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Grievances or Gaps

October 30th, 2004 at 9:40 am by David Farrar

Comments by the chief judge of the Maori Land Court, Joe Williams, are some of the most regrettable I have seen.

Judge Williams has asserted that treaty grievances are all about closing the gaps, not about settling grievances. This view is entirely wrong and misguided, and to have ot held by such a senior Judge I think just shows that the Maori Land Court is becoming a very political and activist body which has almost no regard for judicial principles.

Williams and Mutu risk undermining public support for Treaty settlements. There is considerable support for settlements based on actual proven grievances. Every party in Parliament from ACT to Greens supports these.

However claiming that the “settlements are too small to adequately address disparities” is confusing the issue badly. I don’t care whether Ngai Tahu is poor or rich – we signed a deed of settelement for theiur grievances because it was the right thing to do.

The unfortunate thing that Judge Williams has done, is reinforce in many people’s minds that the settlements will never be full and final. If the mindset is that they should continue for as long as there are “gaps” between Maori and non Maori, then support for the settlements will disappear rapidly, and Judge Williams and co will be to blame.

This is why a policy to lodge and settle all claims by a particular date is becoming more important. We must seperate the issues of settling historical grievances away from general issues of Maori education, poverty and health.

Related posts:

  1. Bigger Treaty Settlements?
  2. Historical treaty claims due in by midnight
  3. Treaty Claims
  4. No partial settlements
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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 30th, 2004 at 9:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Grievances or Gaps”

  1. Paul Says:
    October 30th, 2004 at 7:50 pm

    Oh, and the Maori Land Court and/or the Waitangi Tribunal is/are not policitised?? Hehe, thanks for the evidence Williams (I won’t difnify him with the obligatory citation of “Judge”). I have listened to FTR (“For the Record”, not “Fat Typists Room”) transcripts of Maori Land Court Proceedings – the proceedings get pretty farcical.

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  2. Paul Says:
    October 30th, 2004 at 7:56 pm

    having said that, if you want a greater “quasi-judicial” Government stitch up, check out the wackyness delivered by the Weathertight Homes Reolution Service adjudicators to make ratepayers everywher to pay for a polictical embarrassment – talk about plaintiff-centric proceedings to “fill the gaps”.

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  3. sagenz Says:
    October 30th, 2004 at 11:28 pm

    disturbing dpf, very disturbing

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  4. Rodger Donaldson Says:
    November 1st, 2004 at 4:45 pm

    There’s little to say, beyond “agreed.” Maori had a variety of contracts with the Crown. There were breaches of those contracts. It’s the role of the court to determine fair compensation for those breaches.

    The can of worms this mindset opens is that when iwi piss away their settlement money (I’m looking in the general direction of the Waikato, here…), we see more being demanded under the auspices of this line of thinking.

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