Call for summit on race relations

Press, 27 September 1988, Page 2

Call for summit on race relations

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

A non-partisan accord on race relations has been called for by a former president of the National Party, Mrs Sue Wood.

She told a race relations seminar held by the Planning Council that a reconciliation process had to begin at once. \ But she had no confidence in the Labour Gov-, emment and National Opposition taking a bipartisan initiative within Parliament. What was needed was a conference or accord between representatives appointed by Parliament and Maoridom’s leaders that could, over a period of a few years, provide both the forum and agenda and so make progress towards real reconciliation and resolution of issues of race. The summit would be charged with addressing and resolving important problems on the two cultures to promote cooperation and co-ordina-tion of policies for the benefit of all New Zealanders, Mrs Wood said. But the Professor of Law at Victoria University, Professor Ken Keith, said there were significant difficulties in setting aside the Treaty of Waitangi.

He was replying to calls to put the treaty to one side. “There are those who say it has served its purpose, is no longer relevant, and is a fact of history but no more,” Professor Keith said. But the Treaty of Waitangi marked the beginning and was part of the constitutional government of New Zealand. It contained enduring values, powers and promises as well. To look at the treaty literally in its historical context was to concentrate on the fact that it had been broken, irrevocably so, said the Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago, Dr Richard Mulgan. The treaty became a focus of recrimination and guilt, not justice and harmony. In 1840, Professor Mulgan said, the Maori tribes did not agree to share their land with another people who would settle permanently in much greater numbers, transforming the Maori way of life and threaten-

ing its very existence. “We must not hide from our history but if we want to use it as a basis for a just future we must do so selectively,” Professor Mulgan said. “We can extract the good parts, such as the degree of goodwill and mutual respect between the races when they first met; we can winnow out the arrogance and violence of the colonisers, and the misunderstanding on both sides.

“That is what the courts are trying to do in their interpretations of the treaty,” he said. “But it is a highly sophisticated operation." Maoris, too, were able to focus on the spirit of the treaty as a living document, but the average European New Zealander was more lit-eral-minded. If Europeans were told that the treaty was the basis of New Zealand Government they were very uncomfortable because they knew the situation in the 1980 s was very different from the 1840 s and that the treaty could not be literally enforced. “Their reaction is therefore to say it is irrelevant,” Professor Mulgan said. If Europeans were to agree to use the treaty they must be helped to understand that its present constitutional significance was different from its original historical meaning.