Loss of easy privileges

Thank you for an excellent editorial (“Ōrewa, Waitangi and the lessons we can learn”, February 4). Yes, 20 years ago we had Don Brash’s “one rule for all” and ACT’s recent election billboards trumpeted a demand to end “race-based” politics.

These slogans are designed to appeal to a largely ageing white demographic who angst over the loss of the easy privileges they have never noticed but always taken for granted.

Last week’s correspondent J White typically talks of a “tidal wave” of Māori privilege. This after generations of Māori lived under governance by and for the interests of European settlement. Māori know more about the downside of race-based politics than he and the ACT support base will ever know.

At last we are attempting to put the past to rights. It won’t be easy - two steps forward and one back. We must believe that goodwill and honesty will win through.

Geoff Prickett, Waikanae

Readers of the opinion piece on the Treaty by Sir Āpirana Ngata, published and mass-produced by the self-styled New Zealand Centre for Political Research, and distributed with newspapers as an "advertisement", need to be aware that this is not a disinterested outfit. It is a vehicle for the views of members of the hard-right, neoliberal ACT party.

Ngata was a fine man, and did what he could for Māori in his time. Even so, his pessimistic view of Māori rights expressed in this opinion piece, back in 1922, is not definitive.

John C. Ross, Palmerston North

I get the distinct impression that a lot of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Treaty of Waitangi comes from folk of a certain age.

I am a Boomer with Gen X rising, I'm quite happy with the changes in our attitude to the Treaty and the assimilation taking place by Pākehā into the ever-evolving culture of Aotearoa.

I’m not threatened by the thought of Māori (or anyone) gaining equality, I understand that I lose nothing.

I look to my grandchildren and the openness and diversity that they are growing up in, and feel hope.

Despite what ACT, Hobson’s Pledge et al say, I believe most Kiwis are keen for everyone to have a fair go.

Jerry Lynch, Mosgiel