Tēnā koutou katoa. Apologies for the limitations of my voice. It is the consequence of surgery on my larynx. My written submission focuses on two elements of the Treaty Principles Bill which are insufficiently covered in its public discussion. The first is that the bill is bad history. Our understanding of Te Tiriti has evolved,…
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Chapters in Books Not in Narrow Seas (VUP: Ch.8) In Open Seas (Kea Point: Ch.12) Making Aotearoa New Zealand (Forthcoming: Ch.7) Articles ‘Was There A Treaty of Waitangi?: Was it A Social Contract?’ (Archifacts: April 1997, P.21-49) ‘What the Hell Happened At Waitangi?’ (Newsroom 9 May, 2023) Treaty Claims The Maori Broadcasting Claim: A Pakeha…
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Recommendations 1. That Parliament should not proceed with the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. 2. That Parliament endorse the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi as set out by the Court of Appeal in New Zealand Māori Council v Attorney-General (1987) (C.A. 54/87), while acknowledging that the understandings of Te Tiriti o Waitangi…
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I prepared an earlier version of this note in May 2024 for myself, when the ‘principles of the treaty’ (i.e. Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was a political hotpoint. The most public was ACT’s proposal to have a referendum on the treaty principles.[1] The paper concludes that the treaty principles (with one exception which is explained…
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Notes for a Friend Te Tiriti gave ‘kawanatanga’ (governance) to the Crown but ‘rangatiratanga’ to Iwi (I’ll come to a complication). ‘Sovereignty’ confuses the discussion because it could be either kawanatanga or rangatiratanga – the sovereignty of the state vs the sovereignty of the individual. The governance vision in 1840 was a minimalist state. The…
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Some analysis by a social statistician. A note for myself. On 20 November 2024 around 42,000 people crowded in and around Parliament Grounds nominally protesting against the Treaty Principles Bill after a Hīkoi which came from the North Cape and the Far South. What exactly was going on was more than just a protest against…
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Property rights – which enable decisions over tangible and intangible assets – are critical to an economy as Why Nations Fail pointed out. Not just private property rights for, as we shall see, they are more complicated than that. Neoliberals argue that private property rights lead to the maximum economic prosperity; they used that to justify privatisation….
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Hardly anyone says what are ‘the principles of the treaty’. The courts’ interpretation restrain the New Zealand Government. While they about protecting a particular community, those restraints apply equally to all community in a liberal democracy – including a single person. Treaty principles were introduced into the governance of New Zealand by the Treaty of Waitangi Act…
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Mainstreaming need not be inherently anti-Māori. It will be if it is done badly because it will be anti-those-in need, and proportionally more of them are Māori. That the Coalition Government says it will deliver public services on the basis of need rather than, say, race deserves consideration, even though many will jump unthinkingly to…
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This was written to clarify m y think, and has been shared around. May 2024 version) The background to this note is that by early 2024 the ‘principles of the treaty’ (i.e. Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was a political hotpoint. The most public was ACT’s proposal to have a referendum on the treaty principles.[1] The…
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Interpreting the agreement made at Waitangi as a social contract is a way to move forward on treaty issues. (This column follows ‘Our Understandings Of Te Tiriti Has Evolved Organically’.) Te Tiriti is in the form of a social contract of the sort that political theorists have discussed since the seventeenth century to explain how…
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Why try to stop that evolution? In 1956, historian Ruth Ross presented her investigations of the treaty signed at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 to a seminar concluding, ‘The [Māori and Pakeha] signatories of 1840 were uncertain and divided in their understanding of [Te Tiriti’s] meaning; who can say now what its intentions were? ……
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Note written for circulation, December 2023 Ethnicity is not a well-defined notion for the majority of the population, but when asked for ‘official’ purposes (usually with a choice of tick boxes) most can ethnically identify themselves. (Typically, they may check as many ethnicities as they wish.) In the Population Census data used here there is…
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Commentary: Aotearoa New Zealand Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023) Abstract This paper aims to promote discussion on the complex issue of Tāone Hapū (Māori Gangs), recognising the substantial literature which already exists but adding two further directions which tend to be downplayed: – while it is accepted that the urban Māori…
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Review in ‘Newsroom’ 9 May, 2023 In 1972, The New Zealand Journal of History published the article “Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Texts and Translations” by Ruth Ross (1920-1982). Its impact continues 50 years later, and is likely to remain significant in another 50 years. It’s one of the most influential pieces of work by a…
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There are times when tikanga needs to be broken for tikanga to survive. I recently gave a presentation on Māori economic history based on my Not in Narrow Seas. Its most important message was that Māori proved to be a very adaptable people continually evolving as new opportunities arose. The European tradition recalls the Duke…
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Presentation to a Statistics New Zealand Seminar, 23 February, 2021. Māori involvement in the economy has been an integral part of New Zealand’s story, even if we ignore the first 500 years when there was only a Māori economy. Unlike many of our histories, Not in Narrow Seas does not. There are about 40,000 words…
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A Conversation with My Country by Alan Duff
Speech for launch at Parliament of Heke Tangata, Māori in Markets and Cities on Tuesday 15 May 2018. The event is sponsored by Te Whānau o Waipareira, the National Urban Māori Authority and Oratia Media at the invitation of the Hon. Willie Jackson, Associate Minister for Māori Development. Kia Ora Koutou Katoa. I begin by…
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Dale Husband | May 15, 2018 This was published in e-tangata. Brian Easton is a 75-year-old economist, statistician, academic, historian, columnist, and author. For much of his career, he’s made a specialty of explaining to New Zealanders what’s going right and what’s going wrong in our economy. In his latest book, Heke Tangata, which was commissioned…
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