The lunatic fringe

Most will have seen the story about a group of Tuhoe activists claiming that they not only own the sea for 44 miles out, but they also claimed “absolute sovereignty over all air space to the heavens above“.

Now the last part is interesting, because as you know the Earth rotates on both its axis, and around the sun. This means that at various times many far flung planets will be seen to occupy Tuhoe air space. They will be most surprised to get a bill from Tuhoe, asking them to pay rent.

More seriously, this is one of the reasons why it was so invaluable that Don Brash made his Orewa speech. You see the debate previously had been going in one direction only – towards the extremes. Every year more and more radical propositions were promoted about sovereignty, and while they may not be accepted, they kept shifting the debate to the extreme.

Thanks to Brash we are now debating as a country, the serious, not lunatic, issues. We can now laugh at these claims, because we know the real debate is about more core issues like should one have treaty clauses in legislation, should one retain special seats for Maori, should one fund on race or need, and how does one tell them apart etc?

To be fair to Tuhoe, the details of the submission were not an official position of Tuhoe, with the trust board chair saying that claiming the air space was going a little bit too far. Only a little bit?