Bolger and Graham warn on co-governance

Jim Bolger and Doug Graham have a proud history of having effectively started the settling of the historical grievances. They are most definitely on the liberal side of National when it comes to issues around the Treaty.

So it should be a warning shot to Labour about how far from the mean they are pushing a radical policy position, when Bolger and Graham speak out to warn against it.

The Herald reports:

“What I would like from the Government is some clarity about the endpoint,” said Bolger.

He is extremely worried about the effect.

“This is my concern as a mature New Zealander, is that we are dividing New Zealand as we have never seen it before.”

Graham shared Bolger’s concern.

“I think there is becoming an intolerance in the rest of the population which I find disturbing,” said Graham. People talk to me about it and they are angry. They think it has gone miles too far.

“I don’t believe that most Māori want sovereignty or separate representation or 50 per cent on Three Waters or Five Waters. What they want is a fair go and I think they are entitled to a fair go.”

A fair go, is what almost everyone would support. But ending equality of suffrage and democracy as we know it, is only going to rip the country apart.

“The concept of partnership has got legs which it doesn’t deserve,” Graham said.

Nobody had had the courage to argue against it or question the logic behind it.

“So it has got away. I don’t think anybody is explaining what it means or where it takes us or the raison d’etre for the whole thing.”

His view on the potential for difficulties over the partnership decision is not new. In a book he wrote 25 years ago, Trick or Treaty, about being Treaty Negotiations Minister, he said the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal were creating problems in describing the Treaty as a partnership, instead of like a partnership.

“The Crown is not in partnership with Māori in running the country and it would be totally unacceptable in my view if this concept were to be pursued. It implies some sort of joint management with veto rights vested in each party. That cannot be the case.”

In his interview, Graham said if it was the intention of the parties to the Treaty that henceforth New Zealand would be governed 50:50 Māori and the Crown, it would have said so.

Common sense.

Graham said it was strange that some Māori were saying they were suffering the results of colonialism 200 years ago.

“My parents’ generation went through 15 years of two world wars and a depression. Most people got wiped out, either shot or lost their shirt. But they never moaned about it from then on. Life’s like that. You have your good times and your bad times.

“Some shocking things were done and they needed to be corrected and acknowledged. But to keep going on and on was the very thing I tried to get rid of, frankly – looking in the past, harbouring grievances. It will just hold them back.”

Blaming inequities in colonialism is lazy politics. One can stand for believing stealing of land was bad, but also think the impact from something that happened 180 years ago is fairly minimal.

Jews in Europe had their land and assets confiscated, and those who fled overseas penniless have done remarkably well in many societies.

Ordinary German families at the end of WWII were effectively penniless. Their homes were rubble, the infrastructure was destroyed etc yet in just one generation they built themselves up. The same in Japan.

Graham said while there was one law governing all, people had different rights within that law.

For example, common law rights under English law for fishing or customary harvest survived the Treaty and continued unless they were extinguished by statute or abandonment.

“But not all Māori had that right. If Tainui went to the Titi islands and tried to take mutton bird, there’d be a bloodbath because that’s Ngāi Tahu.

I’m all for recognising customary rights for Iwi or Hapu under the common law.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson told the Herald in July that co-governance was “a manifestation of the delivery of partnership” but he did not expect it to feature in the party’s manifesto next year.

Of course not. But have no doubt it is their agenda.