Post by Kiwi Frontline on May 30, 2016 17:56:10 GMT 12
MAORI HAVE A RIGHT TO BE REPRESENTED
It's an even better concept when you have been landed with a Treaty signed between your Queen, (Queen Victoria), and the local indigenous people that, rather inconveniently it seems, requires that you treat us as equal partners.
To compare the rights of Maori, on the basis that our ancestors were some of the first people in New Zealand, with the rights of Europeans who emigrated here in those first ships totally ignores the fact that those Europeans (a) arrived in a country already occupied by others and (b) recognised the rights of those indigenous people in a treaty.
When you claim "what is actually at stake is the relationship between the public's widespread and longstanding acceptance of one person one vote and the erosion of that principle by appointed representatives based on ethnicity'', you conveniently lump Maori, the partner in the Treaty we have with the Crown, with all ethnic groups.
Maori have a right to be represented and, if it means that the best way to ensure that representation is to guarantee a place for a Maori on a local body, largely elected by middle New Zealand, then that is the right thing to do….
www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/384969/maori-have-right-be-represented
It's an even better concept when you have been landed with a Treaty signed between your Queen, (Queen Victoria), and the local indigenous people that, rather inconveniently it seems, requires that you treat us as equal partners.
To compare the rights of Maori, on the basis that our ancestors were some of the first people in New Zealand, with the rights of Europeans who emigrated here in those first ships totally ignores the fact that those Europeans (a) arrived in a country already occupied by others and (b) recognised the rights of those indigenous people in a treaty.
When you claim "what is actually at stake is the relationship between the public's widespread and longstanding acceptance of one person one vote and the erosion of that principle by appointed representatives based on ethnicity'', you conveniently lump Maori, the partner in the Treaty we have with the Crown, with all ethnic groups.
Maori have a right to be represented and, if it means that the best way to ensure that representation is to guarantee a place for a Maori on a local body, largely elected by middle New Zealand, then that is the right thing to do….
www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/384969/maori-have-right-be-represented