Treaty truly a living document
On such a milestone for the Treaty of Waitangi, it’s time to liberate the historic document, writes Dr Carwyn Jones.
THIS YEAR I’m not going to rage against injustice. I’m not going to be defensive and argumentative. Nor am I going to unthinkingly celebrate or indifferently just have a day off work.
And I’m not going to be a preachy know-it-all – I promise. Not this year.
This is a year of significant anniversaries for the Treaty of Waitangi; 175 years since the Treaty was signed, 40 years since the passing of the Treaty of Waitangi Act and the Waitangi Tribunal was set up, and 20 years since the Office of Treaty Settlements was established.
It’s probably not surprising then that in recent decades a lot of discussion about the Treaty has revolved around claims and settlement – that work is vitally important.
And there is still much to be said and done there.
But in this year of landmark anniversaries, I think we should do something special: let’s liberate the Treaty of Waitangi.
Because the Treaty isn’t simply about fixing up historical wrongs. Let’s free it from that context.
Don’t get me wrong – confronting the past, acknowledging the damage the governments have done to Maori communities over the last 175 years and committing to do something about it is absolutely essential.
But to confine the Treaty to acting as a benchmark against which to measure past action deprives us of the full potential that the Treaty offers.
The claims and settlement process is important for resetting those relationships between Maori and government and providing a platform for healthier, more mature relationships based on mutual respect and recognition of each other’s traditions, institutions, and ways of doing things.
But the claims and settlement process by itself cannot fulfil the Treaty partnership.
Redressing past wrongs is a necessary step, but not by itself sufficient.
If no other action is taken, completing the settlement of historical claims would be about as productive as mopping up a puddle caused by a leaking tap but not doing anything to fix the leak.
Ultimately, the Treaty is important because of the relationship it creates.
Many people will be familiar with the debates about the interpretation of the Treaty, complicated by the existence of an English version and a Maori version, but the essential agreement meant that the Crown was empowered to exercise some form of governmental authority, while the authority of the Maori who signed was confirmed through the guarantee of tino rangatiratanga.
So, the Treaty envisions a relationship whereby public power is to be shared.
That, in a nutshell, is the concept of the Treaty partnership.
Part of the difficulty in freeing the Treaty from the claims process is that successive governments keep breaching Treaty principles.
To place the Treaty in a more positive and less reactive environment – to fix that leaking tap – we need to give serious consideration to constitutional change that puts the Treaty partnership at the heart of our system of government.
This does not mean giving Maori a veto over government decisions, or creating special political rights or separate institutions. In fact, the essence of partnership is about finding ways of working together for mutual benefit, not just agreeing to keep out of each other’s way.
But what it does require is a recognition that our institutions of government, those bodies that make and apply the law, ought to reflect Maori values alongside the values, largely from the British constitutional tradition, to which they currently give effect.
Now constitutional change of that nature is not easy, which is why we should count our blessings that we have the Treaty of Waitangi. We don’t need to start from scratch.
We already have a document that sets out the basic structure of the partnership.
So, this year, let’s think about how the Treaty can be a positive force in New Zealand public life in the future.
Let’s not consign it to a past of historical injustice but instead free the Treaty to create the space for mutual respect and recognition in all that we do as a nation and make sure we have a future founded on partnership and justice.
IF I SEE another photograph of an All Black in underpants I’ll scream, and not in a flattering fan-girl way, with ecstatic tears and arms flailing.
I’m fed up with the body image mania that grips this country, turning even the All Blacks into paper dolls for little girls to put cut-out frocks on, as in the latest Jockey ad where a bunch of them pose in underpants looking blokey and, thanks to a majority lack of body hair, weirdly like overgrown children.
Dan Carter, first into the underwear territory, has always been waxed bald in his ads, and I guess these other ABs, too, would mostly be satin smooth even where a thatch of fur is kinder, up against potentially scratchy fabric and lumpy seams.
Enough of this madness: God gave us body hair to remind us that we’re first cousins of the gorilla, so we needn’t get up ourselves.
There’s no point in the advertisers saying they wanted the guys to pose au naturel.
Who knows what’s naturel any more?
The lineup is plucked clean as a frozen chook, apart from a couple of beards, a possible chest pelt and some heavy, can’t-be-arsedshaving stubble, perhaps designed to put off girls from flinging themselves at them like vampire bats.
‘‘The photographer said to look staunch,’’ says Liam Messam. Actually, coloured powder was thrown over the men at the shoot, after which they threw coloured powder over each other. Tee-hee.
A less phony, hence more dangerous brand image emanates from author Eleanor Catton, vocal about a bunch of issues since she won the Man Booker prize.
Compare this with Keri Hulme, who went straight back to whitebaiting on the West Coast after she won the Booker and so became a Kiwi icon, and Janet Frame, desperately shy and mentally fragile.
The tortured female artist is more the ticket here.
Spending her early life in Canada must have meant Catton grew up believing she has a right to speak her mind with confidence, quite the opposite to our national style.
Some kind of PR guru should have been engaged to explain that the correct mode at all times for successful women is quiet meekness, accompanied – at the most – with mumbled apologies. (It’s different for male writers, who can turkey-strut about as if it’s only natural.)
Catton’s not been wrong about much so far, and I endorse her criticism of the National Library for dropping its school curriculum topic support service, to be replaced by ‘‘curated digital resources’’.
That the library has so little confidence in books is disturbing; it issued a million orders to schools under the scheme last year after all. It will save an estimated $392,000 a year, it says – a sum that just one ultra-rich person might pay in tax each year, if they had to pay tax the way ordinary people do.
To return to body image, I don’t believe that we’re poised to become the fattest nation on earth.
I’ve been to America, where chubby reigns supreme, the land of a whole pie each for dessert and super-sized everything, where round people abound, often in Bermuda shorts and skimpy tops to stress their blunt points of difference.
One surgeon is arguing the case for more stomach stapling operations, and criticising the Government for not funding enough of them.
We’re invited to believe, the argument goes, that it’s the Government’s fault that some people are resolutely obese when just a quick trick with scalpel and clamp could solve the problem. But that’s a bit like a vacuum cleaner salesman knocking at the door of a domestic dust pit. The cleaner isn’t going to be the solution. It takes determination to chew through the calories needed to fuel a morbidly obese person for just one day.
If an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer doesn’t put them off, what can anyone else do about it?
Perhaps fatties would rather die of gluttony while relatively young than live long enough to get dementia, and, frankly, I’d see their point.
To confine the Treaty to acting as a benchmark against which to measure past action deprives us of the full potential that the Treaty offers.
Dr Carwyn Jones (Ngati Kahungunu and Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki) is a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington’s Faculty of Law.