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Post by Kiwi Frontline on Jan 31, 2017 16:20:14 GMT 12
WATER AND WAITANGI: A CONSTITUTIONAL MATTER Meanwhile the actual Prime Minister, Bill English, gets down to serious business when he and a raft of ministers meet the iwi leaders forum on Friday. High on the agenda is freshwater. Drawing on article 2 and tino rangatiratanga, iwi/hapu have insisted the Government and councils do not have an absolute right to allocate water, which commercial and farming interests turn into a property right of use and profit. Iwi/hapu don't ``own'' water as the general law defines ``own''. Nobody does, not even the Government. But iwi/hapu do have legacy and cultural claims because in Maori law lakes, rivers and streams were and are vital to life and integral to their being and identity, which is akin to a form of ownership. The Treaty is an growing part of that constitution through court judgements, specific legislation, government decisions and evolving practice. Some want it tidily in a judge-supervised constitution. But messy constitutions evolve more responsively. Mr Finlayson, for example, is doing some ``tidying'': after a Judicature Modernisation Act last year next comes consolidation into one act of the various bits governing Parliament and ``some work'' on the Constitution Act. So, it might be said, there is water to flow under the constitutional bridge...... www.odt.co.nz/opinion/water-and-waitangi-constitutional-matter
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