The Waitangi Tribunal should be abolished
Saturday, 20 October 2012, 7:54 pm
Press Release: Independent Constitutional Review Panel
Press Statement from the Independent
Constitutional Review Panel
- on the Waitangi
Tribunal’s Kohanga Reo Report
The Waitangi
Tribunal’s report on kohanga reo makes it clear why the
Tribunal should be abolished, according to David Round, a
spokesman for the Independent Constitutional Review Panel.
“The Tribunal is now clearly nothing
more than a grandly-named Maori lobby group” he said.
“Its recommendations are pure politics.” He pointed out
that governments have poured over a billion dollars into
kohanga reo over the last two decades, and that that was
only a part of wider taxpayer support for the Maori
language. “We might reasonably expect a word of thanks for
this generosity. But instead the Tribunal complains that
this funding is actually directed towards education rather
than narrow Maori language immersion, and demands, not just
more funding, but an apology for not doing
enough.”“Whether the Tribunal’s
recommendations are reasonable or not, it is absurd to claim
that details about childhood education can be required by
the ‘principles’ of the
Treaty.”The Independent Panel has been
established by a group of New Zealanders of diverse
political backgrounds who share a common concern that an out
of control Treaty industry has become a serious threat to
New Zealand’s prosperity and integrity as a viable nation.
Mr Round said that the discovery and
application of Treaty principles, even when carried out by
judges, let alone the Tribunal, was a matter of personal
opinion and political
prejudice.
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“Treaty principles are vague
enough to justify any recommendation anyone would ever want
to make.”“There are many instances
of the Tribunal’s bias and partiality to claimants. It is
not even a reliable guide to what happened in the past, and
has no more qualifications to argue for future policies than
anyone else,” he said.“To demand an
apology for not being more generous is not just ungracious
and ungrateful, but downright arrogant. The tribunal is
behaving like a greedy bully. If Maori want even more money
and political changes to save a language which few of them
care enough to speak, they should argue for those things on
their own merits, not hide behind the increasingly
threadbare façade of the Treaty”, David Round
said.
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