Post by Kiwi Frontline on Nov 6, 2023 12:06:44 GMT 12
Mike Butler: A VOTE ON THE TREATY?
Would a referendum on the treaty of Waitangi be corrosive and unfair, as anthropologist Dame Anne Salmond wrote three days ago, and how sound is the dame’s reasoning?
With the ACT Party likely to become party of a new government, Dame Anne dashed off a column to explain why she felt giving everyone the opportunity to vote on the issue was mean and unfair. She wrote:
1. Most voters can’t read the Maori text and their understandings would be shaped by non-Maori understandings.
2. Any referendum would be conducted by the Crown, which would give it more power than Maori.
3. A referendum when Maori are a relatively small minority would give them little say.
4. All this would breach the “contra proferentem” rule (created in Canadian law in 1952) which says that if an agreement is ambiguous (as the treaty appears to be), the preferred legal meaning is ‘the one that acts against the interests of the party who provided the wording.
HOWEVER:
1. Does Dame Anne include Maori voters among those who cannot read the Maori text of the treaty? Since four out of five Maori don’t speak Maori, they would be as disadvantaged as non-Maori by not being able to read the treaty in Maori.
2. She offers no evidence that a government’s power as referendum conductor would eclipse Maori power.
3. Salmond’s “minority would be outvoted” point appears to assume that “Maori” have a uniform view about what the treaty means which is contradicted by the existence of the three ACT Party MPS with Maori ancestry whose treaty views differ from Dame Anne.
4. Her the “contra proferentem” rule argument assumes that the treaty is ambiguous but anyone who reads the one-page document can see it is quite clear in what it says.
To be quite clear, all the treaty actually says is that the Queen is sovereign and Maori are her subjects, with the rights of subjects, including possession of property. That is all, in both English and Maori versions. Since then, moreover, the Queen and her successors have exercised sovereignty for over one and a half centuries, according to Canterbury University law lecturer David Round....
breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/11/mike-butler-vote-on-treaty.html
Would a referendum on the treaty of Waitangi be corrosive and unfair, as anthropologist Dame Anne Salmond wrote three days ago, and how sound is the dame’s reasoning?
With the ACT Party likely to become party of a new government, Dame Anne dashed off a column to explain why she felt giving everyone the opportunity to vote on the issue was mean and unfair. She wrote:
1. Most voters can’t read the Maori text and their understandings would be shaped by non-Maori understandings.
2. Any referendum would be conducted by the Crown, which would give it more power than Maori.
3. A referendum when Maori are a relatively small minority would give them little say.
4. All this would breach the “contra proferentem” rule (created in Canadian law in 1952) which says that if an agreement is ambiguous (as the treaty appears to be), the preferred legal meaning is ‘the one that acts against the interests of the party who provided the wording.
HOWEVER:
1. Does Dame Anne include Maori voters among those who cannot read the Maori text of the treaty? Since four out of five Maori don’t speak Maori, they would be as disadvantaged as non-Maori by not being able to read the treaty in Maori.
2. She offers no evidence that a government’s power as referendum conductor would eclipse Maori power.
3. Salmond’s “minority would be outvoted” point appears to assume that “Maori” have a uniform view about what the treaty means which is contradicted by the existence of the three ACT Party MPS with Maori ancestry whose treaty views differ from Dame Anne.
4. Her the “contra proferentem” rule argument assumes that the treaty is ambiguous but anyone who reads the one-page document can see it is quite clear in what it says.
To be quite clear, all the treaty actually says is that the Queen is sovereign and Maori are her subjects, with the rights of subjects, including possession of property. That is all, in both English and Maori versions. Since then, moreover, the Queen and her successors have exercised sovereignty for over one and a half centuries, according to Canterbury University law lecturer David Round....
breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/11/mike-butler-vote-on-treaty.html