HawkesBay-NZ.net

Welcome to my new Webpage and to my new little poetry book Autentico Amor - True Love.

Five years ago, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, visited New Zealand to consult with Maori. In the report he subsequently produced, he urged the then Labour Government to recognise Maori rights to self determination. In particular, he recommended that the government support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that they repeal Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed, and that they undertake a constitutional review in order to entrench the Treaty of Waitangi.

As could be expected, the report was enthusiastically embraced by the Maori Party. It was dismissed by the Labour Government and the National Party stated that it “should be thrown in a rubbish bin”.

In an apparent complete turn-around, the National Party has now invited the UN’s special rapporteur to come back to New Zealand in July. This is no doubt part of a public conditioning exercise designed to convince New Zealanders that repealing Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed in favour of Maori ownership is a good move.

NZCPR columnist Mike Butler picks up on this theme in his insightful blog “Framing the race debate” on Breaking Views: “With the Maori Party in government, the scene has been set and the actors are in place to cement a radical racial shift, or so the radicals believe, so that a separate Ngapuhi state, a Tuhoe nation, and tribal ownership of the foreshore and seabed, and the subsequent flow of oil, gas, and mineral royalties, would simply be the next step.”