THE PATTERN OF CORRUPTION

If kauri could talk about possums and phytophthora they’d remind us that invading colonists have always been bad news for invaded natives. 

For trees, that is a bald fact with no ethical, moral or legal karma attached.  But unlike plants, colonising humans cannot simply remove the rights, responsibilities and resources of native peoples, and replace them with their own, without creating some seriously bad history. 

Regardless of generations of intermarriage, notwithstanding integration, in spite of the force of numbers, and irrespective of settlement attempts, why is it that human colonisation continues to attract loathing and resistance around the globe?

The answer to that can be found close to home in the remorseless pattern the Crown follows to strip hapu of every right, responsibility and resource possible. 

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the Crown stole more than 70% of the resources held by hapu and marginalised many of them to near extinction.  Throughout that period the Crown never stopped robbing them of as much of the remaining 30% of their resources as it could.

In the 20^th century, growing anger against Crown depredations lead to the 1975 Land March and other direct actions.  In response the Crown created a toothless Tribunal with no powers other than to make non-binding recommendations to it on how it might remedy its many breaches of its own Treaty. 

Then it carried on its robbing until its proposed asset sales in the 1980s lead to successful legal action against it.  In response the Crown created the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown Forestry Rental Trust.  It also gave one tooth to the Waitangi Tribunal, i.e. the power to make binding recommendations for the return of lands under former Crown forests and State-owned Enterprises and for the payment of compensation for Crown forest lands. 

By the beginning of the 21^st century the Crown had ignored every non-binding recommendation ever made by the Waitangi Tribunal and had threatened it with abolition if it ever used its power of binding recommendations to the fullest.  It had also corralled hapu into iwi, and has since mustered most of them into settling on its terms. 

The pattern is one of corruption.  The Crown commits an offence, denies it until it becomes undeniable, defends it until it becomes indefensible, bribes and threatens those it can to turn a blind eye, and changes the law to punish those who won’t.

In the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill the Crown is using that pattern to give control of Ngati Kahu hapu resources at Rangianiwaniwa, Hukatere, Te Make, Kaimaumau, Kaitaia and Takahue solely to others who are willing to settle on its terms.  

However, like the kauri, those resources haven't actually disappeared, and the hapu with mana whenua remain deep-rooted on their lands.  

In the long-term it will be interesting to see when and how they apply tikanga to their situation.  But in the short-term it will be even more interesting to see who does or doesn't turn a blind eye to the historical and current Crown pattern of corruption.