Tribunal view ‘recipe for social disaster’

Press, 16 June 1988, Page 6

Tribunal view ‘recipe for social disaster’

Political reporter

Self-defeating and immature was how the Opposition spokesman on Maori Affairs, Mr Winston Peters, described the Waitangi Tribunal decision.

It set the European community on edge and heightened Maori expectations, and so re-em-phasised the differences between them.

In 1840, there had been two alien and separate peoples, he said, with alien language and cultures with disparate laws and customs.

This was 1988 yet the Waitangi Tribunal was saying that rights had to be assessed on the basis of race. That was a recipe for social disaster.

Constant glancing backwards to the Treaty of Waitangi was not the path of progress for Maori people, Mr Peters said. Education was the way forward, an international language that could be

judged by world standards. “What worries and distresses me is that there is a growing and virulent racism in New Zealand,” he said. “It is not one-sided. On the fringes of European society, and sadly becoming increasingly mainstream, there is a deep and abiding loathing of all things Maori; such malignant and destructive hatred rests also with those Maori radicals who contemplate a future of apartheid.

“I am convinced that the path to partnership is constantly hampered by a treaty that was signed 148 years ago,” Mr Peters said. In 1840 the mixture of

the races on such a scale could not have been conceived. There would be few New Zealanders who wished to see their individual role in the country determined on the basis of their skin colour, he said.

He was proud of his Maori descent but would not bludgeon or seek favours on the basis of his ancestry — either Maori or Scots.

“I call today on this country to begin a public debate on the Treaty of Waitangi,” Mr Peters said. “The question that confronts Parliament and the country is — what now should become of this ancient agreement?”