The High Court finds fault with the Waitangi Tribunal (and a breach of The Treaty) while Jackson is congratulating it

Our Beehive bulletin

While Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson was addressing members of the Waitangi Tribunal,  the High Court was setting aside a tribunal decision to return $800m in state-owned land to an iwi because it had failed to follow tikanga Māori and breached the Treaty

Good grief!

The tribunal breached “the Treaty”?

Apparently so.

According to Newsroom:

Crucially, Justice Francis Cooke declared the tribunal had been in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and not followed tikanga when it decided lands transferred to state-owned enterprises or in Crown forests in the central North Island should be returned to the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi.

The disputed tribunal ruling on the $800m of public lands accordingly has been overturned (although the judgement may be appealed).

Jackson’s speech to the tribunal members, telling them what a splendid job they were doing and giving them an idea of the future work that lies in store for them, was posted on the Beehive website along with –

Another hurrah for treaty rights – but what’s the appetite for restoring all the rights enjoyed by all citizens in 1840?

We are wondering – here at Point of Order – which politician will go out to bat for the idea that all citizens of this country be accorded exactly the same voting rights they were given at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

To ensure nobody was denied those rights, all prisoners of all races in our prisons should be included in this entitlement.

We would like to think the Waitangi Tribunal might  consider endorsing this idea because today it has released He Aha i Pērā Ai? The Māori Prisoners’ Voting Rights Report in pre-publication format.

The tribunal says the urgency report addresses three claims that seek repeal of section 80(1)(d) of the Electoral Act 1993.  It looks at the level of advice provided to Parliament and the Law and Order Select Committee and the consequent ongoing effects of the legislation on Māori, including the individual and collective exercise of tino rangatiratanga.

In other words, its approach is proudly discriminatory.  It is concerned not with the rights  of all prisoners but with the rights of around half of them.

Try not to laugh when you see who sits on the UN body that will evaluate NZ’s human rights performance

The challenge for Justice Minister Andrew Little, when he faces the UN Human Rights Council, will be keeping a straight face.

This outfit has an august-sounding name.  Its membership is a joke.

During his flight to Switzerland to meet the council, Little might care to muse on the Saudi teenager who has been granted asylum in Canada where she arrived amid a diplomatic row between Ottawa and Riyadh over Canadian criticism of Saudi Arabia’s rights record, particularly a recent crackdown on women’s rights activists.

The teenager’s arrival coincided, too, with a deepening of global concern about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outrage that has drawn attention to the global reach of Saudi Arabia’s leaders.

Little might muse, too, on the antics of President Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs has taken the lives of thousands in the Philippines and who last year announced plans to create a “death squad” targeting suspected Communist rebels.