Although we think there is room for debate as
to the correctness of the
landmark Court of Appeal decision in 2003 which sparked this Bill, we
consider that the decision was well enough grounded for the Maori people
to
feel a justified sense of grievance that the Bill is a majoritarian
and
racist attempt to rob them of their property. New Zealand is professedly
a
democracy, and Parliament is of course sovereign, but the naked use
of
legislation to overturn a court decision must always look like an attack
on
the Rule of Law, which is bound to be destabilising -- especially when
the
issue is a minority's rights.
Let me emphasise that we have long been in favour the National Party's
current position of opposition to racial privileges for Maoris -- in
fact,
we held this position long before the National Party did. Routinely
including race as a research variable will routinely thrown up apparently
race-based variation which might well have appeared as a diet-based,
drug-use based, or family-structure-based (etc.) variation, if those
variables were routinely included, instead of race. (see: afaction.html
). However, one
aspect of Equality is surely that one group's property rights should
not be
selectively legislated into oblivion.
We would also like to take this opportunity to decry the bullying
that some
Maoris -- like many Feminists -- use towards people who have been known
to
say things that they dislike. I myself, for example, have occasionally
been
subjected to not-so-subtle suggestions from Maoris that I might meet
with an
automobile accident. Presumably, this is because I say things such as
that
Maori loan-words in English should not be pronounced in a "proper"
Maori
way, unless Maoris themselves return the complement by pronouncing English
loan-words in Maori in a "proper" English way. One senior
Maori teacher at
The Correspondence School only just restrained himself from punching
me,
when I expressed this point of view to him. Maori women (including Law
students) are also, in my experience, amongs the most physically aggressive
of
Feminists. Because Maoris leave school relatively young, on average,
Maoris
are particularly easy meat for simplistic Feminist, man-hating propaganda,
which many Maoris then take to be God's Truth.
Likewise, we are not so naive as to think that Non-Maoris would not
be
excluded, in some cases at least, from areas of the seabed and foreshore
that Maoris were allowed to take control of. For example, I have been
told
that a group advocating the abolition of separate Mori seats in Parliament
were ordered off a beach at Waitangi on Waitangi Day in one year (in
2003, I
think), on the grounds that it was a "Maori beach" !
Nevertheless, the New Zealand Equality Education Foundation believes
that
Justice must be done. There has been a lot of talk on the political
Right
of the need to end the so-called Maori "Grievance Industry".
Suggestions
made in this context involved speeding up the processing of Waitangi
Tribunal claims, which seems quite reasonable. However, passing this
Seabed
and Foreshore Bill will create a whole new Grievance Industry ! Putting
these two facts together suggests that the Right is less interested
in doing
Justice than in being able just to forget about Maoris.
From a practical point of view, too, passing this Bill will just serve
to
increase the "market share" and credibility of those "radicals"
who might
otherwise appear to be on the lunatic fringe of Maori society. These
radicals are only using the Treaty of Waitangi for what they can get
out of
it, and it is clear that they have racist constitutional aims which
are
incompatible with any reasonable interpretation of the Treaty -- and
these aims
will only gain in respectability within Maoridom, when Maoridom is
radicalised by the passing of this Bill.
There is also the international dimension. There is a vast international
list of entities ready and willing to turn the Maoris into heroic victims
and the rest of New Zealand into an international pariah on this issue,
we
believe.
No matter that the term "indigenous" is incoherent, as usually
used (see: dumbindi.html ). The international
Indigenous Rights movement, Hollywood,
and the international Human Rights movement -- plus countries such as
Japan, where
expansionist ideas have often been linked to theories of affinities
between Japan and
other Pacific peoples -- are, we believe, ready and willing to turn
New
Zealand into another South Africa. A lot of racists are ready and willing
to feed on the racist tradition that, if your ancestors had a white
skins
and used a sailing boat to conquer a territory that makes you a
"Colonialist" -- whereas if your ancestors had non-white skins
and conquered
territories in canoes, on foot or on horseback, this turned them into
indigenous
inhabitants of the countries they conquered.
The basic racism underlying this Bill, we feel, is a conservative
wish to
keep the Maoris in their place -- at the bottom of the economic heap.
We
all feel better if we can look down on someone -- in this case, on Maoris.
It is clear that the defeat of this Bill might well bring economic windfalls
to many Maoris, giving them control of economically important resources
which would take many of them off welfare benefits and out of crime,
and
give them self-respect. The "False Prophet" said: "There's
no use in
exalting the humble and the meek. They don't remain humble and meek
once
they're exalted". We can't expect Maoris to be devoid of arrogance
if their
economic situation improves, but that is not a good enough reason to
deny
them their rights !
