Ae Marika:
Bill to ruin dreams of aspiring Maori lawyers

Last week, the Treaty of Waitangi (Removal of Conflict of Interest) Amendment Bill was tabled. It proposes that Maori should not sit on land cases where they might be related to people involved in the case.

What that means is that if I had gone to law school because I wanted to help Maori with their land issues, as many thousands of other Maori have done already, and I had worked studiously to enhance my knowledge of Maori land law, Maori customary law and general land law, again, as many thousands of other Maori have done already, my future prospects would all of a sudden come to a crashing halt because of this bill.

It would mean I could not sit on any case in the North Island simply because of my lineage. It would mean all the skills and legal experience I’d gained would be worthless. It would make nearly impossible in fact, for Maori to judge Maori land issues, and indeed, to even sit on the Waitangi Tribunal itself.

This is a bill I might have credited to a bigot, a redneck, a racist, or just a plain idiot. I am ashamed to say however, that this bill was not only tabled by a Maori, it was tabled by a whanaunga of mine from Ngati Hine, Mr Pita Paraone. Shame shame shame.

Seems to me in fact, that if there is any conflict of interest, then it’s coming from government itself, which has over the past few years tried very hard to intimidate the courts, and force them into acting according to the politics of the day, rather than legal principle. Since the bill to steal the foreshore and seabed first came up, we have seen:

The Deputy PM accusing the Chief Justice of judicial activism and calling her a ‘shop steward’;

The PM questioning Judge Caren Wickliffe’s right to find against the Crown because Wickliffe is part of the Ngati Porou tribe who were taking the case;

And the Deputy PM again criticising Chief Maori Land Court Judge Joe Williams for publicising a customary rights application – a criticism he was forced to withdraw.

So bad has been the intimidation in fact, that the Chief Justice has been moved to say that she believes that “judicial independence is at risk.”

Perhaps government should leave the courts to do their job, and concentrate on their own job – stealing elections with money they weren’t supposed to spend and cutting deals with the devil to stay in power.

ENDS

www.tokerau.co.nz

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