Big banners for tonight's Te Papaganda Treaty 'Debate'

Thanks to those who’ve volunteered to hold these 3 metre long banners and risk incurring the withering glares of the Smarmy Army as they head into tonight’s Te Papa Treaty ‘Debate’ on the Constitution.

We were in the middle of printing the ‘Trickery’ banner above when one of my clever-clogs supporters mused that ‘Treachery’ would be a better description of what the appeasers have been up to for the last 40 years.

Damn, I thought, he’s right. So I got that one printed too. The good thing is, we’ve now we’ve got one for each entrance.

Do come along at 6.30pm. (But preferably earlier, lest you be crowded out by the Claudiophiles.)

I’m sure the assembled Constitutional Advisory Panel members will be delighted to chat with you as they enter and leave the building.

I do not intend to disrespect them, but I would like to ask them some questions.

Questions like:

• Prof John Burrowes: You told me last week that your panel is almost certainly going to meet the general public.  Given that your role is to find out what the public think, why are you treating the public as some sort of afterthought?
• Sir Tipene O’Regan: Why are you still co-managing a panel charged with examining the core of our national being, when you have also been charged with mismanaging a finance company?
• Leonie Pihama: You recently tweeted after I appeared on Maori TV (advocating racial equality) that I was a “redneck” and a “racist”. And then you said “We can debate their [racists’] views without them present!”

  Is that the agenda of the Constitutional Advisory Panel — to debate constitutional matters without the majority of New Zealanders present — people you regard as racist?

• Dame Claudia Orange: How can you call these one-sided discussions ‘debates’ when all ‘debaters’ are from the same side?

Dame Claudia to redefine ‘Debates’ tonight

A reader has just sent me an extraordinary email from Te Papaganda about tonight’s debate.

In fact, about the very meaning of the word ‘debates’, which Dame Claudia Orange will tonight unilaterally update.

But first, the question which prompted it:

I presume that this debate will be just that, with speakers preselected, usually two on each side, to present both sides of an issue, with the audience allowed to comment at the end, and then some fairly adjudicated decision by an independent person, as to “who won”.

Could you tell me who are the chosen ‘presenters’ in the debate, and the judges.

The young people who are particularly invited to this debate will be well aware of the rules of debate – don’t disappoint them!

And this is how the chief Te Papagandist responded:

Good morning,

I have been advised by Dr Orange that tonight she will explain the term “Debates” which can be used in various forums and can be organised in various ways.

At Te Papa it is to convey – to the public – information on which they can develop their own opinions and carry on debates with friends and family in a positive and informed manner.

Please note that there will be four young people participating in the debate and that they do not always agree.

Regards

Keri Roberts
Information Officer
Museum Of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Well, well.

It looks as thought tonight’s debate is going to be a more momentous occasion than I had realised.

Come along at 6.30pm and watch New Zealand’s foremost historian make lexicographical history.

Her freeing of the word ‘Debates’ from the constraints of precision will be a great relief to many language users, I’m sure.

Of course, many words in the Treaty of Waitangi have already undergone this process — words like taonga, which at the time of the Treaty was defined as ‘property procured by the spear’ but now means ‘anything we take a shine to’.

And the words all the people of New Zealand, found both in Hobson’s final draft (the Littlewood document) and in Hobson’s official (ie Maori) Tiriti, which now mean all the Maori people. 

And how reassuring that the four young ‘debaters’ — hand-picked no doubt by Dame Claudia for their politically approved views — do not always agree.

On the details, perhaps. But not, I confidently predict, on the main thrust of the Te Papa/Constitutional Advisory Panel Maorification agenda.

But go on, you young Claudiophiles, prove me wrong!

When did Te Papaganda ask you if they could ditch 'New Zealand'?

Not to be done by the Constitutional Advisory Panel’s arrogant presumption that our country is now to be known as ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’,  Te Papa has skipped straight to the end game that I spelt out in yesterday’s post.

Seems ‘Our Place’ (the slogan you can just make out under the big Te Papa in the logo) has changed ‘Our’ name without ‘Our’ permission.

Below is the full poster for its Slice of Heaven exhibition.

Apart from the New Zealand in the sponsor’s name, it features no other reference to the name of our country besides Aotearoa.

 If any evidence was needed that Dame Claudia Orange’s Te Papa and the Constitutional Advisory Panel are two peas from the same pod, this is surely it.

A national museum is meant to faithfully represent its country the way it is, not the way its resident historian would like it to be.

The Constitutional Advisory Panel, meanwhile, should be representing the public’s idea of what they would like the country to be — not the Panel’s personal preferences.

I trust they’ll be there in numbers for tonight’s Treaty ‘Debate’ on the Constitution, as I plan to ask them some questions.

After last week’s attempt to restrict questions to the Treatygaters, I suggest you put your questions directly to the Panellists as they enter and exit Te Papa.

Will they use a side door, I wonder?

Last post spawns TV interview

Preparing the welcome mat for yours truly.

Seems the preceding post has piqued the interest of a mainstream TV channel.

They want to interview me for their Waitangi Day leadup coverage, and I have reluctantly and modestly agreed.

I shouldn’t reveal who, when or where, except to say that the place is somewhere you walk up en route to a certain chamber of Chamberlains in Thorndon.

The institution concerned is keenly awaiting my arrival, as evidenced by the two gentlemen above laying out the welcome mat.

You can never be quite sure how these interviews will go, but the reporter seemed very interested in my assessment of a certain advisory panel.

To assist the reporter, I thought I’d suggest a backdrop of one or two of my newly-designed Treatygate banners.

If anyone fancies witnessing the interview of the century, while providing visual support for my message, please email me at john@johnansell.co.nz.

When did we vote to change our name to Aotearoa New Zealand?

Email from the Constitutional Advisory Panel,
arrogantly assuming you support a national name change. 

In its first email of the year, the Constitutional Advisory Panel has already concluded that you want to change the name of your country.

When did you vote on that, you may well ask?

You didn’t? Tough.

In lock-step with all mesmerised Maoriphiles who infest our academo-bureaucratic complex, this faux-neutral, fawningly racist panel has airily decided that the nation founded and known for 370 years as ‘New Zealand’ is now ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’.

The Duplicitous Dozen have nailed their colours to the mast, and those colours are brown.

It’s a decision dripping with irony.

After all, shouldn’t a group of constitutional advisors be the very first people to insist that any tinkering with the most sacred parts of a nation’s identity — such as its name — must first be signed off by a majority of voters?

Shouldn’t the appropriate constitutional vehicle for such a momentous change be a referendum?

Not an email?

So who are these constitutional con artists who want to engage with you with a steamroller?

The rigged panel of Griever Maori and Appeaser Pakeha
charged by the National-Maori alliance with misrepresenting
your desire for a Treatyfied constitution.

They are, from left: Dr Leonie Pihama, Hinurewa Poutu, Emeritus Professor Dr Ranginui Walker, Hon. John Luxton, Deborah Coddington, Sir Tipene O’Regan, Emeritus Professor Dr John Burrowes QC, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Peter Tennent, Peter Chin, Bernice Mene, and Sir Michael Cullen.

And this is their first progress report on what they amusingly refer to as The ‘Conversation’ So Far.

These people believe in skirting the courtesies of democracy.

In holding themselves in contempt of the court of public opinion.

In overriding the will of the people whose views they are charged with seeking.

And why are they afraid to talk openly with us, the pesky majority?

Because these unelected, unrepresentative political stooges know full well that the vast non-Maori majority do not share their enthusiasm for such things as ditching the only name this country has ever had.

About which I must briefly digress…

New Zealand was Nu Tirani in 1840

Before the arrival of the British, Maori had no collective name for the country as a whole.

In fact, they didn’t even think of it as a country. Because it wasn’t.

These islands were simply a battleground for dozens of violently independent, crypto-communist cannibal dictatorships, whose shared a common hobby:  butchering, enslaving, and eating each other.

When, in 1840, the chiefs very sensibly decided to bury their hatchets and let the British run a proper country, they called it ‘Nu Tirani’ — the closest a language with no Zs, Ls or Ds could get to ‘New Zealand’.

‘Aotearoa’ was the Maori name for the North Island until well into the twentieth century. Apirana Ngata referred to it as that in his brilliant Treaty of Waitangi — An Explanation in 1922.

As Matthew Dentith helpfully confirmed on this blog recently, the proper Maori way of saying New Zealand is ‘Aotearoa Me Te Wai Pounamu’ — ‘North Island and South Island’.

Some (though not Matthew) would say that was a bit of a mouthful for the name of a country.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

But back to the Constitutional Steamroller Panel.

The change management strategy of these and other name-changers is to publish their unauthorised name whenever they can get away with it. Like Hitler, they know that if  they repeat the Big Lie often enough, it will sink into the public mind as fact.

(They know this trick works. They’ve been using it for decades to embed their twisted history of the Treaty.)

Telling evidence of this name-change-by-stealth strategy is provided in the book Scooped: The Politics and Power of Journalism in — you guessed it — Aotearoa New Zealand.

Here’s a sample page where authors Sean Phelan, Verica Rupar and Martin Hirst use the name Aotearoa New Zealand seven times and New Zealand twice.

Seven ANZs and two NZs. Mesmerised Maoriphiles
trying to change the name of our country by stealth.

A good analogy for the incremental name change is the ‘merger’ of the ANZ and National banks. (Really a takeover by the ANZ.)

In the beginning, there were two separate banks: ANZ and National — just as there are two (Maori and English) names for our country: Aotearoa and New Zealand.

Then ANZ took over the National — just as the Aotearoans would like to take over New Zealand.

And for a time, to appease the customers of the National,  the ANZ owners considerately shared double billing as ANZ National — just as the appeasers (if not the grievers) now speak of Aotearoa-New Zealand.

As with ANZ National, so with Aotearoa New Zealand?

But then, the inevitable end game.

After everyone had got used to the takeover, the ANZ quietly dropped the National Bank name, Suddenly, it was just ANZ.

And so it will happen with New Zealand, if the Treatygaters have their way.

First, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Then simply Aotearoa.

Look at this stamp, in which our official name has been downgraded to an afterthought. Clear evidence that this process is already underway…

Stamping out New Zealand

The downgrading of New Zealand has already begun.

Look, I won’t object if we decide to call our country Aotearoa, or Aotearoa Me Te Wai Pounamu, or even John Keyland for that matter.

(I didn’t say I’d like it. But I won’t object.) Not if the change is decided by referendum.

And that’s my point. We, the people — not they, the elite — must decide.

After announcing its new name for the country, the Constitutional Advisory Panel’s email continues with its pretence that it actually cares what you think…

A “broad range of views”?
Not if the Te Papa Treaty ‘Debates’ are any guide.

We’ve got until the end of June to make sure they hear our views — whether they want to or not.

I’ll be contacting them to see if they’re honest enough to front up to a public meeting, as co-chair John Burrowes told me they “almost certainly” would.

I, for one, would engage with them civilly, provided they do the same.

But of that I can’t be confident, given the tweetings of Panellist Leonie Pihama after my appearance on Native Affairs with Joris de Bres and Ella Henry last year…

 

After watching me advocating racial equality on Maori TV,
Constitutional Advisory Panellist Leonie Pihama condemned
me as a right wing redneck and racist

Add to that Deborah Coddington, who has been lauding the Treaty ‘Debate’ speech of Matthew Palmer on her Facebook page, and being sarky to anyone who doesn’t favour the Palmer plan to put the Treaty into law.

Meanwhile, I hope you Wellingtonians will join me at the latest Te Papa Treaty ‘Debate’ — this one specifically about the Constitutional Review — this Thursday at 6.30pm.

Those planning to bear witness to the latest farce — and perhaps chat to an Advisory Panellist or two — might like to email me at john@johnansell.co.nz.

Only MY Voice Counts!: Debate A L'Orange II

Empress Dame Claudia Orange,
Te Papaganda’s Chief History-Maker
and Censor of Inconvenient Truths.

Thursday night’s Maorification fest at Te Papaganda was billed as a Treaty ‘Debate’.

Its topic was ‘Finding a Place for the Treaty’.

The equivalent moots in other thought-controlled jurisdictions might have been:

• In Fiji: ‘Finding a Place for the Military’.
• In the Third Reich: ‘Finding a Place for Blonde Hair’.
• In Zimbabwe: ‘Finding Farms for Freedom Fighters’.

There, like here, the dictator dictates the outcome, the debaters debate the detail.

The dictator of Te Papaganda is Empress Dame Claudia Orange.

(In calling it ‘Our Place’, she exhibits the same dry wit as the founders of the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.’)

Te Papaganda’s whimsical website assures me that ‘My Voice Counts’. It omits the crucial rider: ‘As long as it can’t be heard.’

And boy, did the Claudiophiles work overtime to try to make sure it couldn’t be. (Without success, as you will read.)

The following is my comprehensive account of a most instructive evening.

Te Papa AKA Chernobyl on Cable — the capital’s politically
correct, architecturally bereft state indoctrination facility
seemingly modelled on a nuclear power plant.

I arrived 45 minutes early to find that the Smarmy Army were already well dug in.

All the seats in the waiting area outside Soundings Theatre were full of indoctrinated undergraduates and assorted other grievers and appeasers.

As predicted, they had arrived early and in numbers to defend the Treatifarian position.

I unwrapped a wastepaper basket symbolising my ‘Place for the Treaty’, and containing 200 copies of the following helpful audience guide…

Our views are not welcome at ‘Our Place’.

I’d hardly had time to reach into my wicker Treaty receptacle when the Te Papaganda Cultural Safety Police pounced.

A black-shirted agent of the state strode up to me looking cross.

“Sorry, but you can’t hand out leaflets in here.”

“Why not?”

“That’s the rule. No handing out leaflets.”

“So what are those thin white papery things on the table outside the theatre?” I asked.

I pointed towards the stacks of Treatifarian mumbo-jumbo waiting to be handed out to arriving audience members.

“Ah,” he spluttered.

“Er,” he choked.

“So no one’s allowed to hand out leaflets — except some people?”

“You could say that.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Te Papa supposed to be ‘Our Place’? Our National Museum?”

“It is.”

“Funded by the nation’s taxpayers?”

“Correct.”

“In a democratic nation?”

“Yes.”

“In which we decide things by majority vote?”

“Yes.”

“So how is it that only the minority is allowed to hand out leaflets, and the majority cannot?”

“Er.”

“Leaflets which ironically advertise a debate?”

“Yes.”

“Which is a contest of ideas between two sides?”

“Yes.”

“A debate in which your side’s leaflets keep telling me that ‘My Voice Counts’?”

“Sorry, but if you want to hand out leaflets, you’ll have to do it outside.”

“So my voice only counts where Dame Claudia doesn’t have to listen to it? What do you call that?”

“I call it the rules, sir.”

And so I left the building, and started handing out the leaflets outside the door.

My Place for the Treaty.

“Find a Place for the Treaty!” I hollered, waving my waste-Treaty basket. “Read all the arguments you won’t hear inside!”

And then, what do you know? — the cultural safety nazi came strutting up to me again.

“You can’t hand them out here either.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re still on Te Papa property.”

“I see. And where does Te Papa property end and the Free World begin?”

He wasn’t exactly sure, but thought it was about five metres into the concourse.

 Dame Claudia’s Cultural Safety Police
told me I was not allowed to hand out leaflets
within five metres of the building.

And so, from behind an imaginary Orange line, I resumed dispensing my leaflets.

Most people accepted them too. Including one of that evening’s ‘debaters’, Moana Jackson, and Constitutional Advisory Panel co-chair Dr John Burrowes.

Sir Tipene O’Regan did not.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer did not.

“But you’re in it, Sir Geoffrey!” I called after him hopefully. But to no avail.

Racist Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres was more accepting. He actually asked me for one afterwards.

Perhaps I will soon be featuring in one of his reports. Favourably, I trust. 🙂

Several times — not necessarily by accident — I intruded into the Exclusion Zone, and was revisited by my increasingly exasperated black-shirted nemesis.

I was joined in due course by Digby Paape. Digby for a time actually managed to penetrate the interior of the Bastion of Bias, handing out many leaflets before also being frogmarched from the building.

In the end, the blackshirt confessed that he agreed with us. To spare him certain summary dismissal, I won’t identify him further.

He allowed us into the ‘Debate’, but only after we’d surrendered our remaining pamphlets at the coat check.

Now to the ‘Debate’ itself, which could be summarised thus:

By a remarkable coincidence, all the ‘debaters’ managed
to find a place for the Treaty. From left: Moana Jackson,
Carwyn Jones, Dame Claudia Orange, Dr Matthew Palmer.

 Yes, it was every bit as one-sided as I predicted in the previous post.

The positions of the two main ‘debaters’ boiled down to…

Dr Matthew Palmer:

• Treat the Treaty as a safety valve, so Maori don’t start a war. (Or in other words, keep appeasing the bullies.)
• Put the Treaty into law.
• Abolish the Waitangi Tribunal.
• Let judges decide Treaty claims.

He actually said the words, “The Pakeha majority have nothing to fear”.

Why?

Because judges can be trusted to be fair.

That would be judges like ‘Chief Injustice’ Dame Sian Elias, who helped overturn over a century of settled law to allow Ngati Apa to claim against the Crown.

The same Dame Sian who is on record as saying that she considers it her right to strike down any law she does not agree with.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather pin my hopes on Parliament any day.

Dame Sian Elias. Matthew Palmer
thinks we should trust judges like her.

Moana Jackson:

From the midst of a remorseless stream of pseudo-religio-academo-bureaucro-babble, I was able to discern three coherent statements:

• Maori had developed a clear system of law before the British arrived.

(Correct. It was so clear it could be boiled down to three words: might is right.)

• Maori did not give up sovereignty.

(Rubbish. Transcripts of the chiefs’ speeches at Waitangi show that they knew perfectly well they were handing power to the Governor, in exchange for the protection of the world’s largest empire.)

• Jackson wants a written constitution like Bolivia’s, which is based on Pachamama, the equivalent of Papatuanuku.

(He forgot to mention the other attraction of the Bolivian constitution: that all people are equal, but indigenous people are more equal than others.)

Indigenous President Evo Morales and his pro-indigenous
Bolivian Constitution. (In Bolivia, 85% are indigenous. In New
Zealand, 15% claim to be, while simultaneously claiming to
have sailed here from the other side of the Pacific.)

I had predicted that this would be a very ‘agreeable’ ‘debate’ — as in one in which the ‘debaters’ were ‘able’ to ‘agree’ on pretty much everything.

Matthew Palmer said as much to Moana Jackson when he detected “an intimate distance between our perspectives”.

(I think that’s universityspeak for “This was no debate at all”.)

And of course it was never going to be.

Question time – sort of

But in a radical departure from previous Treaty ‘Debates’, Dame Claudia flagged at the start that she was going to allow questions from the floor.

When the time came, rather than wait to be presented with a microphone, Digby Paape announced that he was ready and raring to go with a question, and was happy to do it without a mic.

Faced with this fait accompli, Empress Claudia had little option but to let him fire away.

Digby began with a personal observation not strictly within the definition of a question.

“Most of that was drivel”

“I thought most of that was drivel,” said Digby.

“Hear, hear!” said I, spluttering.

He was asked if he had a question. His question to Moana Jackson was: “What is a Maori, and do you want an apartheid state?”

Howls of derision rained down upon Paape’s pate, as Jackson (clearly a long way from being entirely Maori himself) cleverly managed to make it sound desperately unfair to judge one’s Maoriness (for compensation purposes) by the degree to which one is actually Maori.

“How convenient!” I chimed in.

The invisible hand

I kept my hand in the air for the duration of question time, as the microphone was directed by Her Majesty from one Claudiophile to another.

Like Appeaser-General Finlayson at a recent Orewa School meeting, when I had kept my arm up for minutes on end, the Great Dame did not seem to find my raised limb at all easy to detect.

(Note to self: next week, wear fluorescent sleeves.)

Interjections

Feeling ignored and unloved, I had no option but to take matters into my own hands — or rather larynx — with the following spontaneous enquiries:

• “When are you going to run a two-sided debate!?”
• “Why won’t you listen to 80% of the people!?”

and that most abhorrent of questions (judging by the crescendo of howls from the Treatifarians):

• “What about racial equality!?”

(Boy, did that concept set them off.)

Support from the team

John Robinson made the mistake of generously giving Dame Claudia a copy of his book, When Two Cultures Meet — The New Zealand Experience.

From then on he was a marked man, and his attempts to ask official questions proved as fruitless as mine.

But two other gentlemen of our acquaintance did manage to get their hands on the holy roving mic, doubtless because Dame Claudia had not yet learned to associate their faces with trouble.

Owen Stuart:

• “I’m a fifth generation New Zealander. How many generations will we have to live here before we are recognised as equal?” (Or words to that effect. Feel free to amend Owen.)

Andy Oakley:

• “Mr Jackson, how do you propose a race-based sovereignty will work in a multicultural society?”

These questions produced the usual meaningless, meandering responses designed to put the audience off the scent.

In my case, they worked. I can’t remember what they said, except that it was crap.

Opposing views censored

If you heard the broadcast of the ‘Debate’ on National Radio today, you would not have heard any of our comments. Predictably, they edited out question time to present an image of unanimity.

I went into the ‘Debate’ thinking that Dame Claudia was a nice enough person, albeit a chronic exaggerator/minimiser. I left realising that she is also a smarmy and devious manipulator.

A bully, really.

Soundings Theatre, venue for the Te Papa Treaty ‘Debates’.

As we staggered out, punchdrunk by the disgraceful sham we had witnessed, I spotted Professor John Burrowes milling around in the foyer.

So I took the opportunity to ask him whether his Constitutional Advisory Panel would actually be holding any public meetings before reporting back on the will of the public.

Almost certainly?

He replied, “Almost certainly.”

Almost certainly?

A panel which has said it wants to gauge the views of as many members of the public as possible, is almost certainly going to allow the public to meet it?

Hmmm.

I’ve heard good things about Professor Burrowes. He was, by all accounts, a brilliant lecturer. He seems very decent and friendly.

Perhaps ironically, he and Don Brash were close childhood friends.

So I’d really like to remove his eye patch, I really would.

But I’m reminded that I put it on him after reading so many fishy things about the Panel, and after the Panel’s secretariat said he’d try to get back to me when I called him mid-last year.

I’m still waiting.

And now he is almost certainly going to subject his Panel to the scrutiny of the public.

I think we’re going to have to organised one of those public meetings, don’t you?

Constitutional Review ‘Debate’
this Thursday 31 January

Meanwhile, we have another Te Papa Treaty ‘Debate’ this coming Thursday — about the Constitutional Review.

I urge you Wellingtons to be there, and again make your voices count.

Te Papa Treaty 'Debate' tonight – let's give them one!

The publicity for tonight’s Te Papa Treaty ‘Debate’ says “My Voice Counts”.

So I’m going to take them at their word. I hope you will too.

Let’s show Dame Claudia Orange and the rest of the one-eyed, Maorified elite that we will not tolerate sham public ‘debates’ in which the public’s views are not tolerated.

Te Papa is “Our Place”. So let’s have “Our Say”!

The ‘Debate’ is in Soundings Theatre on Level 2 and runs from 6.30 – 8.00pm.

The theatre is likely to be packed, so I suggest you get there early.

Te Papa ‘Debate’ tonight – let’s give them one!

The publicity for tonight’s Te Papa Treaty ‘Debate’ says “My Voice Counts”.

So I’m going to take them at their word. I hope you will too.

Let’s show Dame Claudia Orange and the rest of the one-eyed, Maorified elite that we will not tolerate sham public ‘debates’ in which the public’s views are not tolerated.

Te Papa is “Our Place”. So let’s have “Our Say”!

The ‘Debate’ is in Soundings Theatre on Level 2 and runs from 6.30 – 8.00pm.

The theatre is likely to be packed, so I suggest you get there early.

Make January 24th a debate to remember

Dame Claudia's Te Papa Treaty ‘Debate’, 2012.
On Thursday, let’s give her the debate she’s been missing!

For some time now, Dame Claudia Orange, that most inventive in-house historian of the bicultural bastion Te Papa, has been staging what she amusingly promotes as ‘Debates’ about the Treaty.

Now call me old-fashioned, but in my dictionary a debate is defined as a two-sided affair.

I’m not sure what dictionary Dame Claudia uses.

But in that curious volume, a debate seems to mean:

“Several members of the affirmative, no members of the negative — and no noise from the audience please!”

I took the above photo at last February's ‘debate’. I forget who the guy on the left was.

The others were:

Dame Claudia, Nin Tomas of Auckland Uni (crypto-communist advocate of the Bolivian constitution), Muriwhenua advocate Claudia Geiringer, and Dr John Burrowes, the Great White Hope of the Constitutional Advisory Panel, who seems to be proving pretty hopeless.

Anyway, 'tis the season for two more of these very agreeable ‘Debates’. (Debates, that is, where all the debaters are always able to agree. On everything.)

The first two to agree, as you can see below, will be constitutional lawyer Moana Jackson and Matthew Palmer, son of the inventor of the 'principles' of the Treaty. (Or, as we really ought to call it, the Treaty of Wellington.)

What place would you find for the Treaty?
Make your voice count!

Now I hate to spoil a good love-in. But I think it’s time these Te Papa Treaty 'Debates' were more like, well… debates. (As defined by my dictionary, not Claudia's.)

And so, honest Wellingtonians, I suggest we form ourselves into the Negative team that's been missing in action all these years.

My dictionary doesn’t stipulate a maximum number of members, but somewhere between 50 and 100 would be ideal. Bring all your like-minded friends.

After all, Te Papa, we are told is “Our Place”. And “My Voice” — so the Constitutional Advisory Panel and Dame Claudia tell us — “Counts”. (As, it stands to reason, does Yours.)

What fair-minded public representatives we have!

And now they’re inviting us to a debate — about “Finding a Place for the Treaty”.

Inexplicably, they don’t say why we should necessarily find a place for the Treaty at all.

But, as it happens, I have one in mind — certainly for the piece of paper that Dame Claudia refers to as the “official” Treaty.

(As opposed to Hobson's final English draft, found in 1989, which the great dame strangely refuses to even mention in her updated and supposedly definitive tome The Treaty of Waitangi.)

So. If you have a place you'd like to put the Treaty, come and join me at “Our Place” next Thursday evening, January 24th at 6.30pm.

I'll be the one handing out Treatygate information sheets, and possibly waving a placard or two.

You too can review the Review.
Make your voice count!

If you enjoy next Thursday's ‘Debate’, you may want to come along to this next one a week later on January 31st.

As you know, the Constitutional Advisory Panel is very keen to hear your views on the place of the Treaty.

Let’s make sure they do.

Te Rauparaha's tribe honours spirit of whale by hacking off jaw with saw

A kaumatua inspects the sacred whale before…

…iwi butchers, protected by DOC, hack off the lucrative jawbone.

In the shadow of Kapiti Island, once home of New Zealand’s cruellest cannibal, Te Rauparaha, horrified onlookers yesterday watched the local iwi butcher a beached whale.

The tribe’s sacred purpose: to turn its jawbone into jewellery.

And to hell with anyone who didn’t agree with their traditional take on saving the whales… for themselves, that is.

Stuff bears witness to the gory spectacle:

Police and Department of Conservation staff had to hold back angry and upset onlookers … after those removing a whale’s jaw were left “up to their knees” in blood.  

Grief and anger erupted among the 300 onlookers as Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa iwi members took three hours … to remove the jaw…  

Local whale-bone carver Owen Mapp said children were in tears and some of the crowd became angry about  the whale being butchered.  

“There was a lot of blood and guts. Some people were horrified.”

Creating cultural objects or carved artifacts enabled contemporary society to honour the spirit of the whale, he said. “It is a way the whale can live on.”  

I see, so the culturally appropriate way to honour a whale’s spirit is to hack off its jaw with a saw (an evil pakeha chainsaw, presumably), then cut it, gouge it, sand it, and sell it.

Cost of raw materials: nil. (Thanks, DOC.)

Profit: handy.

By this logic, do Te Rauparaha’s descendants also “honour the spirit” of their dead by ripping out and flogging off their sacred gold fillings?

Sounds more like the spirit of free enterprise to me.

DOC protocol allowed iwi first use of the whale.  

Er, shouldn’t that be “exclusive use of the whale”?

Did DOC contact the local Japanese community to see if they wanted to remove the meat?

Did they invite the descendants of New Zealand’s early whalers to “honour the spirit” of their ancestors by rekindling their family’s association with the great mammal of the deep? (See comment below from Andy Oakley.)

And they say there’s no Maori privilege.

Ngati Toa member Nelson Solomon said people complaining about the gory work did not have to watch.  

How thoughtful. Ngati Toa’s manners have obviously improved since Te Rauparaha’s dinner guests were forced to watch their companions being tomahawked, eviscerated, roasted and devoured, while they mentally prepared themselves for their role as his next course.

“We tried to put up barricades to stop the public going in.”  

Yes, how dare DOC’s Chosen People be interrupted in their sacred duty by stupid pakeha clinging to the wimpish notion that the best way to “honour the spirit” of a dead creature is to bury it intact?

“We are sorry if people were offended but we thought we did what was best in our interests.”  

And that’s the thing about tribes. Tribes care about themselves first, and others not at all. Anyone outside the tribe is the enemy.

It’s the same the world over, wherever tribalism has been tried.

(Which is pretty much everywhere. Including, of course, Britain, whose history runs red with the blood and gore of tribalism — Celtic, Roman, Viking and Anglo-Saxon.)

My point is, Britain and other societies have got beyond tribalism. It’s time Maori did too.

Shouldn’t whaler
descendants get first dibs?

Kapiti reader Andy Oakley made this comment on another thread yesterday:

We had a whale wash up on our shore yesterday.

The local iwi were quick to claim it, rope it off, and rip it open for the jaw bone.

The local council’s unelected iwi representative would have had a hand in this.

Surely the descendants of our country’s early whaler settlers had as much, if not more, cultural connection to this whale than local Maori?

New Zealand was founded by these early settlers and their whaling activities.

While there is no history of pre-European Maori whaling at all. (Though they would cut them up if they ever happen to beach themselves.)

But alas, the whaler descendants were never even consulted.

And here is the reason why:

If you are a descendant of a whaler — i.e. somewhere in your family history someone was a whaler — this does NOT give you the right to call yourself a whaler.

Obviously you are not a whaler. You are just a descendant of a whaler.

And you have NO special place in New Zealand.

However, if you are a descendant of a Maori — i.e. somewhere in your family history someone was a Maori — this DOES give you the right to call yourself a Maori.

And you DO have access to the dual set of rights our government attributes to Maori.

Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in this?

I have no problem with Maori culture, I embrace it.

I do have a problem when it finds its way into every part of our lives at the expense of all other cultures.

You and me both, Andy. Good point about the whalers.

Of course, the tide has turned on the business of hunting and harpooning the uber-mammal. That’s because the whale has joined the dolphin in the ranks of the cute, if not cuddly.

(And, no doubt, because we no longer crave lamp oil and whalebone corsets. Or share the Japanese taste for whale steak.)

But if it’s good enough for Ngati Toa to honour the bloodthirsty Te Rauparaha with a stadium in Porirua, it’s good enough for European New Zealanders to “honour the spirit” of the brave whalers and sealers, from whom so many of us (both white and brown) are descended.

Now how do we get DOC to help us make money out of it?

Only battered women, criminals and iwi get free legal aid

You may have seen this recent Dom Post article about Treaty claimants getting $79 million in legal aid over the past six years.

The article reveals the standard perks — or rorts, depending on your point of view:

• As well as legal costs, Treaty lawyers can claim on travel, meals, accommodation, and the expense of attending a hui to discuss a claim.  
•  More than $800,000 has also been claimed in travel costs during the past 2 years.  

Nothing too unusual there.

But then we get into some good, old-fashioned Maori privilege (the kind the likes of Peter Meihana would have you believe doesn’t exist):

• Unlike civil or criminal cases, Treaty claimants can obtain legal aid regardless of their financial circumstances.

Typical, huh?

But if you think that stinks, it’s nothing to what the article doesn’t tell you…

(This comes from a friend who used to dole out New Zealand’s legal aid. Here’s what he just told me…

There are only three classes of applicant that don’t have to pay back legal aid:

1. Domestic violence victims.
2. Accused criminals.
3. Treaty claimants.

You heard it here first, folks. Free lawyers for battered women (fair enough, but why not all violence victims?), crims, and griever Maori.

And it gets worse.

• While Treaty claims represent a fraction of the total number of legal aid cases, they are often among the most expensive.

Not only the most expensive. Also — by far — the most successful.

What other class of legal aid applicant is so regularly clogging up our legal system demanding millions of dollars from taxpayers — and winning?

(Courtesy of a kangaroo court specifically set up to shepherd their claims past a “see no evil” appeaser government, with no regard for historical truth.)

In other words…

…no class of applicant is more able than Griever Maori to afford to pay back their legal aid.

And yet, unlike you and me — even when they win settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars — they don’t have to pay back a cent.

And unlike criminals, they don’t even have to prove that they’re hard up to get their free legal aid.

Legal aid, remember, is your and my hard-earned cash, handed over to iwi so they can hire lawyers to bring often-bogus cases against you and me, that the Waitangi Tribunal finds any excuse to approve, then gets Chris Finlayson and co. to rubber stamp.)

More points from the article:

• Of the 75 most expensive cases of 2008-09, 41 per cent were for Treaty claims.  
• The Waitangi Tribunal is currently handling or preparing 780 separate claims, which are resolved through regional hearings.  
• In a statement, Justice Minister Judith Collins said she was comfortable with the amount of money being spent on legal aid for Treaty claims.

Disappointing, Judith. I used to think you’d make a strong prime minister.

2013 — the year we force the Constitutional Advisory Panel to tell the truth

Welcome to the New Year.

Sorry I was offline for the last part of the old one, and thanks for your patience.

I’m now fully restored, and determined to achieve the following goals:

• 2013 — make the Constitutional Advisory Panel report to the government that 80%+ of New Zealanders want a colourblind state.
• 2014 — make Treatygate and racial equality an election issue.
• 2015 — make the new government repeal all racist laws and create a colourblind state.

A flurry of posts will soon follow, which I hope will get you excited about wanting to help. 🙂