Supporting Māori sovereignty is politically unsafe
In a year dominated by the approaching general election, Māori watched the government, like the Māori Members of Parliament, steer away from any public debate on Māori issues. In recent years, Māori MPs had come under sustained attack from the conservative opposition and the mainstream media whenever they had attempted to articulate Māori aspirations for greater control over their lives. Calls from non-Māori lending support to those aspirations generally received little or no media coverage. So when Pākehā groups at Waitangi on Waitangi Day in February 2002, including the Green Party, publicly stated their support for Māori sovereignty, it went unreported in mainstream media. Several days later it was partially reported when the Greens’ leader signaled a softening of the stance on Māori sovereignty because ‘many people find the term very frightening’.1
Local councils, not Māori, left to decide if Māori representation allowed
Yet even Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry for Māori Development, as part of the local government reforms, was advocating restructuring local government to ensure that Māori had greater control over their own affairs. The Local Government Act 2002 provided for separate Māori seats for the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, and enabled other councils to follow suit if they wished to. But even if councils were prepared to break from the electoral system that favours the election of middle-class, middle-aged Pākehā males to office2 in order to have Māori representation in local government, that could be contested by a local poll.3 In 1986 the Royal Commission on the Electoral System had noted that the First Past the Post electoral system, since abandoned for parliamentary representation but still used in local government, was unfair, inequitable and unrepresentative of the general populace.4 One of its many recommendations for fairness and equity was that democratic participation should afford due respect to, and recognition and inclusion of, the indigenous population, that is, Māori.5 Yet the 2002 Act barely acknowledges that, and, once again, it is left to overwhelmingly Pākehā councils and voting populations to decide whether Māori should represent themselves. This electoral system continues to deny effective Māori representation,6 even in areas where the majority of the population is Māori.7
Māori views on Māori sovereignty … in the New Zealand Herald!
In the final weeks before the July 2002 election, as right-wing parties were attacking the Treaty of Waitangi and promoting a cut-off date for all Māori claims against the Crown, the largest mainstream newspaper ran a story on Māori views of Māori sovereignty.8 It had to admit that a significant number of Māori it interviewed wanted Māori sovereignty recognised, yet the article concentrated on reporting Māori giving reasons for why it should not be recognised.
Mainstream media Māori bashing
Mainstream media coverage of Māori issues continued to be a matter of concern on several occasions in 2001–02. Claims that the media were Māori bashing surfaced on several occasions. One prominent example was a television documentary on the so-called ‘Treaty industry’.9 The large number of people who work to bring Māori Treaty of Waitangi claims before the Waitangi Tribunal, or to settle them in negotiation with the government of the day, are referred to by right-wing politicians as making up the ‘Treaty industry’.10 The impression given is that these people receive large payments for doing this work. While that is correct for many of the (usually Pākehā) professionals contracted to assist Māori claimants, the Māori whose claims they are almost always work voluntarily or with minimal remuneration. Yet it is Māori that right-wing politicians and the television documentary were targeting.
The programme interviewed a disgruntled historian11 and two disaffected former employees of the Crown Forestry Rental Trust.12 The Trust is a body that administers many millions of dollars of rental monies paid on Crown-owned forests, and allocates some of its income towards assisting Māori to prepare, present and negotiate claims against the Crown to those forests.13 Most of this money goes to historians, lawyers, accountants and other professional advisors. The Trust had been under investigation by the Māori Affairs select committee.14 The television programme was apparently designed to air concerns about the slow pace and possible corruption in the Treaty claims process but instead sensationalised an alleged ‘Māori mafia’, none of whom were named, running the Trust to its advantage.15 It then attempted to blame Māori for the parlous state of the settlements.
So why is the Treaty claims settlement process so chronically slow?
Of the 908 claims registered with the Waitangi Tribunal over the past twenty-six years, fewer than 20 have resulted in any land being returned to the claimants or compensation being paid out. Furthermore, not a single claimant group has received all the land and compensation they are entitled to.16 In 2001–02 the Labour-led coalition government partially settled just one claim: that of Ngāti Tama, in the Taranaki region, where the Tribunal reported Māori had suffered a holocaust in its 1996 report.17 Ngāti Tama lost more than 104,000 acres. The settlement returned just 4,620 acres and $14.5 million.18 The three other settlements achieved under the Labour-led government had been similarly mean-spirited.
Yet the ‘Treaty industry’ television programme made no mention of the real reasons for the chronically slow and inadequate Treaty claims settlement process. The main reason was that every government that had been in power over the past decade had refused to take any Māori advice on the need to radically reformulate its unfair, unjust and racist settlement policy.19 Then there was the ongoing underfunding of the Waitangi Tribunal.20 There was also the pivotal role of the ‘experts’ in the industry, the lawyers, historians and government bureaucrats many of whom seem to actively prolong the process. Most of these people are Pākehā21 who ‘can charge apparently exorbitant fees’.22 However, instead of commenting on these issues, the programme raised ‘already disproved allegations about impropriety by some Māori lawyers’.23 Despite its lack of funding, the Waitangi Tribunal intervened to try to speed up its hearings and reporting process, fast-tracking the Gisborne district hearings through in seven months in contrast to others which have taken more than four years.24
Kidnapping of Baby Kahurautete Durie
The media coverage of the kidnapping of the eight-month-old daughter of a lawyer and a High Court judge, both of whom are Māori, caused further consternation. The fact that the child had been adopted from within the couple’s extended family according to widely practiced Māori custom was frowned on by mainstream media as being ‘not regarded as formal adoption in New Zealand law’.25 Several newspapers tried to imply that it was Māori who were somehow to blame for the kidnapping, despite Māori protestations to the contrary.26 Yet when the baby was found and the kidnapper arrested and sent to jail for eleven years, there was very little discussion of the fact that he was Pākehā and that his sole motivation for the kidnapping was money.27
World Trade Center bombing – Māori perspectives
Māori views of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September were also ignored until the initial furore started to die down. While they were appalled at the incident, they were not surprised.28 Māori elders from around the country, many of them ex-servicemen, were interviewed by Māori radio stations shortly after the bombing. All expressed views that the United States could not expect to keep attacking and making war on other nations and not expect some form of retaliation. It was several days before similar views started to surface in the mainstream media, and the Green Party went on record as opposing New Zealand troops being sent to Afghanistan.29
New Zealand Herald turns its sights on Māori Television
In the 2000–01 reporting period, the country’s largest newspaper ran a campaign against Tainui. Then in 2001–02 it was the turn of Māori television with the New Zealand Herald listing no fewer that eighty articles over that year on its website (the same number listed for Tainui the previous year). Criticism of Māori television had been going on for more than six years as mainstream media, backed by government officials, ignored Court of Appeal rulings and battled to keep Māori out of the industry. When the chairman of the channel’s board attacked the media for Māori bashing in April, they retaliated by closely scrutinising all the workings of the channel. When they discovered that the Chief Executive Officer, who was Canadian, had falsified his qualifications, the number of articles per day attacking Māori television peaked. The day after the board sacked the CEO, ten articles, including an editorial, ran in the New Zealand Herald. They were rather stunned, however, when the CEO was denied bail and subsequently jailed for six months,30 a punishment that legal experts saw as fitting the crime. Then the Herald was silenced completely by the appointment in May of an interim CEO who was one of the very few Māori millionaires and a very experienced businessman. He refused to speak to any mainstream media and in interviews with Māori media said he was not interested in anything that the mainstream media had to say.
Tariana Turia not afraid to take on mainstream media
The one Māori MP prepared to take on the mainstream media, Tariana Turia, did so in March, referring to the media as ‘hysterical, hostile and ill-informed’ over her reference to a Māori holocaust in 2000. She predicted that the media would attack her during campaigning for the 2002 general elections.31 Her prediction appeared to have been enough to stop them doing so. Turia travelled around the country attending many Māori gatherings, including those organised in different tribal regions for ministers of the Crown to meet Māori in their own territories. Although the media attended such events, they were not interested in what Māori were saying at them. Requests of the Prime Minister at these hui to be more outspoken in support of Māori drew the response that when she said such things to the media they never reported them. In the main she considered that the media was only looking for incidents that would allow them to report Māori negatively.32
Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Wēniti: The Māori Merchant of Venice, a stunning performance
Yet there were also the occasional bright patches. In February, the film of the Māori language version of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice played to rapturous audiences throughout the country. Despite the historic and cultural importance of the piece, in particular because of the endangered state of the Māori language, it received minimal media coverage. Yet a four-star rating and an excellent review from a Pākehā film critic appeared in the New Zealand Herald.33 Later in 2002 it won the coveted Audience Award at the Louis Vuitton Hawaii Film Festival.34 Massey University later conferred an honorary doctorate on the producer, Don Selwyn, for his many years of stage, television and film work and his training and mentoring of young talent.35
And then in April, an iwi radio station topped the ratings to become Auckland’s most preferred radio station.36 Ngāti Whātua’s MAI FM caters for Māori and Pacific Island youth and features rap music, rhythm and blues, jazz, hip hop, and more recently, New Zealand-produced music. While its popularity had displaced mainstream radio stations in the popularity polls, it followed naturally from the fact that in the twenty-five years and under population in Auckland, 20 percent are Pacific Islanders and 16 percent are Māori. That, and the fact that a survey of MAI FM listeners indicated that they did not watch television because it did not reflect them. Likewise mainstream advertising.
Prime Minister apologises to Chinese and to Samoans – but not to Māori
Although the Prime Minister claimed to be supportive of Māori, her apologies to non-Māori sectors of the New Zealand society drew some bitter responses from Māori. In February she apologised to the Chinese community for the government forcing them to pay a poll tax of £10 to enter the country from 1881, increasing it to £100 in 1896, and not repealing it until 1944.37 Then in June she apologised to the Samoan community for the New Zealand government’s role in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic in Samoa and the gunning down of Mau movement supporters calling for self-government by peaceful means in Apia in 1929. Samoa was under New Zealand rule during these incidents. In 1918 the New Zealand administration in Apia took no action to quarantine a ship that had previously docked in Auckland while the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was raging there. Instead, it allowed passengers with the flu to disembark in Apia, thus introducing the epidemic into Samoa. Up to 8500 or 22 percent of Samoans died as a result.38 Then, on Black Saturday, 29 December 1929, after many years of unrest as a result of the oppression and persecution of Samoans by the New Zealand administration, unarmed supporters of the Mau movement were fired on by the New Zealand police with rifles and a machine gun. Eight people were killed.39
Although both these apologies were long overdue, an apology to Māori is far longer overdue. While some individual iwi had received formal apologies on the condition that they have been prepared to settle and effectively extinguish all their historical Treaty of Waitangi claims, Māori had yet to receive any overall, unconditional apology for their ongoing ill-treatment at the hands of successive colonial governments and the numerous breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi perpetrated against them.
And there’s heaps to apologise for
Māori commentators noted that while the Prime Minister was apologising to others, Māori on the East Coast were protesting to stop their lands being sold to American developers;40 Māori elders in Northland were being arrested for attempting to defend their wāhi tapu;41 the police in Whāngārei were being repeatedly criticised by the courts for their treatment of Māori youth;42 the Chief Justice sent a Waitara policeman to the High Court to defend a charge of murdering Steven Wallace;43 Raglan police were criticised by a District Court judge for chasing two Māori onto a marae and scuffling with them inside the sacred meeting house;44 and a conviction for not giving a name and address to a policeman was overturned by the High Court when it ruled that it is not an offence to answer a policeman in Māori, one of the two official languages of New Zealand.45
The government had long been aware that Māori receive unfair treatment. Apart from the many damning reports of the Waitangi Tribunal and its own Closing the Gaps reports highlighting the huge and growing disparities between Māori and non-Māori achievement, its report on the tertiary education sector had resulted in tertiary institutions being warned that unless the recruitment, retention and completion rates for Māori improved markedly, they would be stripped of some of their government funding. Yet the local government reforms did almost nothing to address the lack of roading, water supply, electricity, housing and basic living standards for many rural Māori communities. Apologies and remedies for all of these and many other indignities still suffered by Māori are long overdue.
Attacks on Māori make MPs of Māori descent reluctant to publicly support their own
It is doubtful that the answer to Māori difficulties lies within the existing parliamentary system. In June the Prime Minister announced that the country would go to a general election four months early, at the end of July. The main election issues for Māori were Treaty settlements, education and housing. Genetic modification was also an issue, with Māori largely opposed to it. The apparent lack of performance of many MPs who claim Māori descent was another issue. One commentator noted that of the sixteen Māori members in the last Parliament, less than half of them could be relied on to advocate for Māori46 and only one, Tariana Turia, was prepared to fight publicly in support of Māori issues. The poor performance was not unexpected given the severe attacks from both the media and conservative opposition parties on any outspoken Māori MPs and the fact that party loyalties had effectively prevented Māori MPs acting as a single bloc.
July general election sees a record twenty MPs of Māori descent in Parliament
Yet the July 2002 elections saw a record number of twenty MPs who claimed Māori descent in a Parliament of 120 members, eleven representing their own electorates and the rest as list members for their parties. But none of these were independents. All seven Māori electorate seats remained with Labour, with the Labour Māori caucus at a record ten members in the full Labour caucus of fifty-two. Yet despite the strong Māori numbers, the Māori caucus indicated shortly after the elections that it was requesting just three Ministerial appointments inside cabinet and three outside cabinet in what would become a Labour-led minority government.
Of the remaining parties, the traditional mainstream conservative party, National, returned only twenty-seven members, with their vote dissipated amongst right-wing minor parties. Only two of their members were Māori. Of the three other right-wing parties represented in the house, New Zealand First gained thirteen seats, while ACT and United Future each gained nine. The New Zealand First Party was led by a Māori, the charismatic Winston Peters, and despite a general impression that he was Māori bashing, six of his thirteen members were Māori. ACT had one Māori member while United Future had none. The left-leaning Green Party gained only eight seats, one of which went to a Māori. The Progressive Coalition had two members, neither of whom were Māori. Labour entered negotiations with both the Greens and United Future about the composition of the next government.
1 Audrey Young, 2002(a), ‘Greens move to defend Maori sovereignty stand’, New Zealand Herald, 9 February 2002, p. A7.
2 Sullivan, ‘Māori Representation in Local Government’, p. 137.
3 MLR, April 2002, p. 7.
4 Sullivan, ‘Māori Representation in Local Government’, p. 135.
5 Sullivan, ‘Māori Representation in Local Government’, p. 137.
6 Sullivan, ‘Māori Representation in Local Government’, p. 144.
7 Te Puni Kōkiri, 2006, Te Kotahitanga o te Whakahaere Rawa: Māori and Council Engagement Under the Resource Management Act 1991, Wellington, Te Puni Kōkiri, p. 20. 55 percent of the Wairoa District Council’s population is Māori, but this is not reflected in the council’s elected membership.
8 Simon Collins, 2002, ‘One Man’s Poll: Maori in the New Millenium’, New Zealand Herald, 9 July, 2002, p. A9.
9 Television New Zealand, Assignment, 2 May 2002.
10 Audrey Young, 2002(b), ‘NZ First Will Campaign on Treaty, Race Issues’, New Zealand Herald, 19 April 2002, p. A6; NZPA, 2002(c), ‘ACT Wants End of Year Deadline for Lodging Treaty Claims’, nzherald.co.nz, 3 July 2002.
11 Michael Bassett, 2002, ‘Halt the Treaty Gravy Train’, Dominion, 6 February 2002, p. 12.
12 Moana Jackson, 2002, ‘The English text’, Mana, June–July 2002, p. 51.
13 See the website of the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, http://www.cfrt.org.nz/about/
14 Māori Affairs Select Committee, 2002, ‘Inquiry into the Crown Forestry Rental Trust’, press release, 19 September 2002, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0209/S00337.htm
15 Fran O’Sullivan, 2002, ‘Forest Action Begins – Touch Wood’, New Zealand Herald, 6 May 2002, p. D2.
16 Mutu, ‘Recovering Fagin’s Ill-gotten Gains’, p. 203.
17 Waitangi Tribunal, Taranaki Report, p. 312.
18 Mutu, ‘Recovering Fagin’s Ill-gotten Gains’, p. 203.
19 See chapter 2 on the fiscal envelope.
20 Hamer, ‘A Quarter-century of the Waitangi Tribunal’, p. 10; MLR, November 2000, p. 10.
21 Jackson, ‘The English text’; Tapu Misa, 2002(b), ‘Parliamentary Colour in Quantity, but Quality in Doubt’, New Zealand Herald, 31 July 2002, p. A13.
22 Jackson, ‘The English text’.
23 Jackson, ‘The English text’.
24 Hamer, ‘A Quarter-century of the Waitangi Tribunal’, pp. 12–14.
25 Greg Wycherley, 2002, and Richard Knight, ‘Whangai Adoption a Grey Area’, New Zealand Herald, 17 April 2002, p. A3.
26 Angela Gregory, 2002, ‘Treaty Experts Sceptical Over Kahu Kidnap Link’, New Zealand Herald, 17 April 2002, p. A3.
27 Paula Oliver, 2002, ‘Details of Kahu Kidnap Revealed’, New Zealand Herald, 25 May 2002, p. A2.
28 Moana Jackson, 2001, ‘Terror and Democracy’, Mana no. 42, October–November 2001, p. 50.
29 Scott MacLeod and Reuters, 2001, ‘Global Chorus for Peace’, New Zealand Herald, 1 October 2001, p. A4.
30 2002, ‘He Pitopito Korero: John Davy’, Mana no. 46, June–July 2002, p. 12.
31 John Armstrong, 2002, ‘PM’s Tip to Turia: “Bite your lip”’, New Zealand Herald, 11 March 2002, p. A7.
32 Helen Clark, personal communication.
33 Peter Calder, 2002, ‘Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weneti’, New Zealand Herald, 16 February 2002, p. E6.
34 2002, ‘Chatterbox: Picking up Good Vibes, and Bryan’, nzherald.co.nz, 16 November 2002.
35 ‘He Pitopito Korero: Don Selwyn’, p. 12.
36 Louisa Cleave, 2002, ‘Mai FM Steals Newstalk ZB’s Mantle as No.1’, New Zealand Herald, 18 April 2002, p. A1.
37 Margaret Mutu, 2009(a), ‘Media and Literature: Depictions of Māori and Chinese’, in Manying Ip (ed.), The Dragon and the Taniwha: Māori and Chinese in New Zealand, Auckland, Auckland University Press, p. 247.
38 Tapu Misa, 2002(a), ‘The Spoiling of Samoa’, New Zealand Herald, 1 June 2002, p. B5; Michael Field, 1991, Mau: Samoa’s Struggle for Freedom, Auckland, Polynesian Press.
39 Misa, ‘The Spoiling of Samoa’; Field, Mau.
40 2002, ‘Protestors Occupy Young Nick’s Head’, nzherald.co.nz, 15 July 2002.
41 Bridget Carter, 2002, ‘Jail Activists Vow to Battle On’, New Zealand Herald, 5 June 2002,p. A2.
42 Daniel Jackson, 2001(a), ‘Lawyers to Watch Whangarei Police’, New Zealand Herald, 18 October 2001, p. A5; Daniel Jackson, 2001(b), ‘Top Officer Will Investigate Whangarei police’, New Zealand Herald, 19 October 2001, p. A5; Daniel Jackson and Scott MacLeod, 2001, ‘Judge Says Women Forced to Confess’, New Zealand Herald, 27 October 2001, p. A3; Tony Wall, 2001(a), ‘Strong Arm of the Law Put in the Dock’, New Zealand Herald, 3 November 2001, p. A1; Tony Wall, 2001(b), ‘Police defy judge’s rebuke’, New Zealand Herald, 4 November 2001, p. A1.
43 2002, ‘Chief Justice Sends Steven Wallace Case Back to Court’, nzherald.co.nz, 14 June 2002.
44 NZPA, 2002(a), ‘Judge Rebukes Police Over Marae Fracas’, New Zealand Herald, 12 February 2002, p. A7.
45 MLR, March 2002, p. 7.
46 Misa, ‘Parliamentary Colour in Quantity, but Quality in Doubt’.