cry aloud for redress for the natives. The two reserves (Manuwhetai and Whangaiariki) are theirs and should be returned to them, no matter what cost to the Crown this may involve".

Doug Graham passed a law preventing the Waitangi Tribunal from ever again making recommendations covering private land. Since Graham's amendment also defined land held by local bodies as private (even though they may have acquired and held that land through use or abuse of powers delegated from the Cerown), that particular move amounted to a deliberate denial of history and justice.

Part of the problem was the two reserves above were on farms owned by Alan Titford and his neighbour Don Harrison. Titford made the case a cause celebre of the anti-treaty brigade, fuelled by his muddled interpretation of the documentary record. Harrison, from my conversations with him, just seemed to be agin Maori on principle.

Both were paid out generously for their properties, but claimed it wasn't enough. Titford went off to Tasmania, but appears to have made a hash of things there by not being able to get on with his neighbours, and came back to stir up trouble again.

The pair were stopped by police from turning up at the settlement ceremony because of threats Titford made against claimants.

The OTS summary of the settlement skillfully hides crucial detail.

1. What is the total cost to the Crown?
$9.5 million plus interest from the date of the signing of the Deed of Settlement, and the cost of cultural sites returned, as listed at 1(A).

Yes, but how much did OTS pay to buy the various blocks? How much is the surplus valued at? What further profit is it making from its misdeeds towards Te Roroa?

OTS claims the settlement recognises the economic loss suffered by Te Roroa as a result of treaty breaches and "is aimed at providing Te Roroa with resources to assist them to develop their economic and social well-being." To that end, Te Roroa will receive a combination of Crown-owned land and cash to a value of $9.5 million, and have a 50 year right of first refusal "to buy, at full market value, certain surplus Crown-owned properties."

Grind their faces in it a little longer.

Economic loss is something OTS seems to want to fight to the bitter end, whether it is a small hapu wanting to asset ties to land of marginal economic value in Northland, or the Port Nicholson claimants who were cheated out of much of central Wellington. If it was taken by the gun they may pay compo, but confiscation by pen is too close to home for the bureaucrats.

The rest of the settlement is full of the contrived nonsense about food gathering areas and correcting place names which were developed in the Ngai Tahu settlement and have been clung on to by bureaucrats ever since as the model - write a manual on how to be a Maori.

Te Roroa isn't the longest negotiation, and it's certainly not the biggest example of claimants getting short changed. There are claims reported on earlier which are still not settled.

Unless this Government puts a rocket up OTS and reviews its whole process (something Margaret Wilson neglected to do when Labour returned to Government six years ago, preferring to run with Doug Graham's great white father model), the chances of settling all historical claims by the current deadline are as remote.

Wetere walks with head high

2005-12-15T17:02:00.000+13:00

Rongo Wetere has stepped down as chief executive of Te Wananga o Aotearoa in a move which saves the wananga from having to continue fighting what would have been a costly Employment Court hearing. story

Although Wetere had a strong case over the manner in which the wananga’s council, which is now controlled by Crown appointees, forced him to step aside earlier this year, the council had made clear their intention to appeal if the judgment went against them.

Tertiary education minister Michael Cullen had also indicated he was prepared to legislate to get rid of Wetere – which was probably an empty threat, given the precarious hold Labour has on the treasury benches, but it all added to the pressure on Wetere.

Wetere gets six months pay in recognition of long (and underpaid) service. Bentham Ohia will become acting chief executive.

The right thing now for Michael Cullen to do is remove Wira Gardiner, appointed by his predecessor Trevor Mallard, from the wananga’s council. It was Gardiner who forced Wetere out when the council received the Auditor Office’s draft report on the wananga, ignoring natural justice as usual. The fact the final report backed off most of the more extreme claims ands failed to find any criminality or fraud on the part of Wetere or anyone else is a testament to Gardiner’s poor judgment.

Not only is Gardiner a divisive factor in every situation he is put into, he also has a major conflict of interest because of his involvement with Ngati Awa’s Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi. Among the courses the Crown managers dropped from Aotearoa’s funding profile are some which compete with Awanuiarangi.

In fact, given the content of the Audit Office report, the Crown’s justification for intervention falls away.

There was an interesting discussion about the wananga on National Radio's 9 to noon show. The Maori Party’s Hone Harawira floundered, Labour’s Shane Jones spelled out his reservations about the wananga designing courses for non-Maori students, insisting the wananga should be seen as part of the Maori renaissance. However, he did acknowledge a major function of the wananga was salvage education, which applies to more than Maori.

Stoking the calls for resignation

2005-12-09T10:19:00.000+13:00

Jon Stokes still hasn't read the Auditor General's report properly.

In his piece in the NZ Herald (payment required) stokes gives credit to Rongo Wetere for his achievement in building up Te Wananga o Aotearoa against the odds.

But the unbiased Mr Stokes shows he is a dab hand with a slant.

"In 2000, Mahi Ora, a course designed by Wetere's daughter, Susan Cullen, was offered. It actually appealed to the educational drop-outs at whom it was pitched. The dress-for-less of the tertiary sector was born.

"As the wananga grew, so did the murmurings about the quality of courses and standard of management. This week, a damning report from the Auditor-General showed that some of the concerns were valid. "

Auditor general: "We did not examine … the quality of courses delivered."

Back to Stokes: "The report fuelled calls for Wetere to resign. Dr Michael Cullen, the Minister for Tertiary Education, said Wetere should listen to those closest to him, and stand aside. And of course he must. Examples of conflicts of interest and shoddy decisions appear to have been rife."

"Appear to have been", until you dig deeper. Even the Auditor General couldn't keep his story straight on that one. His big scandal was the wananga spending $14.4 million buying and doing up the Glenview Tavern, site of the wananga's library. On page 44 it says a "recent valuation" puts the complex at $10 million (5.41). Yet in a handy chart on page 19, the Auditor General values a proposed sale swap of the Glenview complex at $25 million. Very shoddy, making decisions which bring a 60 percent return.

"A battle for control will come only at the expense of Wetere's mana and further increase the spiraling legal bills that his defiance has created."

How about the spiraling bills from the Crown coup? Up to $100,000 a month for the Crown manager. A further $80,000 a month on interest for the Crown loan. Not to mention the money lost through deliberate suppression of enrolments by the Crown team.

Stokes finishes his piece with some gratuitous kicks at the late Sir Robert Mahuta (never Sir Bob).

"Tainui has had its share of visionary leaders whose reputations have been shredded in futile attempts to cling to power. Wetere's relative, and former nemesis, Sir Bob Mahuta, shared the same traits.

"It was Sir Bob who ensured his tribe was hammered into some type of unity long enough to achieve its $170 million Treaty settlement. It was an impressive feat requiring buckets of mana, heavy connections, and a powerful can-do personality.

"Yet Sir Bob, who died in 2001, is not universally remembered for the settlement, arguably his greatest achievement. For many, including some within his Waikato tribe, there are bitter memories of the division and financial scandal that tarnished his final months at the helm. Sir Bob was a good leader, but not gifted with the management skills required when millions of dollars are poured into an organisation.

"Senior management positions were dished out based on whakapapa and blind loyalty. The consequences were devastating. The year Sir Bob died, Tainui wrote off about $42 million. This year, after consistent growth, a $20 million profit was posted. The brutal internecine fighting of that time has also faded."

As a historical overview, that rates a D.

As it stands, there is nothing in the Auditor General's report which would permit a legally constituted wananga council to sack Wetere, and even less the current council, which has advice it is illegal, could safely move on.

What is needed is to connect the dots - and that means going back a bit further, and looking a bit wider.

Money trail shows audit holes

2005-12-08T13:41:00.000+13:00

There is an important principle in investigative journalism called "follow the money".

You would think somebody called the Auditor General would have a similar mandate, but his report on Te Wananga o Aotearoa seems driven by a desire to follow the paperwork - and the requirements of political masters, which is unfortunate for the independence of the office.

To recap. The report was made public Monday. The wananga's rounder and chief executive, Rongo Wetere, said it showed no misappropriation, no fraud and no nepotism.

No one disputed that assessment, but made a meal of findings of poor decision making practices for significant expenditure, inadequate management of conflicts of interest, and "unacceptable" practices in senior management expenses concerning international travel and credit card expenses.

What it failed to do was give the numbers documenting the Wananga's growth, nor did it spell out the circumstances which led to the financial problems which allowed former education minister Trevor Mallard to impose direct control on the wananga through a number of interventions between February and July.

Media coverage before and after the release fixated on how much members of the Wetere whanau may have made from the wananga, including a "let's pull some numbers out of the air" exercise from the Herald's Jon Stokes which claimed companies owned by Rongo Wetere's daughter Susan Cullen "earned" $74.2 million from the wananga between 2000 and 2005.

According to a range of authorities, "earnings" means net income, once all expenses are deducted. What Stokes reported was an estimate of "revenue".

Stokes said "Cullen estimates her personal fortune at around $30 million, which includes three Waikato farms, two rental properties and a commercial property." Note the reported speech, rather than a direct quote.

What is Susan Cullen worth? I don't know. Jon Stokes doesn't know. The Waikato Times did a search of valuation rolls back in February, which is why her property holdings are on record, but how much equity she has in them is unknown.

The Auditor General's report has a different set of figures for Cullen, totaling about $39 million. Most of this comes from running the courses her companies developed. It sounds a lot, but per student it is somewhere between $2000 and $3000. Out of that Cullen had to cover staffing, course materials, postage, communications and so on for a year long course. Compare that to the cost per student of a conventional polytechnic course, and the value of Cullen's innovation becomes clear.

There were two direct payments for courses: $7.022 million in 2001 for Mahi Ora, which was designed to get long term Maori unemployed ready to enter the workforce, and $1.7 million for Lifeworks, a further development of Mahi Ora designed more specifically for Pakeha students.

Again, that is a gross figure. Take out tax and whatever it cost Cullen to develop them and you can work out what it cost. I'm not saying she was left out of pocket, but I am saying there is not enough data to say exactly how much she earned.

So what did Te Wananga o Aotearoa get out of the deal financially? According to Cullen, it bought Mahi Ora for a lower price than she could have got elsewhere (she had a long term and successful business running courses for The Open Polytechic). Gross revenue to the wananga from Mahi Ora has been about $120 million. It the Auditor General had published an analysis of the wananga's accounts over the period, he might have had to mention that.

The $1.7 million paid Cullen's company Awarua to develop Lifeworks was returned tenfold in revenue over its first three years, through fees from licensing it to The Open Polytechnic.

Kiwi Ora, a programme for new migrants, has brought in $7 million in revenue since 2002.

While Cullen's companies grossed $74 million since 2000, the wananga's side of the deal brought it revenues of $174 million.

The profits allowed it to build up in excess of $100 million in property assets, which were required to keep pace with a student population expanding by the size of Waikato University every year. This is at a time when the Crown's contribution to capital development was $40 million (far short of what it should have been, it the recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal's Wananga Capital Establishment Report had been followed to the letter).

The Auditor General seems to posit a world where Cullen, because she was Wetere's daughter, should not have been involved at all in the wananga's activities. The truth is, if developing successful courses was so easy, everyone would be doing it. The programmes and systems developed by Cullen, along with her brothers Kingi and William Wetere, where what allowed the wananga to grow at a phenomenal rate in four years, along the way increasing the participation of Maori in tertiary education by 200 percent.

While we are on the subject of the brothers, the Auditor General got hot and bothered over the wananaga doing business with the procurement company they ran, Oma Investments. While he can point to a "conflict of interest", his data does not show profiteering.

Rather, it shows that in 2004 Oma was paid $8.4 million to buy and distribute resources for the wananga, and a further $416,000 to handle procurement for MO1, the subsidiary handling Mahi Ora. Oma was able to buy supplies at a lower price than the wananga, and rebated $3.2 million back to the wananga.

Then there is the ridiculous noise about Rongo Wetere's brother Ara getting a bunch of gardening and landscaping contracts at the various wananga sites, totaling $1.8 million over three years. The Auditor General was told Ara's company Aranui was chosen because of its availability, speed and quality of work.

"Given the high value of the work undertaken by Aranui (2003) Ltd, we expected evidence of a competitive tender, or evidence that TWAO sought a series of quotes before selecting a provider," the Auditor General huffs. "We do not accept that it was impossible to find other willing contractors for this work."

Get real. These are a whole bunch of landscaping contracts scattered across the Waikato and beyond - putting in some plants, knocking up a fence, tarsealing a carpark. When the police want the lawn at their substation mowed, they ring a guy they know, they don't ask every contractor in town to submit a tender. Given the economic boom in the provinces during the period, especially the strength in dairy incomes and investment, the idea there were tradespeople sitting by the phone waiting for a call from the wananga is real Wellington thinking.

Which is where this comes down to. Rongo Wetere is not guilty of Wellington thinking. That is why he got into trouble. And that is why he was able to build an education institution which succeeded where Wellington-thinking ministries, polytechnics and universities have failed in addressing long term structural problems with the New Zealand workforce.

Declaration of interest

Wananga declaration of interest

2005-12-08T13:11:00.000+13:00

On December 2 I was engaged to provide some media advice to Rongo Wetere regarding the Auditor General's report on Te Wananaga o Aotearoa. This came up as a result of previous postings on this site, and is the first formal or informal contact I have had with Wetere on a non-journalistic basis.

Blogging doesn't pay my bills. I am a freelance journalist, and I earn a living by selling words to media outlets, or other services like media advice to people on the other side of the equation. To avoid conflicts of interest, I don't sell stories about people I am giving media advice to.

This blog is an outlet for my analysis of events, or for stories I think should be told. It does not exist to spin stories for clients - I doubt that would be effective, and it is certainly not worth the risk to my credibility and integrity. If I am wrong about something it is because my analysis is flawed, not because I am paid to be wrong. I have 20 years of reporting Maori issues, and no client is worth putting at risk what that entails.

Having said that, I don't feel I need to stop writing about the wananga just because I have offered Rongo Wetere some advice (which he may or may not have taken - going by the Auditor General's report, if he took my advice, it would be a first). What I can offer is my analysis of the publicly available material and the media coverage of it, and perhaps point out where I feel people are missing the point.

Apart from that, the usual disclaimer: All opinions on this blog are those of the writer, and not those of Rongoe Wetere, Te Wananga o Aotearoa or any other party.

Why race relations are so good in Hawkes Bay

2005-12-04T10:41:00.000+13:00

Newspaper Hawkes Bay Todayhas discovered a nifty way of Maori bashing - deputy editor Paul Taggart attacked state spending, except almost all its examples are spending on Maori.

Sunday Star Times has a piece today on the paper's political bias. APN merged the Hastings and Napier papers to create Hawkes Bay Today, which just goes to show the dangers of the one-newspaper town.

Highlights: Editor Louis Pierard publishing an unsigned editorial on the eve of the election (rather than a week or so out, which would allow some debate) on "Why this government should go" alleging: "It plays God, meddling uninvited in cherished institutions... Its arrogance... Its hypocrisy... The soft bigotry of low expectations... Rules enforcing the acceptability of breastfeeding in public... It parades its vanity... It disarms us, insulting our friends and leaving us a South Pacific parasite... We say we've had enough of the smug, mother-knows-best conviction that a government can dictate the way we must live and the way we must think."

The Monday after the election associate editor Paul Taggart vented over the fact the MMP system meant ousted Labour MPs Russell Fairbrother and Rick Barker would stay in Parliament on the list. "They will be free to care even less about their home cities than before... What a joke. Under the former system, Fairbrother would have been defending criminals in Napier court, and Barker would have returned to calling strikes as a union official."

Wananga course purge called "ethnic cleansing"

2005-12-01T10:54:00.000+13:00

"Ethnic cleansing" was the theme of the first day of the Waitangi Tribunal's wananga hearing in Hamilton. Te Wananga o Aotearoa tumuaki Rongo Wetere said he didn't set up the institution for Maori only, but that is the way Crown managers are pushing it.

Former education minister Trevor Mallard refused to pay over a $20 million suspensory loan agreed to in an earlier treaty settlement, on the pretext that the wananga had too high a percentage of non-Maori students. The resulting cash flow crisis was the excuse Mallard used to institute direct crown control. While the tribunal said it would not consider hear relating to the loan, any findings on student rations can be considered relevant.

According to Stuff Wetere said the down-sizing was costing the wananga tens of millions of dollars.

Former wananga tutor Keith Ikin said the Crown appeared to want the wananga to offer only traditional knowledge courses to Maori with only Maori content. Which is not strictly correct, because it is also trying to scrap the waka courses.

The Herald quoted Wetere saying the government attack was about reducing tertiary numbers and saving money. He said 94 percent of the wananga's 60,000 students did not pay fees - a threat to the user pays education philosophy which has become embedded in the tertiary sector.

He tipped Wira Gardiner, who Mallard appointed to the wananaga council, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers accountant Brian Roche, the Crown manager, as leading the move to shrink the wananga.

That would remove some competition for Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, where Gardiner is deputy chair.

Whips out at Te Rapa for Waitangi trialists

2005-11-29T21:07:00.000+13:00

The Waitangi Tribunal hearing on a claim by Aotearoa Institute into Te Wānanga o Aotearoa starts November 30 at Te Rapa Racecourse.

The tribunal says the inquiry "will concentrate on issues concerning the revised charter, student profile, and future direction of TWOA. Key questions will include the role of the Crown and the claimants in determining the future direction of TWOA; the Treaty responsibilities that the Crown has to the claimants; and the question of what a wananga is."

Back in March then education minister Trevor Mallard told the wananga he wanted the charter rewritten. He had already used used student profile - the fact the wananga was attracting a lot of non-Maori students - as a pretext to hold back $20 million the government had earlier agreed to loan the wananga under the terms of a previous Waitangi Tribunal claim settlement. This precipitated a cash flow crisis, giving Mallard an excuse to insert two hit men: former Te Puni Kokiri head Wira Gardiner, who went on the council's board; and Brian Roche from accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, who went in as Crown observer and then became Crown manager, with complete control over finances.

Since July, when Gardiner got most of the wananga's council to "step aside" as the only way to prevent Mallard from installing a commissioner, the Crown's agents have been running the show, slashing courses and riding roughshod over what the wananga's founders would consider their rangatiratanga.

The tribunal has already discussed rangatiratanga in its Wananga Capital Establishment Report:

Rangatiratanga involves, at the very least, a concept of Maori self-management. … The wananga that have been recognised as tertiary education institutions have all developed out of the efforts of Maori iwi groups to provide tertiary education to, in the first instance, their own people; in the second instance, Maori students; and, in the third instance, anyone who wishes to embrace this particular form of education. As such, the efforts of these tribal groups to create and sustain tertiary education institutions are a vital exercise of rangatiratanga. The establishment of wananga as tertiary education institutions recognised by the State represents an attempt to engage actively with the Crown in the exercise of rangatiratanga in the management of new forms of tribal and Maori education. The Crown's Treaty obligation is to foster, support, and assist these efforts. In doing so, the Crown needs to ensure that wananga are able to remain accountable to, and involved in, the communities that created them.

With those kind of statements behind it, the Government looks on course for a hiding on this claim.

The new tertiary education minister, Michael Cullen, is well aware of the mess Mallard and Gardiner left him.

In a letter to wananga chairman Craig Coxhead earlier this month, Cullen said the current governance by the purged council "may not be lawful".

"While I appreciate that the council took decisions on 19 July 20005 to reduce the council to a group of five with the objective of improving the governance of the organization, I am concerned that that course of action may be of questionable legal validity and, as a result, that the governance of the wananga may be increasingly problematic," Cullen said.

If the wananga does not have a legal governance structure, it may have problems securing funding for 2006. Tertiary institutions must submit a profile of courses and likely student numbers to the Tertiary Education Commission, which doles out the dollars.

Gardiner, Coxhead and Roche have made plans to dramatically slash the size of the wananga, dumping some courses because they are not paying their way, others because Mallard didn't like them, such as the one which trained people in the theory and practice surrounding traditional canoes. Trade training and business courses are also off the menu. While it can be argued other tertiary institutions provide such courses, the wananga's success has come in large part from its ability to attract to education people who other tertiary institutions have been unable to reach.

The Crown management has not solved the wananga's financial crisis, although the government is now providing loans. Cullen said the wananga is expected to lose $12 million this year (up from the $4 million originally projected).

Most of that loss is due to a reduction in EFTS (Equivalent Full Time Students) to about 26,500. The Tertiary Education Commission funded for 28,000 EFTS, so the wananga may have to pay back $10 million.

While some of the shortfall is due to low unemployment (let us not forget the continued strong economy, driven by high prices for dairy products, might have faltered if the wananga had not provided tens of thousands of work-ready people, especially in the provinces), attacks by government and opposition politicians have also tarnished the wananga's brand. Unsubstantiated allegations about low quality courses, and fears courses may be axed or interrupted, may have artificially lowered student numbers.

The longer the Crown continues to control the wananga, the more its problems become the government's rather than the wananga's.

Cullen's solution is to pretend the "resignations" never happened and get Coxhead to reconvene the council with all members whose terms have not expired. That includes Crown appointees Coxhead, Gardiner, Tania Hodges and Bruce Martin, current member Richard Batley, as well as Mana Forbes, Carol Nin and Napi Waaka. There was also a question over whether wananga founder Rongo Wetere was lawfully suspended as Tumuaki, and therefore whether he can sit on council.

Without waiting for elections for staff and student representatives which would bring it up to full strength, Cullen wanted the reconvened to ratify all actions taken by the unlawful rump, and maybe to then to delegate its powers back to a subcommittee.

Rather than try this option (which would probably meet resistance from wananga supporters), Gardiner and co are still trying to sack Wetere.

The parties hoped matters would be clarified by a High Court case taken by the council members who were pushed aside. However, in a messy and confusing judgment, Justice Frater refused to determine two critical issues: whether the current five-member council is valid; and whether the plaintiffs can continue in office after their terms expire.

"I hope that there is still the possibility that, with appropriate advice, the parties might be able to work through these and the other issues of concern to them to reach a common accord," chirped the beak. The judgment has been appealed.

Trust battle smells fishy at Waipareira

2005-11-25T09:11:00.000+13:00

What have they got to hide out west?

John Tamihere wants to be back on the Waipareira Trust, now his career as a member of parliament is over.

He turned up with a big group of supporters to the trust's annual meeting this week and was voted in, along with six other new members.

The trust's chairwoman, Naida Glavish, said before the meeting that Tamihere would not be allowed back, because the trust had changed its rules to exclude as candidates people who have brought the trust into disrepute. It also reduced the number of board members from 15 to 10.

Faced with Tamihere's taua on the night, Glavish couldn't stop the meeting voting down those provisions. Now board treasurer Ricky Houghton says the new rules will stay, and the board has legal advice backing its actions.

It's risky ground for Glavish, Houghton, chief executive Reg Ratahi and their supporters. Tamihere may have damaged Waipareira's reputation when his attempt at remote control while an MP spectacularly blew up in his face, but he also made its reputation as a competent deliverer of social services, economic development and training to the West Auckland Maori community through the 1990s.

He lives in that community and has an interest in the institutions which will affect his family.

Then there is the question of whether Glavish and co have been prudent managers. Waipareira made a loss last year, and Tamihere claims it has been selling off assets to stay afloat.

There is another reason for Tamihere to want to be on Waipareira. While an MP, he and fellow MP Willie Jackson inserted a provision into the Maori Fisheries Settlement Act creating an ongoing role for something called the National Urban Maori Authority.

Since Jackson's mother's Manukau Urban Maori Authority is mostly smoke and mirrors, and the Wellington and Christchurch urban Maori authorities barely struggle along, NUMA would rely on Waipareira to drive it. And realistically, only Tamihere is capable of making anything of what is a pretty tenuous concept to start with.

NUMA has a say in appointing future fisheries commissioners, and in saying what happens with some of the money from the settlement.

So it's not so much count the numbers, but count the NUMA. Don't expect anyone to back down any time soon.

The smell of treason

2005-11-23T16:44:00.000+13:00

You would have thought Winston Peters would have learned from the last time. Hubris it's called. Pride goeth before a fall, and all that. In that case, it was Tuku Morgan, brought into Parliament with Peters, who took the fall, brought down by a pride and vanity (two of the seven deadly sins, lest you forgot).

In that Bolger-Peters government, Peters also pushed for an inflated ministerial portfolio that was beyond his competence, but as treasurer Peters was so far out of his depth he stuck to parroting what Treasury put before him, so remained fairly safe.

This time he wanted to strut on the world stage in his built up shoes. But Helen's little helper (as he is known in Labour circles) isn't up too it. Too many late nights in Courtenay Place have dulled his tap dancing prowess.

Now he tells us it's treasonous to criticize him, because he is foreign minister. No Winston, trying to sell out your country is treason.

If you want lessons in treason, no one better to ask than that woman you elbowed in next to at Apec, like like a drunken thug gatecrashing a christening. Condi Rice (or the devil's handmaiden, as the Black Commentator dubbed her) and the family which owns her lied their way into a war which has already killed more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, not to mention 2000+ Americans and blighted the lives of hundreds of thousands more with injuries from conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Yes Winston, the mushroom cloud your new friend said Saddam would have never existed, but the nuclear fallout from America's arsenal of depleted uranium is being distributed shell by shell, bullet by bullet across the Asian landscape.

You want us to treat every Afghani and Iraqi and Iranian and Muslim as a potential terrorist, Winston? Until your friends started this war, they were valuable trading partners, taking our sheep once we had shorn all the wool off. You will reap what you sow.

This clown will continue to embarrass us, and I suppose we will have to put up with it. Just think, he might have chosen a really dangerous portfolio for himself - minister of revenue, say.

Pic: AP/Bullit Marquez

Harawira's real maiden

2005-11-22T17:27:00.000+13:00

Better than the entry speech. It's on Scoop.

Sharples shifts the paepae

2005-11-22T10:56:00.000+13:00

Pita Sharples is turning into a very interesting political performer. While I rate highly his intellect and experience across a number of fields, it may be too early to judge his political acumen.

But his questioning of the exclusion of women from the speaking order in welcoming ceremonies, especially in state sector powhiri, shows he is capable of throwing up useful solutions which balance respect for culture with modern needs, more so than the petty martinets who make powhiri such a fraught and unproductive occasion so often.

While in an earlier post I called Sharples a cultural conservative, that does not mean he is a reactionary. As someone well versed in cultural forms, he is perhaps best placed to point out the places where there can be change and innovation. After all, he has nothing to prove to anyone any more on a cultural level.

"I believe it is time now for women to assume the talking roles as well as men. The reasons for women not speaking may have gone and need not be enforced," said Sharples.

Maybe he should have come out and supported Mira Szaszy when she made the same call 20 years ago, but his reasons now are interesting. He hears too many speeches by men with poor Maori, who don't know their local history or even the significance of the event taking place. He sees Pakeha speaking on the marae in English, while at the same time "I look at elderly women who might have the mana of age and knowledge and I see them with good reo Maori and a good knowledge of the local history and that they are au fait with the event that is taking place. And I think, well, why aren't they speaking as opposed to Pakeha who don't know anything?"

As for women being made to sit "in the back", Sharples suggested the traditional solution, still in use at Hoani Waititi Marae, could be applied more widely - that the "paepae tapu", where the orators sit, is slightly separate from the bulk of the party. This can allow women and other non-speaking dignatories to sit in prominent positions without compromising tikanga.

John Bevan Ford transcendant

2005-11-20T18:51:00.000+13:00

Artist John Bevan Ford, whose paintings marrying traditional Maori forms with landscapes brought international recognition, died of cancer September 16. He was 75.

I learned this from the Guardian, which features an obit written by Dale Idiens, keeper of the Department of History and Applied Art in the National Museums of Scotland, which has a large Polynesian connection.

I don't recall seeing anything in a New Zealand newspaper, and a search of the NZ Herald site and Stuff fails to turn up a story. The only New Zealand mention on Google comes from Massey News, which acknowledged his role establishing contemporary Maori visual art papers on the Palmerston North campus before his retirement in 1991.

I know the media culture in this country rates coverage of the art world about as low as it rates coverage of te ao Maori, but John was a significant contributor to this country on a number of levels, and their silence reflects badly on them.

John had a distinguished career as an educator, both at Hamilton Teachers College and at Massey, and competed many major public art commissions, including a traditionally carved waka in Taranaki Museum and a meeting house in the Wairarapa.

His explorations of Maori culture and identity within a cross cultural framework has helped many younger Maori artists as they try to fit traditional concepts and practices with modern materials an themes.

Also in the Guardian, Julie Adams captured a quote from John summing up his approach: " "That which transcends culture is the best art of all."

John Bevan Ford has transcended all. Haere, haere, haere.

Another (only fair) maiden

2005-11-18T09:28:00.000+13:00

Update: Harawira maiden speech is at 3pm today. I'll check on delivery!

The first thing to remember is Hone Harawira is no intellectual. He has got where he is so far through bullying, an imposing physical presence and a limited range of treaty rhetoric.

Those who have followed him through numerous Waitangi Day protests will be amused by his maiden speech where he dressed down MPs for poor behaviour and childishness: "The point-scoring, the malicious statements made under protection of parliamentary privilege, the interruptions, the abuse, the chanting, and the sheer immaturity of parliamentary debate … (the Maori Party is) committed to raising the standard of debate within the house, and to trying to eliminate the poor behaviour that parliament has become notorious for."

Harawira also promised Maori Party MPs will use te reo Maori at every opportunity "to open our speeches, to preface our questions, and to make our points in the house."

I am reminded of a conversation with the late Matiu Rata when NZ First's "tight five" got into Parliament and started talking te reo Maori at every opportunity.

You don't go to Parliament to speak in a language none of the rest of them understand, said Rata.

Here's another option Hone. Learn how to speak their language, the language of rules and procedures, clauses and subclauses and schedules and regulations, of laws and lawmaking. That is your job, lawmaking. The recent intakes of Maori MPs have been pretty poor at the mechanics of the job. It's dry, it's boring, but it's extremely necessary.

Maidens, prepare to be savaged

2005-11-17T14:07:00.000+13:00

Maiden speech time in Parliament, where the new MPs say who they are, what drives them, and perhaps what we can expect.

First up was Labour's Shane Jones, opening the Address and Reply debate.

If you were wanting a manifesto, it is not this speech. Jones chose to bury his strengths and his considerable experience in treaty matters below a bluster of feel good rhetoric, forcefully delivered. His Labour colleagues loved it.

He affirmed his Pakeha, Dalmation and tangata whenua roots, and in a slap at National's Don Brash, declared himself "downstream, upstream, full on mainstream!"

He said the Treaty of Waitangi is about relationships. "My own thoughts have changed over the years. The emphatic Treaty activist of the 1980’s became a Mäori economic advocate in the 1990’s. This decade however, we must move on beyond historical angst. The future summons us to a relationship, which transcends both Crown and tribe. To this end it is pleasing to see that all parliamentarians are committed to the resolution of historical grievances. I favour expeditiousness, to clear the path so our aspirations are not twisted by protracted disputes over acre, rood and perch."

Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples brought to his speech the skills of more than three decades of performance.

His rhetoric was also familiar, if extremely well delivered. "It is common knowledge that Maori do not enjoy the same socioeconomic and educational benefits as non-Maori in this, their country of origin. It strikes me as somewhat amazing, that half the country and probably half this house, actually believe that Maori are the privileged group within our society. Cries of racial funding, gravy train, specials courses, are constant within these walls, and eagerly published by every arm of the media to promote a negative stereotype of Maori.
(Snip)
"Does privilege mean we Maori dominate certain illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, asthma, glue ear and others? That we die 10 years earlier than Pakeha? Or is our real privilege to be revealed by this country's disgusting incarceration figures?"
His solution is to accept the future of New Zealand is entwined with the future of Maori.
"For this nation to thrive economically, culturally and with a sense of social justice, Maori must be able to play a full role in all parts of society … While Maori have made great strides within kaupapa Maori initiatives, the reality of equality for Maori is still far off. While more Maori are in jobs, we must look at the quality of those jobs. Many Maori also have been isolated from their iwi base, while many face negative images of themselves daily in the media."
So is that the answer. Go back to the pa and don't read the paper? You'll have to do better than that, Pita.

Graceful gesture caps lifetime achievement

2005-11-14T12:00:00.000+13:00

Filmmaker Don Selwyn received Te Waka Toi's Te Tohutiketike award Saturday for his outstanding contribution to the development of Maori arts.

Te Mahurehure Marae in Point Chevalier was full of people from film, television and other arts who have benefited over the years from Don's expertise, inspiration and generosity.

That generosity and lifelong commitment to the kaupapa were illustrated by an act of supreme grace, when he took the $20,000 cheque he received with the award and handed it over to Brian Jones and Selwyn Muru, the trustees of a new Pei Te Hurinui Jones-Murupaenga Fellowship, which will assist the writing of plays and screenplays in Maori.

Don told of his introduction to theatre when a fellow teacher at South Wellington Intermediate got him to come along to a rehearsal for Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. "I agreed to come along as long as he came to one of my rugby practices," he said.

Peter Bland, who was supposed to play Oberon, king of the fairies, had not turned up, so the redoubtable Nola Miller asked Don to read the part. And despite his clumsy effort, she then insisted he take the role.

In the press release, Te Waka Toi chair Elizabeth Ellis said Selwyn was recognised not only for his direct contribution as an actor, producer and director in stage, television and film, but for his tireless work in training and mentoring young Maori in the industry.

“There are many Maori working in film and television who are there because of Don Selwyn’s relentless devotion to ensuring that we had a voice in those industries. He felt strongly that not only should Màori be represented in front of the cameras but they should also be influential behind the cameras, in the technical areas, and in the director chairs."

Between 1984 to 1990, 120 Maori and Pacific Island people went through Don's film and television training course, He Taonga I Tawhiti (Gifts From Afar).

When work scheme era ended, Don met his own challenge, setting up He Taonga Films with producer Ruth Kaupua Panapa. The company has made dramas and documentaries in Maori and English, with Don’t Go Past With Your Nose in the Air winning best foreign short film at the New York Festival in 1992 and the Barry Barclay-directed film on Moriori, The Feathers of Peace, willing the 2000 New Zealand Media Peace Award.

Even closer to his heart was Maori Merchant of Venice, the first feature film entirely in te reo Maori.

Don said when he grew up in Taumarunui, Pei Te Hurunui Jones told him he translated Shakespeare's plays into Maori "so Maori would realize what a great linguist Shakespeare was."

When we hear people speaking their own language, he said, "we know the pride of themselves is in themselves."

Looking at Don's achievements and his contribution to the Maori language revival is a reminder the language is not the end game, it is merely the vehicle for the expression and creation.

A man of principle

2005-11-10T19:27:00.000+13:00

A major figure in the cultural and political life of Aotearoa New Zealand, Tama Poata, died Wednesday November 9.

Poata wrote the screenplay for Ngati, the Barry Barclay-directed film which, by using a near historical lens (the East Coast in the 1940s) was able to shine a light on the contemporary role of Maori in NZ society in an understated but powerful way.

Poata was raised in Tokomaru Bay but ended up in Wellington in the late 1960s after spells as a labourer on the South Island hydro schemes, driver and other jobs.

An active member of the Wellington Drivers Union and the Communist Party, Poata formed the Maori Organisation on Human Rights to address specifically Maori issues. It was responsible for two significant publications: Saana Murray's Te Karanga a Te Kotuku (1971), a poetic look at the issues which eventualy formed the basis for the Muriwhenua Claim, and a reprint of Aureretanga, the  Groans of the Maoris, GW Rusden's 19th century exposition on the injustices meted out to Ngai Tahu and other tribes.

Human rights was the framework Poata chose to view the world. He protested the Vietnam War, Springbok tours and Maori land grievances, always with his own carefully thought-through perspective. It was Poata who came up with the name Halt All Racist Tours (HART) as the umbrella organization for anti-apartheid protests.

He was one of the leaders of the 1975 Land March, was arrested at Raglan, and was again on the front lines at Bastion Point. By that stage he had his own land, a gorse-covered farm at Makara west of Wellington, which he broke in with the help of running some of the early work schemes.

His film career started when he shifted from beign a set builder on NZ's first television soap, Pukemanu, to getting a small role. His film work includes Wild Horses, Utu, Among the Cinders and Never Say Die.

I first encountered Poata in 1981. Suspicious of the domination of the Wellington Springbok protest movement by the Maoist Workers Communist League (aka Weasels), the punks, anarchists, Trots and similar untameable types chose to park themselves in Brown Squad, led by Poata with able assistance from Te Nia and Barney Pikari. It was an instructive period, not least for Poata's rejection of some of the thinking coming from the Auckland movement, that there should be some dual protest against racism in South Africa and Aotearoa. No, said Poata, the kaupapa is supporting the struggles of those in South Africa, and that should never be forgotten.

His ability to see Maori issues from an internationalist perspective was extremely valuable, and took some time to be picked up by others.

Tame Poata, truly a man of principle. You will be greatly missed.

Crown could crumble against Kingmaker's kin

2005-11-08T10:02:00.000+13:00

Michael Cullen will have a major headache in his new role as tertiary education minister as he tries to clean up the mess made by Trevor Mallard and his minions in their attempts to bully Te Wananga o Aotearoa into submission to Crown authority.

Sending lieutenant colonel Wira Gardiner in to subdue the descendants of Rewi Maniapoto was not a good idea, and Gardiner's usual tactic of upending everything is now coming under fire from the kumara pits.

Gardiner and Mallard's other factotum on the wananga board, Brian Roche, seem set on a course of putting the wananga into receivership. Part of this process seems to be selective leaks about alleged mismanagement by the previous executive ahead of an Audit Office report. (I am not accusing Gardiner of leaking - the practice does not seem to be part of his arsenal - but the divisions created in the organisation do seem to be making it porous.)

Tying the Government's hands is the Waitangi Tribunal hearing November 30 to December 2. The brief the tribunal set itself is very informative as to the minefield the Crown has got itself into.

"The inquiry will concentrate on issues concerning the revised charter, student profile, and future direction of TWOA. Key questions will include the role of the Crown and the claimants in determining the future direction of TWOA; the Treaty responsibilities that the Crown has to the claimants; and the question of what a wananga is."

The Crown tried to argue those matters are the province of the wananga board, which did not join the Aotearoa Institute in lodging the claim. The claimants argued that since Gardiner pressured most of the iwi representatives to step aside, the Crown has three members on the reduced five member board and so calls the shots.

Indeed, wananga supporters now claim Gardiner's board is ultra vires or has no legal standing, because the changes imposed on it were outside the scope of its constitution, which requires a board of between 12 and 20 members.

Those members who stepped aside did so because of Gardiner's message no further funding would come from Government unless they did so. As it was the Government still hasn't paid over the suspensory loan the wananga argued it was owed under the settlement to the earlier Wananaga Claim.

The claimants want the hearing held in Hamilton rather than Wellington. However, most venues in the city are booked, and the tribunal doesn't want to go near one which is available - the wananga-owned Glenview International Hotel and Conference Centre.

Glenview was subject of a Sunday Star Times story, which a report commissioned by Roche show renovation costs on the complex, bought in 2003 for $5.12m, blew out from $2.8m to $11.2m. It blamed management for failing to properly budget and manage the remodeling. The wananga's reasons for the investment were not canvassed.

Meanwhile, in a speech to the Institutes of Technology and Polytechs of NZ Conference November 3, Cullen said the market-ideology reforms of the 1990s led "to the pursuit of ‘cash cow’ opportunities and an atmosphere that encouraged high-growth strategies for their own sake."

He said such high growth strategies "will not cut much ice" in future. "Specifically, no certificate or diploma level qualification can grow by more than 200 EFTS in any twelve-month period unless this has been approved in advance."

Radio New Zealand interpreted that as " a clear swipe at the Maori tertiary provider Te Wananga o Aotearoa". Radio NZ should remember it was not the wananga but Christchurch Polytechnic which claimed funding for thousands of students based on a CD of computing resource material it handed out, and it was Hawkes Bay Polytechnic who counted as students people who sang along to a radio programme (not incidentally a bad idea, but perhaps too generously funded☺)

Cullen claimed the Government wanted innovation and leadership to flourish in the sector, and that tertiary education is absolutely crucial to the task of building workforce productivity.

That is where the attacks on the wananga don't make sense. The wananga's greatest growth happened WHILE the Crown had representatives on its board. Former ministers Mallard and Steve Maharey were happy to see the wananga sucking the oxygen away from the private training establishments, but less comfortable when it came to a turf war with unis and polytechnics.

Rather than assist the wananga with development of pedagogy and ensure it had sufficient capital to manage growth, the ministers stood back until they thought they could move in and execute a coup. Learn from history, guys.

Whatever the wananaga's deficiencies, it has succeeded in getting a large number of older Maori and working class Pakeha engaged with education again, which has had a profound effect on the country's ability to create more than 250,000 jobs. It has taken on the task of salvage education which was ignored as a systemic problem since a previous Labour administration "sacrificed" a generation of NZers to theories of monetarism and economic rationalism.

Green voice silenced

2005-11-07T10:56:00.000+13:00

I must acknowledge the death of Rod Donald, Green Party co-leader and champion of ensuring power remained at a community level, rather than being appropriated by corporations or governments.

I had a little to do with Rod when I was investigating the corrupt entry of a NZ First MP to Parliament, and subsequently made a submission on the reporting practices which allow NZ politicians to disguise the source of their funds - a situation other parties are happy to go along with for fear their cash would dry up if donors were identified.

Rod is more than anyone else associated with the introduction of Mixed Member Proportional voting (apart from the well-funded then-Telecom chairman Peter Shirtcliffe, who fronted the campaign to retain first past the post). I favoured the single transferable vote method, which unfortunately did not make the final ballot, as I was concerned MMP gave too much power to parties. Since Rod's party did not have some of the authoritarian aspects of other parties/political cults, he may have had a different view of the threat.

I last saw Rod just before the election, speaking at a Green meeting in Auckland. He showed a willingness to tackle difficult issues many other MPs either don't understand or shy away from, like the current account deficit and the huge distortion to the economy created by the continuation of the Bolger/Birch accommodation supplement.

His big campaign for this term was going to be buy New Zealand. When someone like Jim Anderton floats that kind of idea, it comes across as old style protectionism. When Rod Donald floated it, is seemed an extension of the principles by which he lived his life - that every action has a consequence, and you must be aware of those consequences. That is why he could promote local initiatives while also reaching out around the world through Trade Aid to create direct channels for communities in developing countries to sell their products at a reasonable return to themselves, without the ticket being clipped by predatory middlemen and corporates.

His contribution to NZ life and politics was huge. We'll miss you, mate.

Green Party bio

Jon Stokes scores C in computing test

2005-11-04T11:41:00.000+13:00

Interesting reporting in the NZ Herald on a failed software project at Te Wananga o Aotearoa, based on a leaked report prepared for acting chief financial officer John Mote.

According to Jon Stokes, Te Wananga o Aotearoa spent more than $2.5 million on developing software that was "out-of-date before it was implemented" and has never been used.

It sounds bad, but the story doesn't actually tell us enough to be of any use, apart to add to the general impression that wananga chief executive Rongo Wetere was not up to scratch.

Calling software "out of date" is not particularly informative. Software is not like that container of yoghurt you forgot about in the back of the fridge. Many organisations happily rumble along on software they installed 5, 10, 20 years ago.

Putting on my IT reporter's hat, here is what I could get out of the story.

The system was being developed by a company called InfoQuest, based in Malaysia.

InfoQuest is run by Ganesin Supayah. (I checked the Companies Office record for InfoQuest NZ, and there is someone of that name with a Malaysian address listed as shareholder. The only reference to that name comes up on Google in a list of gongs given out in the state of Agong.)

The software was supposed to be for human resource management and online learning, ie, two completely different systems.

The online computing content was described as "generally poor" and not meeting NZ Qualifications Authority unit standards. I assume the use "computing" in that sentence is redundant.

"Difficulties in co-ordinating development because of language and time zone barriers were also seen as problematic." Hey, outsourcing sucks.

Almost $1 million was spent developing the Human Resource Management System software

The report said the wananga would have to make a "significant commitment" of resources to bring the human resource software up to a usable standard, a cost that must be balanced against spending about $55,000 to buy a complete HR package from a local vendor.

That is the point where I really got concerned about the competence of the people writing this report. Human resources in a polytechnic context, with lots of tutors on fixed time contracts, is complex. The wananga has multiple campuses around the country, which makes it even more difficult. Such systems are not trivial.

The wananga went from a few hundred students in Te Awamutu to being the largest tertiary education provider in the country in a few short years. I would very much doubt it was able to develop adequate IT systems to cope.

Let us not forget that Auckland University, which is far wealthier than the wananga, has spent more $60 million on a student management and HR system. AUT spends millions every year building and maintaining its own systems.

This is not a defence of the wananga. I'm just saying this story actually tells us a lot less than it purports to.

A worn out welcome

2005-11-03T00:34:00.000+13:00

In what seems to be an endorsement of National's campaign against "political correctness", Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples says he will ask the Maori affairs select committee to inquire into all cultural practices endorsed and adopted across the state sector.

"Questions have been asked by tangata whenua as to whether the use of tikanga across the state sector is for the benefit of the state more than for the benefit of the people. The Maori Party has brought a strong and distinctive Maori voice into Parliament. As part of this, we believe the consideration of how the State uses and applies tikanga is an appropriate issue for us to give priority to."

Sharples is a cultural conservative who would prefer Maori culture to remain in Maori settings such as marae. He is a creative and innovative practitioner within that culture, but his history is of cultural revival rather than creating a new and blended culture.

He has shown a preference for kaupapa Maori education models, setting up alternatives to the mainstream system rather than challenging the mainstream to be more responsive to the needs of Maori students. It is good the option is there, but it is not there for the bulk of Maori families, so cannot be left to stand alone.

Before the Maori Party fuels National's desire for a witch hunt, perhaps it should consider the history of tikanga within the public service, and whether that is the major issue vis a vis Maori.

Before the state sector reforms of the 1980s, the only places you were likely to find a Maori environment in the public service were the Maori Affairs Department, the Environment Ministry's Maruwhenua unit, the Waitangi Tribunal (small as it was in those days), the Maori units of the state-owned broadcasters and a very small unit of the Education Department.

Then came NZ Maori Council vs Attorney General, which articulated for the first time some of the obligations the government had towards Maori. The public sector responded with Maori advisory units being set up all over Wellington, staffed often by middle aged Maori men, ex-teachers or police or military, who were native speakers and had the cultural stuff down pat, even if they were useless at developing policy, advocacy or managing staff.

The result was a lot of form rather than substance.

Part of the problem is that while it was bringing in a lot of middle-level management and Maori graduates, the public service did not have any system of structured career development for Maori staff. The Maori and Pacific Island cadet scheme had been a victim of Stan Roger's reforms, and the core of institutional experience built up at Maori Affairs was dispersed with the axing of that department. There was also an over-reliance on consultants, often of extremely dubious quality, rather than building up internal capacity.

Looking around the public sector, I do not see the numbers of quality Maori in senior management positions I would expect if there had been a real commitment to equity and establishing a public sector which can meet the needs of Aotearoa going into the future.

That is not to say the Maori units have not done some good work, and the sector as a whole is more cognisant to Maori needs than it was in the past, even if many of its assumptions are flawed and its delivery mechanisms clumsy.

Getting back to the question of tikanga. Maybe the full powhiri is not always appropriate, but remember the alternative? People turn up on the job with no welcome, no orientation, no formal process in any culture to make sure they are known, that they meet their fellow workers, that they become quickly productive.

Part of the process we have gone through as a society, including attacks on "separatism", "cultural safety" and "political correctness", is to become aware that institutions and situations are never culturally neutral. Introducing an element of tikanga Maori into the life of an organisation highlights the fact that the alternative is just as much an imposition of a cultural norm which may not always be appropriate.

The state sector can be bilcultural, it can be multicultural when appropriate. What it should not do is return to being monocultural, creating an environment only Pakeha feel works for them.

Winston Peters endorses murder of 500,000 children

2005-10-31T18:48:00.000+13:00

Winston Peters is back to his usual tricks, making a lot of noise about things he knows are of little consequence but play well to his base.

Peters has ordered Foreign Affairs officials to investigate why two New Zealand companies were involved in questionable dealings under the United Nations oil for food programme in Iraq.

Ecroyd Beekeeping Supplies of Christchurch and pump maker J B Sales International were among 2400 companies, half of them from the United States, named in the "independent" inquiry by former US treasury secretary Paul Volcker. Both transactions were under $1 million and neither involved allocations of oil, where the bulk of the kick backs to Iraqi officials occurred. Ecroyd is listed as supplying $US273,000 of honey extractors and pesticide, and JB Sales as providing pumps worth $US393,000. Both transactions were cleared by the NZ government at the time.

National Party foreign affairs spokesman Murray McCully supported the inquiry, saying New Zealand's reputation "would be hanging out there to dry" until the matter was resolved.

Rather than litigate problems two small NZ firms had getting their goods through a difficult border, we should be asking why New Zealand supported the sanctions against Iraq which killed at least half a million Iraqi children - a prolonged of medieval proportions and one of the most barbaric acts of the late 20th century. Challenge on those deaths, former US secretary of state Madeline Albright said "we think the price is worth it," a statement which lays raw the evil and hypocrisy at the heart of the west's policy.

Fact. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Fact. Saddam destroyed the remaining chemicals he had been sold by the US and its surrogates soon after the end of the first gulf war, a fact western governments were well aware of after Saddam's son in law defected, with large amounts of documents, in 1994. The sanctions, which were not imposed by the UN as a whole but by the US-dominated Security Council, stayed on though because their sponsors were not prepared for any outcome but regime change.

The reason many New Zealanders are unhappy with Peters being foreign affairs minister is because they want the independent foreign policy positions Labour governments sometimes deliver. Peters seems to want to suck up to the unelected rogues running the US (or at least those who have so far not been indicted).

On the topic of sucking up to Americans, Peters cried crocodile tears for singer Barry McGuire, denied permanent residence because at 70 and with a pacemaker, he could be a burden on the health system. This is someone with a NZ wife of long standing who has lived here for extended spells, taken part in its musical life and paid taxed on international earnings here.

But before we are too critical of a manifestly stupid decision by Immigrations officials, let us not forget why they are playing hard ball.

Step forward … Winston Peters, whose multi-year campaign against immigration has led to a major tightening of our borders, with significant economic and cultural impact, not to mention damaging our international reputation.

Too many ministers spoil the wrath

2005-10-29T11:31:00.000+13:00

What do you do when you have been dissed, yet again, by your party?

Of course, you put out a press release!

Despite being a former minister of Maori Affairs (albeit under the guise of NZ First and Mauri Pacific), Tau Henare is only associate Maori affairs spokesman in the new National line-up, with a ranking of 24.

It is a task he shares with Georgina te Heuheu, who is 21 on the pecking order and newcomer Chris Finlayson, who ranks above both of them at 18.

All three of course are under "two fisted" Gerry Brownlee, who retains overall responsibility.

And of course there is another de facto Maori affairs spokesman, Wayne Mapp in his guise as "political correctness eradicator", there to make the world safe again for white men in suits.

Interestingly, National's webite menu includes a link to political correctness eradication, but not to Maori affairs, so we must assume four out of these five spokespeople are acting in a policy vacuum - ie, making it up as they go along.

So Raymond, sorry Tau Henare, decides to back Mapp's campaign, while taking a swipe at his former leader at the same time.

Henare challenged foreign affairs minister Winston Peters to "to support Wayne Mapp's call to eradicate the practice of 'dial a kaumatua'", calling in elders to open foreign posts.

"Such performances pervert the integrity of the culture, particularly in view of Mr Goff's recent comments that karakia are performed merely as promotional gimmicks to attract media attention in foreign countries.  While some kaumatua may willingly hop on the 'plastic tiki tour' abroad, Labour's recent hash of the Foreshore and Seabed Bill back home is proof of the double standards inherent in their politically correct agenda," said Henare, throwing haymakers every which way.

Georgina te Heuheu voiced similar concerns, citing former probation officer Josie Bullock's challenge to the Corrections Department's practice of discharging prisoners with a formal poroporoaki, at which women are required to take a back seat.

"I would imagine Maori might already be thinking that they should withdraw those protocols from those environments which are really not necessarily suited to our protocols, and maybe take those protocols back home to where they belong," said te Heuheu.

Te Heuheu makes a better point than Henare, but it will be lost in the unsubtle campaign being run by Mapp, Henare et al. I think as a society we are still learning how to develop protocols and processes which make all feel comfortable and included. We all notice the powhiri which goes on too long, or seems wrong for the occasion. But is there a similar level of outrage about similar manifestations of protocol from other sources - the introductory speech which goes on too long, the inappropriate comment from the mayor, the failure to acknowledge people. What is worse, welcoming people, or making them feel not welcome?

Getting back to Finlayson, who was head boy at St Patricks College when I started there in 1973. His Maori affairs, treaty issues role probably comes from his acting for the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission in his former job as a Bell Gully lawyer. It is worth remembering though that Labour left National's treaty framework intact.

Ngapuhi doubles profit

2005-10-28T14:39:00.000+13:00

Te Runanga o Ngapuhi declared a $2.6 million profit for the year ended June 30, compared with $1.23 million the previous year.

Auditor Steve Bennett said that represented a margin of 22 percent.

I haven't seen the full report - not available on the Ngapuhi.iwi.nz site yet - and the reporting in the Northern Advocate is particularly informative, so it's hard to make meaningful comparisons.

The result does not include the $67 million in assets, including $3.8 million cash, transferred to the runanga this month as Ngapuhi's share of the fisheries settlement.

I understand a lot of the revenue comes from the fisheries joint venture, which paid a dividend of about $1.8 million. There are also some government contracts and the return of investments, which come from fisheries earnings accumulated over the past five years.

The last year under the previous management regime there was a $800,000 deficit, so it is a substantial achievement.

Running costs for the runanga are about $1 million a year, although there could be some extra costs this past year around the need to build up membership numbers and pass the tests required to receive the settlement allocation.

Including the settlement cash, Ngapuhi now has about $7 million in cash or investments.

More once I get the result.

Not mainstream and proud of it

2005-10-27T09:47:00.000+13:00

After discovering it might have to make accommodations with Maori MPs if it is ever to regain the treasury benches, National has revised its Maori-bashing strategy.

Don Brash has given Wayne Mapp the job of "political correctness eradicator", based on a speech the North Shore MP made in June claiming "polical correctness" ran counter to the basic freedoms of society.

"A person, an institution or a government is politically correct when they cease to represent the interests of the majority and become focused on the cares and concerns of minority sector groups," Mapp said then.

Mapp, whose doctorate is in international law, tries to justify finesse his definition of political correctness as being of concern when it is given the power of government through legislation or advocacy,

Examples he gave the NZ Herald were the Waitangi Tribunal, Human Rights Commission and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Mapp, who is married to lawyer Denese Henare, is ranked at 14 in the National ranks, despite his supposed skills and experience.

Deputy PM Michael Cullen said Mapp has a hard task ahead of him: "I think Wayne Mapp would have significant difficulty doing anything. I always thought [that] with Wayne, actually managing to walk into the chamber, one foot in front of the other, was a major achievement in life."

Back to Mapp's definition of political correctness as ceasing to represent the interests of the majority, a common bleat of privileged.

The majority interest is always looked after. White men in suits wrote the rules, and they enforce them, despite numerous examples of failure and incompetence.

Majoritinarianism went out with First Past the Post - Mapp's jihad is yet another example of how the Brash Nats fail to understand MMP.

If political correctness means not behaving as if everyone is white and middle class, bring it on. What is called "politically correct" is often just people acknowledging structural issues of control, and arise out of techniques of political and social analysis which emerged in the 70s and 80s.

What next - will Mapp start attacking analysis of economic discrepancy as "class war". On Morning Report he said there was no need for a ministry of women's affairs. Obviously he hasn't read the data showing a persistent lag between men's and women's wages.

Mapp again raised the bogey of PC being opposed to "mainstream values". Whatever they are.

A party of one

2005-10-26T10:58:00.000+13:00

Over on Public Address, Keith Ng tries to get his finger on what it is about Winston Peters that makes him such a formidable political actor:

"He's in politics for the love, for the status, for the glory - especially the glory of being persecuted. The more he's being attacked, the more he feeds off it and grow stronger. Perhaps one more blast from the media's Why-Do-You-Keep-Lying-to-Us Ray will finish him off? No, he just soaks it up."

Ng noted an observation from political science on an Agenda panel interview with Peters, regarding the statement by NZ First deputy leader Peter Brown that NZ First was an opposition party, not a government party.
Boston: "You cannot have the leader of a party representing the country internationally as the Foreign Minister, claiming at the same time that it is an opposition party. The only way you could realistically maintain that position would be to decouple the leadership of the party from the party, that in effect would mean Mr Peters leaving his party."

I think the resignation of Doug Woolerton as party president was a clear sign the party knows Peters has given up any pretence the party is about anything but Peters. Labour knows that too - this government isn't about doing stuff, it's about getting through to the next one.

Not a new net yet

2005-10-19T18:42:00.000+13:00

For a Cabinet reshuffle which was supposed to be about regeneration, the lack of movement in the Maori portfolios is disappointing.

Labour has to seriously address not only winning back the Maori electorates, but comprehensively winning Maori voters' party votes and ensuring it also wins their electorate votes where they are enrolled in general seats. Given the changing demographics of New Zealand society, it cannot afford to concede to the Maori Party.

Parekura Horomia continues as Minister of Maori Affairs with a range of associate portfolios - education, fisheries, social development and employment, and state services. While piling resources into the East Coast is a good tactic for retaining Ikaroa Rawhiti, it falls short as a Maori policy.

New minister Nanaia Mahuta gets Customs, Youth Affairs and is associate minister for the environment and local government. That is a relatively safe way of ensuring she learns how to do the job without major risk.

In local government, she will be working alongside Mark Burton, who keeps the treaty negotiations portfolio. Burton still hasn't made his mark in this role, but given the pressure from NZ First for a review there could be opportunities.

Despite losing their electorate seats, Dover Samuels and Mita Ririnui keep their jobs, Samuels as associate minister of Maori tourism and under secretary for economic and regional development, Ririnui as under secretary to conservation, corrections and treaty negotiations.

If anyone can point to evidence Ririnui has retained his job based on performance, I would like to see it.

Mahara Okeroa gets a promotion, becoming associate minister for social development, arts, culture and heritage, and conservation.

Mahuta in Labour's Top 20

2005-10-18T09:34:00.000+13:00

Congratulations Nanaia Mahuta, for getting to Cabinet. After nine years of slogging away on the committees it is time to see what she has got.

Lianne Dalziel gets another crack at full ministerial status, having been punished enough for her mess up in immigration. Clayton Cosgrove, David Cunliffe and Damien O'Connor are also among the favoured 20 who will file into the cabinet room on Monday mornings, as is David Parker. As a lawyer (a short supply in Labour's parliamentary ranks these days), Parker probably benefited from Russell Fairbrother's failure to live up to expectations and his unforgivable loss of the Napier seat.

Parekura Horomia was re-elected. Given the lack of inspiration he brought to Maori affairs, it would be good to see him moved over this time and Mahuta put in that slot.

While the associate positions haven't been announced yet, don't expect to see Dover Samuels and Mita Ririnui retain their spots on that list - Clark isn't wanting to give them any reasons to stick around.

Mahara Okeroa may get some associate portfolio, given he upped his work rate over the past year and held his seat comfortably.

Clark would also be foolish not to give newcomer Shane Jones something meaty to get his teeth into, given the talk about the need for rejuvenation and the generally pedestrian look of most of Labour's line-up.

Minister of cocktails and cigarettes

2005-10-18T09:18:00.000+13:00

In a world where John Bolton can become the US ambassador to the United Nations, having Winston Peters as New Zealand's foreign affairs minister makes perfect sense.

It's not that Peters is a xenophobe - he will say anything he thinks will shore up his support among his remaining aging and deluded base of fearful white males and their blue-rinsed wives.

He thinks it will give a statesman-like cast to the end of a noisy but undistinguished political career, but he is the same Winston we know and 6% of us love - an opportunist in built up shoes.

The rounds of diplomatic cocktail parties will fill in his evenings between his days at the racetrack and early mornings in Courtenay Place.

Maybe he should have sought an associate health job - minister of smoking and drinking. After all, Labour did have a minister of wine and cheese.

The racing portfolio will be interesting. Peters isn't cheap to maintain, and he has had a lot of support from that quarter, so expect a quick pay-off. The industry has been lobbying for the $26 million or so in gst on its betting to be ploughed back into larger stakes and more support for clubs.

It does leave the rest of the party sitting on the sideline watching Winston gobble the goodies. Doug Woollerton has woken up the the ride he has been taking on for enabling Peters for so long (to borrow language from the world of therapy) and members with a bit of self respect like Brian Donnelly and Ron Mark are going to find their self-respect challenged in the months to come.

Looking through the Labour-NZ First agreement, Labour has left itself plenty of wriggle room.

It only has to support giving a select committee a crack at Peters' bill on taking references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi out of legislation. Once there, the committee will probably conclude that the principles are now embedded in case law, and the references are merely helpful reminders to make sure agents of the state don't make expensive blunders which will see the Crown battling Maori in court all over again.

NZ First also wants a select committee to consider lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years, either through a members bill or a government bill by the end of the term. Given Ron Mark's own history with under-age crime, the already high rate of imprisonment in New Zealand, the disproportionate number of Maori in the criminal justice system, it won't be good law but it will be a political bone for their reactionary base.

On the Treaty front, NZ first has asked for more resources for negotiations, the use of "expert external negotiators" and more direct negotiations, by-passing the Waitangi Tribunal claim process which it describes as "lengthy and expensive".

It also got Labour to agree to review the appropriateness of the chair of the Waitangi Tribunal also holding an appointment as a Maori Land court judge.

Brief points. Compared with the alternatives, the Waitangi Tribunal system is relatively inexpensive. The costs escalate around Office of Treaty Settlements and the bureaucracy the Crown has developed to fight every claim to the wire.

If OTS was competent, there would be no need for "expert external negotiators" - who in practice would turn out to be another bunch of expensive negotiators. For claims to be settled, there needs to be forceful engagement at the ministerial level at appropriate pints in the process, and a bureaucracy which is able to straddle the cultural divide. That cultural facility has been lacking.

As for splitting the tribunal and the court, Maori land law is an arcane but very necessary administrative system. The court's resources are an important part of settling any claim. However, the tribunal workload is larger than was originally envisaged when the tribunal was set up, and creating a separate tribunal head is not a bad idea.

What making the chief judge of the court also the chair of the Waitangi Tribunal does is establish a status benchmark within the legal system of the tribunal. Any change should not reduce that status. I would suggest requiring the chair of the tribunal rto also be a High Court judge.

Clear as mud

2005-10-17T15:40:00.000+13:00

Patrick Crewdson in the Sunday Herald reckons Helen Clark and Tariana Turua buried the hatchet the day after the election. But he sounds unconvinced, and turns to Matt McCarten for clarification - who dumps on the Labour leader.

"Clark's a self-confessed control freak - she'd feel very miffed that Tariana Turia didn't do what she was told. And then she not only didn't do what she was told, she actually went out, left, survived, and came back with numbers... Clark would find that very hard to stomach," McCarten said.

More light from unnamed Labour sources, who say Turia's behaviour in caucus was septic, with Clark repeatedly having to intervene. "Clark tried to accommodate her every step of the way," one source told Crewdson.

His sources suggest two strategies. Labour could tolerate the Maori Party as an ally and not go hard out to destroy it next election, or sideline it and hope it withers or disintegrates before 2008.

"Strategy" is not the right word for the current state of NZ politics, in any camp. It's all tactics.

The Sunday Herald Sunday Star Times said it conducted a poll which showed voters want Labour to form a coalition with the Greens and NZ First. However, the figures it reported left me scratching my head as to what the poll actually asked or found. What is this supposed to mean?: "Of the parties Labour is negotiating with, voters' preferred coalition partners are the Greens (35 per cent), followed by NZ First (29 per cent), the Progressives (26 per cent) United Future (21 per cent) and the Maori Party (17 per cent)."

Meanwhile, Russell Brown has some good points to make on why the prospect of a National-led government can't be taken seriously yet.

Dr Cullen and the tide of history

2005-10-15T23:46:00.000+13:00

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Michael Cullen used the Michael King Memorial Lecture at Otago University on October 14 to set out his version of the history of the foreshore and seabed controversy.

He said right was on the side of the claimants, but the political cost was too high to let the original Court of Appeal decision stand. "In the intensely heated atmosphere of the time [letting the Ngati Apa case go on to the Maori Land Court] was not a real possibility and those who still argue so are refusing to recognise the depth of pakeha anger and alarm."

Dr Cullen's version of events may help other historians as they try to unravel political management from constitutional theory. "Already the facts have been substantially lost in a welter of ex post facto wisdom and rewriting of both history and the law, not least the legal decision which occasioned the need for a policy response."

To recap. In June 2003 the Court of Appeal granted an appeal by iwi from the top of the South Island which would have allowed them to ask the Maori Land Court to rule on whether they had customary rights to parts of the Marlborough Sounds which the local authority was busily leasing for mussel farms.

Existing case law, dating back to the 90 Mile Beach case in the early 1960s, was that Maori claims to customary rights had been extinguished by the assumption of sovereignty by the Crown, and subsequent legislation asserting Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed.

In this New Zealand was at odds with comparable Commonwealth jurisdictions, which held that governments had to specifically extinguish such rights.

Each claim for customary rights still endured therefore needed to be tested in the courts.

"In arriving at this conclusion I am sure the Court of Appeal was correct and the seemingly settled case law wrong," Cullen said.

Where the problem arose for the Government was the way the Court of Appeal directed the case back to the Maori Land Court.

"If satisfied with those claims, [the Maori Land Court could] declare areas of foreshore and seabed to be customary land under the 1993 Te Ture Whenua Maori Act."

While the Government was confident proving title would be a hard ask in the High Court - "the tests to be applied would be the fairly rigorous and reasonably well established common law tests," is the way Cullen put it - it was not so clear how much leeway the Maori Land Court would have under the 1993 Act.

If such coastal areas were declared Maori customary land, it would be a relatively simple procedure to convert them to freehold ownership.

"For the Government, the situation was an impossible one. Already the Treaty settlement process was causing deep concern amongst many pakeha, despite the fact that it was proceeding in a largely smooth fashion and Maori claimants were usually showing remarkable moderation. Now the nation had all but convinced itself that very large chunks of the foreshore and seabed were about to pass into private ownership. Maori were pleased, by and large. Pakeha were in a state of incipient revolt, by and large," Cullen said.

"The issue was further complicated by the differing views of what ownership meant. For pakeha, it did imply the ability to buy and sell, to exclude and to exploit. It raised deep atavistic feelings about who we are as a people and what pakeha believed (rightly or wrongly) they had escaped from in the old world. It was like some new Norman yoke being imposed (even though it is Maori who in this case actually come closer to filling the historical role of the Anglo-Saxons).

"For Maori, ownership was more about a mutual relationship of belonging between the people and the land. What I found emotionally scarring about all of this was that the Government ended up trying to seek a way of crystallising the actual status quo, as it were, on the ground while many Maori considered that we were engaged in another raupatu or land confiscation.

"The Government could have left things to the Maori Land Court. But, in the intensely heated atmosphere of the time that was not a real possibility and those who still argue so are refusing to recognise the depth of pakeha anger and alarm.

"Moreover, such a process would have been dragged out over many years creating massive uncertainty about the legal status of foreshore and seabed. It certainly created an opportunity, but with no security."

Cullen said the political process was fraught, as the National Party "early on determined that its interests continued to lie in playing the race card and claiming the legislation gave everything to Maori. The Maori Party was formed and claimed it took everything away from Maori."

Cullen seemed to offer a hint the Foreshore and Seabed Act could be changed in future.

"Much will, I think, depend on the outcome of the current discussions and pending Maori Land Court cases," he said.

Those discussions are with the Ngati Porou from the East Coast and the neighbouring Te Whanau a Apanui, "which I believe will be successful. They will demonstrate that there can be real substance to the Crown’s recognition of areas where there are enduring and ongoing Maori interests in the foreshore and seabed while preserving the rights of the population at large (including it needs to be said, Maori who are not tangata whenua in those areas)."

An interesting read. Thanks to Te Karere Ipurangi for catching my old friend John Gibb's original Otago Daily Times story.

1000 words

2005-10-15T22:51:00.000+13:00

Tom Scott from the DomPost (don't know how long the link will work).

You should have seen it coming

2005-10-15T22:10:00.000+13:00

Many people have been surprised at how much effort Tariana Turia has put into seeking an accommodation with National, despite Don Brash's Orewa speech etc.

Co-leader Pita Sharples has been going along with it, claiming on Mana News on Friday that Brash was seeing Maori issues and in particular the foreshore and seabed issue "in a new light now".

They obviously weren't listening hard enough before the election, when Turia and other party leaders repeatedly outlined positions on the socially conservative side of the fence. Don't lump us in with the gays and the prostitutes and the tree-huggers, and don't tell us what's good for us, was the gist. After all, what is "whanau-hapu-iwi" but family values writ large.

"This whole notion we are a party of the left and we have got to be a party of the left. Oh no," Turia told me in July. "We are a party that is on about kaupapa. Politics needs to change. Politics does not have to be about the left or the right. Politics can be about values and principles and integrity and commitment and honesty. It can be all those things and we can have politicians who genuinely believe they are there to represent the interests of the people they serve."

She said there was little or no difference between politicians like Winston Peters, Don Brash and Trevor Mallard.

On coalition with National, she said once the election was over Brash would want to sit down with the party if he was short of the numbers.

The fact is the rupture between Turia and Helen Clark was deep and bitter, and was about more than the foreshore and seabed. It won't be healed overnight.

Clark went out on a limb to bring Turia into Parliament and into a ministerial position, and it blew up in her face. Turia has never courted the wider Pakeha public, and made no compromises in power. The occupation of Pakaitore/ Moutoa Gardens, which made Turia nationally recognised, did not win wide public support in the same way the Bastion point occupation eventually did. As a minister Turia stymied initiatives which did not conform to her idealised views of Maori social structures failed to provide the kind of leadership Clark was looking for from her.

Turia's side: "I lost complete respect for Helen Clark. I held private and confidential discussions with her which were leaked to the media, and I knew there was an attempt to portray me as someone who wasn't well, who was stressed, who was basically unsure of things, mentally diseased. The same as they did to John Tamihere actually. I knew I would have to leave as quickly as possible to maintain my integrity with the people, or they would portray me in quite a different way."

This is the same person who told a Maori asthma conference last week that she overcame stress-induced asthma by leaving Labour (as well as by adopting the Buteyko method of breathing exercises).

Tariana's utu has given Winston Peters with a far stronger hand than he merited, which he seems to be using to block the Greens from any useful role in government and to wring a number of trophy policies which may, like those of his inspiration Rob Muldoon, shore up some of his votes but cost the country dearly in future.

Over on the Tino Rangatiratanga mailing list, tree chopper Mike Smith suggests the Maori Party should keep its powder dry in anticipation of winning more seats in 2008, and "don't let personality politics get in the way of the kaupapa".

Too late Mike. The powder is sodden and personality politics are rampant.

A mighty totara

2005-10-14T10:52:00.000+13:00

Claude Edwards died this month, aged 73. He was a long serving secretary of the Opotiki-based Whakatohea Maori Trust Board and the most public face of the tribe for many years.

Edwards' long-standing friendship with National's treaty negotiations minister Doug Graham meant Graham took a personal interest in getting negotiations off the ground for Whakatohea's claims regarding confiscation of land in the eastern Bay of Plenty.

In October 1996 Edwards and his chief negotiator John Delamere signed a deed of settlement for a $40 million package of land, cash and other management rights. The signing was on short notice because the parties wanted to get Cabinet sign off on the deal before the election. Delamere was also headed to Parliament as a NZ First MP.

A communication breakdown in the tribe meant some members of the negotiating committee were not informed, resulting in a campaign led by Ranginui Walker and his brother Tairongo Amoamo to reject the deal. A mail ballot of beneficiaries, conducted over the heads of the negotiating committee by the Whakatohea Trust Board, found against accepting the settlement.

With divisions between claimants deepening, the settlement offer was withdrawn. In March 1998. Graham spat the dummy and said Whakatohea would have to go to the back of the queue.

Even at the time that seemed an appalling decision. It cemented the notion that settlement offers were made on a "take it or leave it" basis and showed the Crown was not equipped to handle the tensions and disruptions in tribal life its interventions cause.

This year Edwards applied to the Maori Land Court for a determination on Whakatohea's customary rights to its coastline, including "rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga". It is the first application under the Foreshore and Seabed Act, and poses real challenges to that legislation.

A mighty champion has fallen.

Winston wins this hand

2005-10-13T13:08:00.000+13:00

The Maori Party promised us a new sort of politics.

Now we find it's not politics at all, but some kind of therapy as co-leader Tariana Turia works through her antipathy towards Labour.

Turia's courting of Don Brash and United's Peter Dunne, for what reason it is hard to fathom, seems to have pushed Labour to give more to Winston Peters and NZ First than it might have needed to if the Maori Party had stayed in the game.

The Christchurch Press reports that in exchange for guaranteeing confidence and supply, Peters is asking for an increase in the pension and the minimum wage, free doctor's visits for the under-sixes, a review of all Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation and a commitment not to repeal the foreshore and seabed legislation.
The Maori Party wants more Treaty. NZ First wants less. Guess who will be at the table.

More alarming for the Maori Party's strategic ambitions is the Maori option. After each census, Maori voters are given the chance to switch between the Maori and the general electoral rolls. An increase in the Maori roll will lead to more Maori seats for the Maori Party to contest.

The census will be held on March 7. The option will be held later in the year. If the numbers go up, boundaries will need to be redrawn. This all takes time. A stable government which lasts the maximum term is in the Maori Party's best interest - and allowing Winston Peters to have his hand on the switch that can turn this government off is the last thing it should want.

Send in Kenman

2005-10-12T09:01:00.000+13:00

You're a new party, trying to get the most out of your parliamentary numbers. Coalition negotiations are tricky, and the party trying to put together a government has a lot of experience.

So you send in the best negotiator you can find, someone with a reputation for toughness and strength under fire who knows parliament inside out and can maximise whatever small leverage you have.

Fanfare of trumpets. Spotlight falls on … Ken Mair.
Ken Mair? Don't get me wrong, nice guy. Came out of the navy, got jobs as a probation officer, social worker, got involved in protests, some clever, some just plain dumb, moved back to his tribal area in Whanganui just in time to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tariana Turia at Pakaitore.
But is Ken the best the Maori Party has got?

Matt McCarten fell out with some in the Maori Party over its strategy of chasing the party vote (he was right, they were wrong), but could still be available to once again carve out an accommodation with Labour. Laila Harre is another experienced political negotiator who could give the novices in the Maori Party a sense of what to ask for and what to set aside for another day.

But no, cousin Ken is the man. Meanwhile Tariana has regular tete a tete's with Don Brash, despite her party membership's disquiet about that direction.

Tariana's perverse strategy gives more leverage to Winston Peters, who experience shows is not going to do anything to advance any of the causes the Maori Party holds dear.

Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira put out a press release saying the party's that consultation hui "consistently expressed their confidence in us, the four Maori MPs, to deliver the best deal that we could for our people."

That sounds like religion, not politics. "Trust us, we know what we are doing."

Harawira said the party has three policy priorities: the Foreshore and Seabed Act, the constitutional status of the Treaty of Waitangi and preparation for next year's Maori option.

Earlier posts have discussed the foreshore and seabed. Might I also suggest the party's focus on the constitutional status of the Treaty of Waitangi may result in perverse outcomes.

Short version. This debate has been around a long time. Matiu Rata, who spent his political career working on this issue, backed by decades of debate and discussion within Ratana about what needed to be done, eventually succeeded in getting enough of the Treaty into legislation to give it force, in the right circumstances. But he came to the conclusion that it was a bad thing to "ratify" the Treaty or incorporate it fully into legislation. Any number of reasons, but one stands out. There is a political dimension to making the Treaty work in a real, practical way, which would be jeopardised by putting interpretation in the hands of judges.

The Waitangi Tribunal, a standing committee of inquiry including what should be some of the best Maori and Pakeha minds, is the body charged with advising parliament on how the Treaty should be interpreted. That is a system that works.

The relationship between the tribunal, the courts and parliament is evolving, but it is not broke.

Rather than grandstand, Harawira and his fellow Maori Party MPs should reread the words of Justice Cooke and his fellows in the Court of Appeal's 1988 judgment in NZ Maori Council v Attorney General 1988 - in fact it should be required reading for all new MPs and for Winston Peters, who keeps claiming no one knows what Treaty principles are.

(If anyone can find a link to the full judgment, I would appreciate it. Meantime, here is a link to a Waitangi Tribunal paper on Treaty principles.

Election sudoku

2005-10-11T10:55:00.000+13:00

Time to play some E9 sudoku again, mining the election statistics for patterns and clues to the future.
The Maori roll expanded to 208,003 voters this election, but only two thirds of them - 67.07% to be exact - turned out to vote. That is 10 percent better than 2002, when Maori voters didn't feel there was a choice on offer, but it is still below 1996 when NZ First slate of dynamic candidates drew 77% of Maori electors to the polls, or 1984 when more than 80% turned out to throw out Rob Muldoon.
That means the Maori party failed to capitalise on the huge amount of support it seemed to be generating and getting those people to the polls.
Since its next major task is likely to be whipping up Maori interest in the electoral option - which could result in one or two more seats for it to win - that may present a problem.
Certainly, while it will never come out in public and admit it, Labour's interest is for Maori voters to cross over to the general roll. Under MMP, winning Maori electorates isn't as important for Labour as it once was, and with the right candidate it can win them back anyway. What is important is winning the party vote in those seats - which it does. But it doesn't hurt to have a big chunk of Maori and Pacific Island voters around when chasing to general electorate seats, especially in the provincial towns.
We can say conclusively that the Maori Party's hunt for votes in Australia and elsewhere was a waste of plane tickets. For the Maori electorates were only 602 valid overseas votes, including defence force votes, down on the previous election.
They were evenly divided between Labour and the Maori Party 267/266. Pita Sharples, who went doorknocking across the ditch, only got 41 overseas votes to John Tamihere's 63.

Foreshore too far to fore

2005-10-10T00:22:00.000+13:00

The Maori Party has the potential to be an independent voice for Maori within an MMP system, if it can get over the trauma of its birth.
The problem which seems to be emerging is the baggage party co-leader Tariana Turia is taking into coalition talks.
Being told to lie down in the back of the limo may take a while to get over, but get over it she must if the party is to have any chance of making a long term contribution.
According to the Sunday Star Times, Turia is talking with Don Brash about what it would take for the Maori Party to support a National-led government.
That is despite Maori voters showing almost no appetite for National.
Turia says if National axed Labour's Foreshore and Seabed Act, as it has considered doing, Maori Party members may come in behind.
"It's the number one issue why this party started. If a political party was prepared to repeal and we were able to get through some of the other discussions that we're having, they will go with who repeals," Turia said.
At the risk of seeming insensitive, Tariana should stop using the foreshore and seabed issue as the excuse for her disaffection with the Labour Party and her inability to advance her political ambitions inside what is an extremely tough environment.
Sure, Labour did a bad thing constitutionally by refusing to let the top of the South Island case go through the courts. It was stupid. It was inept. It was Margaret Wilson at her worst (which is pretty bad). But let's pretend we are in an alternative universe and think what might have happened.
For starters, there would have been no let up from National whipping up the "beaches will be for Maori only" nonsense. As it is, if the Act was going to have such a heinous effect, why was National able to get away with its Beaches: Iwi/Kiwi billboards? I don't recall Turia challenging the accuracy of that meme.
Meanwhile the issue would have been back before the courts, chewing up more time and legal fees for what could have been an uncertain outcome. The same problems with actually identifying and defining customary rights would have remained.
The fact is, as a nation New Zealand has always been extremely uncomfortable with customary rights. Occasionally they have been codified, such as the right to take muttonbirds from the offshore islands of the south, but in the main anything with a whiff of exclusive license has been resisted. Where practices have persisted, it has either been because white NZ does not see them (ie, attaches no monetary value to the practice) or because of a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" environment.
If the claimants had succeeded in establishing their rights at common law, it would then create the problem of writing those into statute. While not strictly necessary, the fact is in the absence of large amounts of case law, the ministries would be pushing the politicians to come up with legislation or regulation to help them do their jobs.
More importantly, let us go back to where all this started - the carve-up of coastal space for aquaculture by the Marlborough local authority with no regard for the rights and aspirations of tangata whenua.
The crazy thing for Labour, and an indication of their mismanagement of the whole matter, was the fact it did come up with a solution to that problem, by treating aquaculture space as a subset of the wider fisheries settlement. That solution was always on the table, but when it was announced, it said it had nothing to do with foreshore and seabed. Stupid. Inept. Etc.
As it is, the Labour's Foreshore and Seabed Act is unworkable, in part because of Winston Peters insistence there be no legal aid for claimants. It needs to be tweaked to make it workable, but it's no big thing. People either have a relationship with their beaches or they don't.
The more important thing is to ensure the 20% of aquaculture space going for iwi is usable. That means making sure there are robust processes to ensure iwi don't get the marginal bits, and could involve some changes to the Resource Management Act, Marine Act, Local Government Act etc to ensure the "settlement" isn't negated by red tape.
That means the Maori party knuckling down and doing some real politics, rather than this fantasy stuff of snuggling up to a party whose current Maori policy is "shut up and be assimilated".

Sore loser

2005-10-06T23:25:00.000+13:00

So Winston Peters is taking Bob Clarkson to court for handing him a right thrashing in Tauranga. Remember his old line, "I'm happy being the MP for Tauranga," which he used to say whenever he was asked if he wanted Jim Bolger's job?

Peters claims Clarkson over-spent his $20,000 campaign limit by at least $30,000, mainly because the Bay of Plenty Times covered Clarkson's construction company as part of a series of advertising features on the region's building sector firm.
Setting aside the small point that all NZ First's campaign spending went towards promoting the Peters brand, this brings back echoes of an incident after the 1996 election, when won all five Maori seats.

The Sunday Star Times and Holmes reported that NZ First Te Tai Tonga MP, Tutekawa Wyllie, had over-spent to secure his spot, including chapter and verse of where the overspending occurred.

Rather than standing up for clean elections, Peters lashed out at the reporter - me - and took the blanace of power Wyllie's seat gave him to put National back into power.

Wyllie's campaign spending return came in under the limit, but there were obvious gaps. Printing for mail-outs but no envelopes and insufficient postage. A check of his suppliers turned up expenses he hadn't reported, taking him over the limit. So filing a false return, as well as the over-spending.

Considering the former Maori All Black was playing in an MPs vs police rugby game within weeks of getting elected, it came as little surprise the electoral office and the police didn't want to touch the case. The police investigated for an hour in the last week before the six month limit for bringing charges, after which it was automatically deemed no crime.

Peters of course won Hunua for National in 1979 by challenging Labour's win in court. Peters used legalistic attacks to strike out hundreds of votes which went to Malcolm Douglas, Roger's brother. As a result of that the law was changed to allow votes to be accepted as long as the voter's intention was clear. Peters was getting votes thrown out if they had a cross rather than a tick, if I remember rightly.

Bad mainstream reporting on Maori, example 743

2005-10-04T18:54:00.002+13:00

The National Business Review online reported today that "Ngapuhi leader" David Rankin reckons Ngapuhi Runanga is heading for a financial crisis over what to do with the $66 million in fisheries settlement assets it received last month.

"We have known for thirteen years that this settlement was coming, and in all that time, the Ngapuhi Runanga failed to develop a plan for managing and allocating the money. Now, they have received $66 million and they are scratching their heads, wondering what to do with it," Rankin said.

No comment from runanga chairman Sonny Tau. No context. So the story is, "Maori confirms NBR prejudices, Maori can't handle money."

Normal reporting practice is to give readers some context as to how much authority or credulity someone has. This rule doesn't seem to apply to stories about Maori. MBR tries to fudge it by saying Rankin "heads a group of (unnamed) Ngapuhi kaumatua and academics", as if it meant something.

Te Runanga o Ngapuhi is a democratic organisation. If Rankin can't win the confidence of enough of his fellow tribespeople to be elected, what makes his criticisms so compelling?

Rankin describes himself as a direct descendent of Hone Heke - a considerable feat, as Heke had no issue. The Rankins do come from the same descent lines as Heke, so no argument there. His grandfather was Hone Heke Rankin, a leading figure in Northland Maori life from the 1930s until his death in 1964. Hone Heke Rankin's mother, Matire Ngapua, was the daughter of Niurangi Puriri and Hone Ngapua, a nephew of Hone Heke Pokai, treaty signatory and flagpole feller.

Because of the Hone Heke connection, Rankin and his father have tried to claim ascendancy in the north since the death of Sir James Henare. Ngapuhi tend to be even more suspicious to claims of arikitanga than most Maori, and while they respect a distinguished whakapapa, they aren't about to bow down before it.

Rankin is able to make contributions to Ngapuhi on a cultural level, even if he cannot secure a mandate for political and economic activity. His Hone Heke Foundation oversaw the creation of an exhibition on Hone Heke at the Museum of NZ Te Papa this year, and it is attempting to create a museum in Kaikohe to display artifacts relating to Hone Heke.

In 2003 he got into a stoush with the Auckland War Memorial Museum over its refusal to supply Heke-related material to an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra re-examining the role of Heke, Ned Kelly, Geronimo and other “rebels”. He tried to take two taiaha out of the museum, but failed to win support of other descendents. Rankin eventually loaned Canberra some items form his own family's collection.

The fact organisations like Ngapuhi Runanga are getting large infusions of assets is a significant business story, which the business press should find ways to cover sensibly. That may require a bit of work to work out the metrics which make sense: profits, return on assets, amount and nature of returns to beneficiaries.

Merely providing platforms for disaffected tribal members to vent their individual spleen is not the way to go about it.
More illuminating is a piece from the Northern Advocate of September 22.

Runanga chairman Sonny Tau outlined some likely places revenue from the settlement will be spent:
- hapu economic development
- education scholarships
-preservation of tribal knowledge
- funding for resource management oversight (an unfunded or unfunded obligation on tribal groups under the Resource Management Act and other acts)
- Other business investments to build up iwi assets

Mismanagement of its fisheries portfolio was the major reason the previous runanga leadership was voted out. As the Advocate pointed, when Tau was elected chairman in 2000 Ngapuhi fishing company was $860,000 in debt after a decade of secretive deals and unwise investments.

"We got rid of the company boat and today, without the settlement money, that asset is worth $15 million and we have had $4 million in the bank from its operation," Mr Tau said.

This year Ngapuhi fished deepwater quota leased from the commission in a 50-50 joint venture with Northland Deep Water, and on-leased inshore quota to Ngapuhi fishermen at cost.

National looks out for its loyal soldier

2005-10-04T10:16:00.000+13:00

The first political hit of the new season is in. National's Maori Affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee is demanding new Labour list MP Shane Jones quits as chairman of Te Ohu Kaimoana, the successor to the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission.
Apart from the obvious - that National rates Jones a threat - what is going on here?
Jones says Te Ohu is now an administrative body, shorn of the political contention and workload of the allocation debate.
"Te Ohu is a completely private body, and I am staying at the encouragement of the current directors," says Jones.
Last week Jones stepped down as chairman of Sealord, the fishing company half-owned by Maori through the fisheries settlement, to avoid potential commercial conflicts of interest. He was replaced by another former commissioner, Business Roundtable chairman Rob McLeod. Former Fonterra chief executive Craig Norgate also joined the Sealord board.
One Te Ohu director who is not encouraging Jones to stay is former National Party Maori vice president Wira Gardiner, who was put on the commission by Parekura Horomia in what seems to be some misguided eruption of tribal loyalty.
Labour's willingness to put Gardiner in sensitive positions is irrational. Party president Mike Williams told me it is because Gardiner is "competent". This is confusing activity for outcomes. The former lieutenant-colonel's style is aggressive reorganisation, which never get to problems of substance and have negligible positive outcomes for Maori.
The fact National's first major attack is on behalf of Lieutenant-Colonel Gardiner should wake Labour up to what the problem they have create for themselves by putting political foes into politically sensitive positions.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10348537

Talking your way out of influence

2005-10-03T09:14:00.000+13:00

The Direct Democracy Party got just 717 votes, 0.04% of the total, in the election. That's how much regard the voters of New Zealand have for the notion that once you elect representatives, you stick around to do their job for them.
So why is the Maori Party going out for a series of regional hui before its next step into the world of parliamentary politics?
Sure, they promised to before the election, but it was a dumb idea then and it's an even dumber idea now.
The Maori electorate made it clear the sort of government it wanted, giving 85 percent of its party vote to either Labour, the Maori Party or the Greens. Centre left coalition with respect for the treaty and Maori aspirations please!
With the exception of Tamaki Makaurau, the Maori electorates are geographically huge. This sort of direct democracy exercise will be hugely taxing on the party's resources, human and financial.
And what about the people who can't get to these workday meetings? Do their views not count?
Part of the task of being a party and being an MP is developing formal and informal methods of consultation.
The conference and remit system favoured by the major parties is currently at a low ebb, but it still can serve as a warning to errant policymakers.
The informal method is probably more important in our system, and the evidence is once politicians stop listening to those channels, their support quickly ebbs. The charges of "arrogance" against Labour during the first half of this year and the confused messaging of its campaign were an indication its back channels to voters were in poor repair.
Rather than immerse itself in hui, the Maori Party core should be taking its new age list of governing principles and turning them into a policy agenda for the next 100 days, one year, three years. What is likely to emerge on the political landscape? What select committees do they want to be on? How closely do they want to attempt to work with Labour?
If, as seems reasonably likely, there is a Labour-Jim Anderton-Greens minority Government, a Maori Party commitment on confidence and supply would sideline NZ First and United Future. Taliban Tariana may not be ready for that step just yet, but the party as a whole may need to weigh up whether encouraging a continuing climate of uncertainty is in its best interest.
While the party is huiing, the Greens are consolidating their position and the other minor parties are staking a claim for influence. The Maori Party does not want to consign itself to irrelevance this early in the game.

Final election tallies

2005-10-01T16:42:00.000+12:00

Final election results are in, and the Maori Party improved its party vote percentage from1.98% on election night to 2.12 percent. The effect of this was to reduce its overhang from two seats to one, so the new Parliament will have 121 members.
Its improvement was at the expense of the Green Party, whose share of the vote went up from 5.07% to 5.3% - not enough to get Nandor Tanczos back in the House.
Labour's total went up 0.36% to 41.1%, leaving it with 50 MPs, while National slipped back 0.53% to 39.1% and lost an MP, giving it 48.
National can't form a government, but Labour can, if somewhat untidily.
With Jim Anderton in coalition, Labour has 51 seats and can rely on the 6 Greens for confidence and supply. While the Greens want to be in Cabinet, that could result in United's 3 MPs and NZ First's 7 voting with National and Act - which means Labour would need the Maori Party's 4 votes on every issue.
A more likely scenario is NZ First abstaining - Winston Peters can go on holiday again, like he did in the last Parliament, until election season rolls around again.
Where does this leave the Maori Party? Learning the ropes. Labour doesn't intend any major reform this time around, but may have to look hard at its Maori and treaty policies to ensure nothing will bite it. The Maori Party needs to identify some policy objectives and try to get them through, so it can go back to its voters next time and show the notiuon of an independent Maori voice in Parliament counts for something.

Donna Awatere-Huata refuses to bow before court

2005-10-01T16:36:00.000+12:00

In the Auckland District Court September 30, Judge Roderick Joyce jailed former ACT MP Donna Awatere-Huata and husband Wi Huata for defrauding the Pipi Foundation, the organization she set up to promote her five minute reading programme.
Donna was sentenced for 21 months for the frauds and 1 year for obstruction of justice, ie, creating a paper trail to cover up the frauds., a total of 2 years 9 months. Wi was jailed for a year for each crime, so is within the two year limit for home detention to apply.
Listening in the court to the judge's convoluted 90-minute explanation for his tariff, I was struck by a feeling he had written his judgment some time ago and the pleas in mitigation would have no effect.
Former Labour MP Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan said she felt "great aroha because Donna will be standing to be judged like her father before her." , Colonel Pita Awatere, former commander for the 28 Maori Batallion and later a Maori Affairs welfare officer, was jailed for murder in 1968. She spoke on the pressures of being part of a family which is expected to lead, something which requires a lifetime of largely voluntary service.
Te Wananga o Raukawa founder Professor Whatarangi Winiata offered the court some principles which could have allowed for a more creative sentence, pointing to the seal behind the judge with included both Maori and Pakeha. Joyce acknowledged the contribution, but was not going to act on it.
Joyce also noted a written submission from Neville Baker referred to the importance to the Maori community of Pita Awatere, and the way Donna sacrificed her chances of an opera career when he was jailed for murder, giving up a scholarship in London to look after the family.
Joyce noted Awatere-Huata had always led with her chin, but later in his summary criticised her for not showing remorse - a kind of ritual humiliation demanded by judges. If Joyce were to assess the ranks of politicians with his judicial eye, he might find remorse in short supply - saying sorry doesn't get you elected. It also seems somewhat sadistic to demand someone displays weakness before consigning them to an environment where showing weakness may carry enormous risks.
In court to show personal support for Donna were new Maori Party MPs Pita Sharples and Hone Harawira, who have shared many battles with her. The proceedings will be a warning to them of the dangers that MPs can face.
Also on hand were Sir Graham Latimer, Titewhai Harawira, Donna Hall, and a large contingent from the Huata whanau and Ngati Kahungunu.

2005-09-28T23:38:00.000+12:00

This is a continuation of Nga korero o te wa, digest of Maori news and views, which I produced from 1994 to 2003.
I will try to post various news bits and analysis as they come to hand.
I'll start by recapping some of what I discussed on Maori television tonight.
I've been looking at the results of the New Zealand parliamentary elections, particularly as they pertain to the seven Maori seats.
Some points to note.
The new Maori Party won four of the seven Maori electorate seats, but only took enough party list votes to cover two of them. That means there will be an overhang, with 122 seats in Parliament instead of 120.
The party's decision to chase the list votes, rather than a pure play for the electorates, caused some internal criticism. Former Alliance president Matt McCarten, who was providing some political advice, counselled against it. The result of the election showed two reasons it was wrong:
- It diluted the message the party was trying to send Maori voters. Rather than offering them the seductive two for one choice - vote for the Maori Party candidate for the seat, get the Labour Maori MP back via the list vote - voters were torn.
- The party lost the opportunity to build up some goodwill. The prospect of it forming a coalition with a Don Brash-led National Party government was so remote as to be almost unthinkable, so some working relationship with Labour is inevitable if the party is to make any headway with its programme (whatever that may be). By taking 1.6 percent of the party vote (which is essentially wasted), the party lost the opportunity to build up some goodwill. Labout counts that 1.6 percent as a loss against its total.
It also ate into the Green vote. In 2002 the Greens won 10.7 percent of the party vote in the Maori seats, which translates into a boost of a couple of percentage points overall. In 2005 they scored 3 percent, less than the 5 percent they scored overall, so the Maori vote will actually drag them down slightly.
The Maori Party could have justified endorsing the Greens for the list vote fair reward for their stand against the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Or it could have let voters choose. Either way, it would have been a smarter use of the MMP system.
As it was, Labour's share of the list vote in the Maori seats went up on the night from 53.7% to 55%, compared with 41% overall.
The Maori Party got 27.1%, which accounted for most of its 16% overall.
Only 4.3% of Maori gave their list vote to National, about the same as last election and well shore of that party's 40% overall total.
Winston Peters' sustained efforts to distance himself from his Maori support base finally got through, with the Maori electorates giving him the same 6% support as the general electorates, well short of the almost 15% he got in 2002. The honeymoon is well and truly over.
The counting of the special votes on Saturday is unlikely to change matters greatly in the Maori seats. Of interest will be the overseas votes. The Maori Party made special trips to Australia to encourage expatriates to vote for it. Since there were only 370 overseas votes across the seats last election, it will be interesting to see if the airfare was justified.
Coming up. Should defeated MPs hang around on the list, and why the Foreshore and Seabed isn't that big a deal.