Mana Party flunks Treaty 101

The Mana Party announced its first official policy this week, the Treaty of Waitangi Policy. It said:

Remove the 2014 deadline for lodging historical claims with the Waitangi Tribunal to better enable iwi with such claims to properly research and state their cases.

The only trouble with this policy is the deadline is not 2014, but was 2008. S6A of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 states:

… after 1 September 2008 no Maori may submit a claim to the Tribunal that is, or includes, a historical Treaty claim

So Mana’s presumably most important policy, is wrong on the most critical of details. That is just appalling.