Why we should all rally around the Treaty over water rights and asset sales today

A Crown witness from the Office of Treaty Settlements at the Waitangi Tribunal hearing conceded that given the Crown diverts and captures certain tracts of water in order to use to create hydro-electric power, and that it controls it to the exclusion of all others, it was a characteristic of ownership. This admission they noted undermined the Government’s base proposition that no one owned the water. They concluded that selling state assets to foreign investors would not be in the interests of all New Zealanders.

That's a Crown witness.

What is truly offensive about all of this is the way this Prime Minister has behaved since having his economically self-harming policy to sell our assets halted in its tracks by Maori. Our Prime Minister initially attacked the claim by the Maori Council, attacked the mana of the Tribunal, told the media he could ignore any decision and then demanded the Tribunal hurry up the decision he had already informed us that he could ignore.

The Prime Minister even had the audacity to claim Maori were being opportunistic. Seeing as John is the one pushing through one of the most unpopular asset sale policy's in modern political history, I'd suggest he was the one being opportunistic. If anything, John's rash ideologically driven asset sales agenda has prompted a swarm of claims from Ngāti Kahungunu over waterways to Ngapuhi over wind. It is the attempt to privatize that has created this response because Maori are the last line of defense for our national sovereignty.

It would be difficult for Key to trump the contempt he has shown Maori to date, but refusing to attend the National Hui today and listen to the concerns of all Maori, and not just the corporate Iwi he is trying to buy off, is a new low even for this Prime Minister. A real New Zealand Prime Minister would uphold our egalitarian traditions and be inclusive by actively working to include everyone, but not John Key. Our money trader leader has done everything he can not to engage, preferring to pick off Iwi one by one with divide and conquer tactics.

Maori are not so easily tricked Mr Key. While John tries to cook up a deal over the next 5 weeks, all of Maoridom have gathered today by invitation from Kingi Tūheitia to debate and take their concerns to the highest Courts in the land to demand the justice Key is so quick to deny them.

Pakeha should want the Treaty honored because it's our Treaty too. These are our collective resources that Key is trying to privatize with voodoo economics that don't work.

Maori are fighting for collectivity and we should rally around that fight.

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