“List positions above 30 are listed alphabetically.” what is the point of that? we want to know if the vote goes above 30 who will be the next one in?

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“In a civil war situation, the vast majority of service men and women are Maori, and would would be loyal to their hapu, rather than to the “nationâ€? of New Zealand that has stripped them of their land!”

i take it as a matter of faith that our fine representitives in the armed forces have a strong professional military ethos & would do nothing to violate the integrity either of this country or the armed forces.

“I am also sick and tired of hearing that it is my fault that Maori top almost every single statistic when it comes to crime, poverty, child abuse and the like.”

what would you do about this problem?

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billy Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
You miss out the rigorous select committee/parliamentary process, all the evidence and overwhelming NGO and expert support for this law change.
………….
In theory yes but when presented with Dr Millichamps contrary evidence Sue Bradford questioned her motives. In my opinion the whole thing hinges on whether light occasional smacking is harmful
and if there is always a better way (“naughty mat”). One clincher was when the children’s commissioner stated that “X did a meta analysis which showed that it is never ok to smack”…. I simply don’t believe that as I have read from other sources that while little has been done on light smacking the evidence is “equivocal” as to whether it is harmful or not. It smacks of an ideological putsch.
There is nothing that comes close to the Otago Interdisciplinary Health and Development Study of children over 30 years… (day long interviews…. not 10 minutes as we were told).

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billy, don’t forget the expert support *against*, and the NGO *opposition*.

I don’t think the figure was 85% either (maybe in one poll) but most figures were in the mid-high 70s. pedantic, yes.

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Ai combarro Toad (whatever that means).

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I think the point is this Toad:

“By convincing the National Party leader that the foreshore and seabed issue is nothing more than a dispute over property law, they have opened the way to a much more radical application of indigenous rights.

For who can dispute that, at one time, the entire geographical entity we call New Zealand was the property of Maori collectivities?

And, if they have a customary right to New Zealand’s beaches, then why not its rivers, estuaries, swamps, lakes, forests and everything else?”

Your argument is “Open wiiide…..it won’t hurt a bit” or a bit here and a bit there. Note people from Naitahu protesting on Brighton Pier (Chch). Cast your eyes at Fiji, Uganda…. Rwanda…

We need to remember that the population is up to 53.333 times greater than in 1840. [75000/ 4000000].

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jh said “On Sue Bradford she may have been voted the most effective MP but in fact 85% of people opposed repeal of Section 59 and how many people she persuaded (â€?men who smack are …pervertsâ€?). Labour made its MP’s vote and National folded , so it shows how politicians can work and manipulate the system. Hardly “appropriate decision makingâ€??”

You miss out the rigorous select committee/parliamentary process, all the evidence and overwhelming NGO and expert support for this law change.

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jh said: Michael Cullen’s legislation was, in effect, a renationalisation of the foreshore and seabed

Don’t get me started, jh. Trotter’s got it wrong – pure and simple.

It wasn’t a renationalisation, because what the Court of Appeal said was that the issue of ownership had to be determined by the lower Courts on a case by case basis. So it cannot be said that the Crown ever owned all of the foreshore and seabed before the Foreshore and Seabed Act.

The Act prevented people with a claim to property rights from going to Court to get a determination as to whether those property rights actually existed.

So it was an abrogation of the right of hapu to go to Court to determine whether they or the Crown owned particular parts of the foreshore and seabed, and, as such, was an affront to justice.

And the Greens are not calling for the privatisation of a large part of the coastline. You cannot privatise something that the State does not own. If the State decides that coastline should be in public ownership, then those who lay laim to ownership should have the opportunity to prove their claims, and if they are upheld, be compensated for any subsequent nationalisation.

Anything short of that is confiscation. Imaging the uproar if the Government had decided, rather than negotiate a deal with Toll, to legislate to place ownership of the railways to public ownership without compensation. Yet that is effectively what they have done with the foreshore and seabed.

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Should be : how many people did she persuade?

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On Sue Bradford she may have been voted the most effective MP but in fact 85% of people opposed repeal of Section 59 and how many people she persuaded (“men who smack are …perverts”). Labour made its MP’s vote and National folded , so it shows how politicians can work and manipulate the system. Hardly “appropriate decision making”?

The Greens apply the ecological principle to big industries but at the other end you become advocates for the slack. Sue Bradford apologised for the Kahui’s “they aren’t part of the up side of life” despite the whanau pulling in a bomb from the welfare system.

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Tiriti guarantees Maori tino rangitiratanga and the Crown kawagatanga. It was made pre satellite phones and was an order from above to an unwilling Hobson. Europeans were a small minority. It resulted in a vague agreement re power sharing but Maori wouldn’t have much of a clue as to the ability of the British to migrate. What other result could there have been. Stop cherry picking the effects.
……………………..
Chris Trotter says it well

Seabed makes odd bedmates
FROM THE LEFT – CHRIS TROTTER

The Dominion Post | Friday, 08 February 2008

“The Labour-led Government’s decision to pass the Foreshore and Seabed Act represented their determination to ensure that our beaches remained the common property of all New Zealanders. It had long been held that the Crown’s ownership of the foreshore and seabed was “settled law�, which is why the Court of Appeal’s upholding of the Maori appellants’ claim to exercise “customary title� came as such a bombshell.

Michael Cullen’s legislation was, in effect, a renationalisation of the foreshore and seabed on behalf of the whole nation – Maori and Pakeha.

The Maori Party, the ACT Party, and (to their shame) the Greens, in calling for the act’s repeal, are, in reality, calling for the privatisation of large parts of the New Zealand coastline.
…�
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4392654a1861.html

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A supreme peice of irony. Christchurch City gifted part of Hagley Park to the government for a nurses hostel. When the hostel was closed down the government gave the land to Ngai Tahu as part of their treaty settlement. My understanding is that instead of the council entering into a gifting contract with the Crown they had foolishly made the gift in a Local Act. The Crown simply included a clause in the Ngai Tahu Settlement Act that repealed the Local Act, vested the land and buildings in the Crown and then transferred the land and buildings to Ngai Tahu.

Recent governments have had a penchant for rogering Christchurch and Canterbury. Like adding 5 cents to the petrol tax to be distributed on a per capita basis. Canterbury got that but lost an equal amount from the pre-existing petrol tax so that it got no real increase. In effect it went from losing one-third of the pre-existing tax to losing one-half. By getting all of the 5 cents it managed to keep it’s overall loss at one-third. With hypothecation of the petrol tax it reakky will lose half its petrol tax to other regions, roughly two-thirds of that loss goes to half million South Islanders who don’t live in Canterbury, the other third to Auckland and Wellington. Despite the fact that the government has known for three years that Canterbury has the worst economic damage (%RegionalGDP) from traffic congestion of the four urban areas studied by Transit.

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BB –

A major part of Te Tiriti relates to guaranteeing Maori property rights. Are you arguing that we ignore these property rights? And that we ignore theft simply because it happened in the past?

Would you be unhappy if you found out that years ago someone (who was still alive) stole and continues to profit from your (now dead) parents’ property? Given that the crown orchestrated the theft of Maori land and that the Crown still exists and continues to profit from the theft, is there not at least be a prima facie case for compensation?

To put it simply – to advocate for “moving on” from Te Tiriti would suggest you have no respect both for the rights of property owners or those affected by theft. That would make you both a communist and soft on crime – maybe I should tell my ACT buddies that you’re actually a pinko limp liberal?

Finally, no-one has argued that recognising Te Tiriti is necessary to absolve any sense of collective guilt. Instead most people in the Green Party value property rights and victims compensation, which is why we recognise Te Tiriti.

So it would appear that your views are inconsistent and shallow. Come on Big Buddha, let the light of logic clear the cold conservative poison from your clogged brain cells.

Ciao!

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Toad

First of all I need to make it clear that I was not calling you a “sickly white liberal”

Secondly how on earth did you take from what I have written that I want a war?, all I have said is that a policy like that would start a civil war and have us end up as the Zimbabwe of the South pacific.

Mind you, I am not sure that you are right given the overwhelming numerical superiority of one of the possible combatants, you also seem to suggest that it is only Maori who feel strongly enough about NZ to fight for what they believe, if you think that then you are sadly wrong.

Anyway, back to the original point, look if you can find any of he original people who suffered at the hands of the settlers then by all means negotiate to your hearts content, however I suspect you will only find distant descendants alive these days, these are the same people who lay the fault for all that is wrong with Maori at my door, if you and the Greens are silly enough to pick up that guilt then that is your problem.

I am more than happy to acknowledge the past Toad, what I am not happy to do is have that past used as an excuse for the ills of Maori, that is simply rubbish and anybody who is taken in by the con is a fool.

We can either move on and work together to create one nation or we can keep seeing Maori slip further down, the choice is an easy one as far as I can see.

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BB, it is nothing about feeling guilty. My great-grandfather was the first Mayor of Woodville, and apparently did some appalling things by the standards I acknowledge today.

Although he was dead before I was born, I still ackowledge him as one of the founders of our nation.

Just as I do Te Kooti, although I have some problems with some of the things he did too.

It is not about feeling guilty – it is about acknowleging the past and negotiating to find a way to move on in harmony.

And if you want a civil war, which I don’t, I suspect we as Pakeha would lose – you just need to look at the racial composition of the Army. In a civil war situation, the vast majority of service men and women are Maori, and would would be loyal to their hapu, rather than to the “nation” of New Zealand that has stripped them of their land!

To reverse Jim Morrison’s immortal line, as “We got the numbers, but they got the guns”!

You want a civil war, BB, carry down the path you’re on. Personally, I’d like to accept the Maori version of Te Tiriti, which is the one acknowledged in international law, and negotiate on that basis to a harmonious resolution of grievances.

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Toad

What you have just outlined is a sure fire recipe for civil war, I am sick and tired of being told (usually by sickly white liberals) that I should feel guilty about something that happened 150 years ago.
I am also sick and tired of hearing that it is my fault that Maori top almost every single statistic when it comes to crime, poverty, child abuse and the like.

It is time we moved on as a nation and time that we stopped pandering to one race, it is also time that we all started acting like New Zealanders first and worry about our ethnic heritage second.

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jh: why are you so scared of Te Tiriti being implemented in the version that is accepted according to the principles of international law?

Just saying “move on” and that after 168 years it is impossible to implement doesn’t cut it with me.

Sure, there need to be some negotiations, and some compromise, but it is still the document that is the cornerstone of constitutional propriety in this country.

Reject Te Tiriti, and you are back to the Wild West, or the Wild Kororareka (Russell) of the 1830s.

Negotiation and order, or war and chaos – what should be our destiny. I, for one, would prefer the former. Pakeha essentially subjugated Maori though the Land Wars, and now it is time to acknowledge that, and achieve some solutions that acknowledge both pre-existing Maori property rights and the rights of those who have innocently acquired property consequent on abrogation of those Maori property rights.

That requires genuine negotiation between Crown and Hapu, but not negotiation with unilaterally Crown-imposed limits.

The Crown still acts for the guilty party in terms of events past.

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JH, social justice cannot be ignored for environmentalism, and vice-versa. The realisation that the world has finite resources cannot be seperated from the principle that those resources must be distributed fairly, with an opportunity for everyone to claim a share- even future generations.

Social justice in the Green sense is directly derived from environmentalism. I honestly can’t see how you think it’s appropriate to address our over-consumption without addressing how unbalanced that consumption is.

As for non-violence? I think you’re straw-manning. I’m a big fan of this one, and I’ve long worried that our policies on America risk isolating us from a big ally if we don’t engage on our differences and why they’re healthy. We can disagree with unjust wars without attacking American culture and values. (in fact, I feel it’s far more in line with American values to disagree with unjust and imperialistic wars)

And the Treaty? I think everyone acknowledges how colonial and outdated the translation of it was, but the official/Maori version is actually a lovely document that pledges partnership and trust between Maori and European people, equating leadership with responsibility to the population in much the same way our democratic system does now. Having a document like that as the core of our constitution would be a beautiful thing indeed.

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“Rubbish. The Green Party has often debated the ranking of its principles and has always determined that they are equal. This is because greens believe environmental problems cannot be solved without the other three principles in play (and visa versa for that matter).”

and the Green Party debated the treaty and decided we should use the agreement as made by British agents with Maori in 1840 as the basis for the modern day state of NZ (a series of tribal cantons)………………..

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jh says: “The paramount principle is the ecological principle.”, etc.

Rubbish. The Green Party has often debated the ranking of its principles and has always determined that they are equal. This is because greens believe environmental problems cannot be solved without the other three principles in play (and visa versa for that matter).

There’s an obvious reason the Greens have had more success on social justice issues than environmental ones – they have to work with the government! Labour has shown it is just not interested in making progress on environmental matters, but will support Green social justice initiatives. This is the surpreme frustration of the Greens in Parliament.

As for anti-Americanism, there are many other reasons to be so inclined than non-violence, but the Greens are not anti-American. They will oppose any government (not people) showing facist tendencies and good on them.

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