AN UNSETTLED HISTORY

In his last speech as a Member of Parliament, Sir Douglas Graham, the driving force behind Treaty of Waitangi settlement policy during the 1990s, had this short, bitter exchange with then opposition MP Tariana Turia.

Rt Hon. Sir DOUGLAS GRAHAM: If that member thinks we are going to deal with hapū settlements, she can forget it. There are thousands of them, and if she thinks the Crown is dividing people now, which we are certainly not trying to do—

Tariana Turia: It's a treaty right.

Rt Hon. Sir DOUGLAS GRAHAM: The member keeps talking about treaty rights. If the member does not want any settlements, and I know she does not, then, say we want to deal hapū by hapū, in a thousand years' time she will still be working it out and will still be arguing about the hapū rohe boundary. It is bad enough dealing at the iwi level, but that is another issue.

The nub of what Doug Graham and Tariana Turia were debating was the ‘fiscal cap’ policy that he and his officials had designed to extinguish the unsettled historical claims of Māori for remedies to the prejudice and harm caused them by Crown breaches of the treaty. 

When that policy was unilaterally imposed by government on Māori in late 1994, it set a $1billion cap on the amount of money the government would make available for settlement.  It also set a time limit of ten years in which to settle all claims within the fiscal cap.  And it stipulated that claims would be settled with ‘large natural groupings’ of Māori, rather than with the actual whānau, hapū or iwi who had sustained the prejudice and harm.

That policy, which has only been slightly modified by successive governments, is based either on untested or untrue assumptions.  The first is that Crown-sponsored crimes against Māori ought not be dealt with legally, but should instead be dealt with politically. 

The second assumption is that if Māori with well-founded claims seek legal reparation, the country will go broke.  Therefore, Māori claims must be dealt with as cheaply as possible. 

The final assumption is that Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Māori language document debated and signed by more than 500 Māori, is the same in content and intent as the fraudulent English language Treaty of Waitangi.  Therefore, Māori claims must be extinguished rather than settled. 

In New Zealand the only others whose claims of prejudice and harm get unilaterally extinguished politically and cheaply are the imprisoned, the insane and the institutionalised.  In New Zealand there is no constitutional protection for the human rights of Māori and these ‘others’ to equality before the law and freedom from such discrimination. 

In New Zealand there is no constitutional fetter on the power of government. In New Zealand, government don’t just try to divide the people, they actually succeed at it.  Until those facts are constitutionally addressed, New Zealand will continue to have an unsettled history.