Half-a-billion dollar "Treelord" settlement

[El Dopa]

so does this mean the British Government is about to make reparations for all the North Sea oil and gas profits from over the past 3 decades too?

Only if you apologise for Braveheart.

[Magua]

why shouldn't soemthing like forestry assets or fisheries be state controlled?

Depends on your viewpoint. Fisheries QMS was brought in because people were over fishing (well, that's the reason they gave).

When it came to allocating quotas, they handed them out on a catch quantity basis. Basically, those who had the biggest catches between '82 and '82 (not sure on the years) received the biggest quotas. So then these fishermen went out and caught as much as they possibly could to receive large quotas, 85% of the quota system controlled by 12 companies.

There's a reason for not letting the government control it _b

[sAsLEX]

Depends on your viewpoint. Fisheries QMS was brought in because people were over fishing (well, that's the reason they gave).

And watch Coastwatch and see who plunders undersized Paua et al. and ruins ecosystems....... did I hear someone mention the Moa.......

[Scouse]

so does this mean the British Government is about to make reparations for all the North Sea oil and gas profits from over the past 3 decades too?

So are you saying that the Scotts are the Maoris of Britan

[Sanx]

That's debatable. My ancestry is from England and Scotland. When can my Scottish side expect reparation from the English for however many years of oppressive rule?? Or the English from the Romans?? At what point do you say "Fuck it, that's the way the world was at the time"?

Meh? Is that all? My surname is anglo-saxon, dating from Warwickshire before the Norman Conquest. That's on my dad's side. My mother's family originates from the Baltic states, but as they're all Jews, who knows where the fook they come from before that.

As I see it then, I have lots of people and governments I can sue for confiscation of lands my ancestors had traditional ownership of or customary rights to. The Vikings (all Scandinavian governments) and the Normans (the French) will have had a negative effect on the presumed wealth of my father's ancestors - yes, for all I know they were lowly serfs, but that's not the point. As for my mother's family ... well, it's hard to know where to start. The Germans, the Poles, the Cossacks, the Russians - they'll all have to be sued too.

Treaty claims, and therefore settlements, are a crock of shite. Nowhere else in the world has had a system of compensating the natives for land taken during colonisation, with the possible exception of Zimbabwe, and look how well that's gone.

Before whitey turned up in this country, the Maori were a stone-age canabalistic society with no formal governance or structure outside of the Iwi; and that governance took the form of a lord / serf arrangement. Internecine feuds were commonplace, with many tribes displaced from lands they held or simply wiped out completely. (As soon as one tribe got guns, the first thing they did was attack the next Iwi over to take their land.) Whilst Maori like to portray themselves as a peaceful people with an advanced well-established culture, they weren't. They hadn't discovered the wheel, let alone such other niceties as the written word. There were massive differences in language from one region to another as well as in other traditional cultural activites and customs. Maori hadn't even been in New Zealand that long, in the grand scheme of things. No-one really knows when the seven great waka arrived - or in fact how many great waka there actually were - somewhere between 800AD and 1300AD is usually quoted, with Maori generally claiming they got here towards the early part of that period to try to further legitimise their claims against the Crown.

The issue of whether or not the Moriori were here first, or devolved from the Maori population as a whole, is unknown. The commonly-held belief that they were here prior to Maori and were wiped out or displaced by Maori, thus negating any tangata whenua-based claims, has since been revised with the common thinking that Moriori settled just the Chatham Islands at the same time as the Maori settled New Zealand. Their physical and genetic simlarity to Maori makes analysis of bones very difficult, so no-one actually knows. What is absolutely certain is that the virtual extinction of the Moriori was primarily caused by Maori invasions of the Chathams. Although the population declined once whitey turned up with their exotic diseases and started hunting the seals that formed a large part of the Moriori's diet, the biggest decline came from massacre at the hands of Taranaki Maori. In 1835, two ships carrying 900 armed Maori arrived in the Chathams. The Moriori were enslaved or slaughtered. Moriori were forbidden to marry or breed with other Moriori. Between 1835 (whitey arrived in 1791) and 1862, the population declined from 2000 to only 101 full-blooded individuals. The last full-blooded Moriori died in 1933. My point in saying all this? The confiscation of the Chathams and the slaughter and enslavement of its inhabitants was acceptable according to Maori culture at the time. They saw nothing wrong with it. To my knowledge the Iwi responsible for the Chatham invasion (Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama) have never apologised for their actions, let alone paid out compensation. Should such acts have been carried out by whitey on Maori, you can be certain there'd be numerous claims for substantial compensation.

Loss of traditional land and customs is often blamed for Maori's over-representation in just about every negative statistic going: child abuse, alcoholism and drug-abuse, prison population, life-expectancy, illiteracy, unemployment, etc. Well, contrary to what many Maori activists would like to claim, customs and language cannot be passed down through genetics. The vast majority of today's activists did not have land taken from them. The vast majority of such acts did not occur in the lifetimes of today's activists' parents. The grievances they have are therefore not raised from the loss of something they (as individuals, not as a culture) once possessed, but more a passed-down sense of aggrievement. The failure of modern Maori to adjust, as thousands of cultures and peoples have done all over the world, is blamed on this one thing. If we'd had our lands we could of, should of would of been OK.

The difference between Maori and the thousands of other peoples in a similar position round the world is that there was that Treaty. Ignoring the small fact that not all Iwi chiefs signed it (though that's never stopped those Iwi making claims under it, funnily enough). Maori were happy to conquer other Iwi, confiscate their land and slaughter and enslave their people. That was the Maori way and in keeping with their culture and customs. The rules that Maori today want to retrospectively apply to whitey do not apply to them themselves. One only has to look at the spat between various Iwi over who 'owned' the lands around the Hauraki gulf to see an example of this inconsistency. Now there are great wads of cash up for grabs, there are different Iwi fighting over who should get it. The greatest hypocrisy comes from the Iwi that came out on top way back when, with their modern descendants claiming the land was theirs by right of conquest. Well, in that case, why can't the right of conquest be applied to whitey coming and taking it over only a few years later?

The whole Treaty issue has grown into a gravy train machine designed to extract as much money and land out of the government. It's existence is divisive to the nation as a whole. The best outcome would be for the whole thing to be abolished and the Treaty of Waitangi written out of legislation and relegated to a status it should have occupied years back; an interesting relic.

[Sanx]

So are you saying that the Scotts are the Maoris of Britan

Based upon per-capita consumption of lard, fags and booze - yup.

[McJim]

Only if you apologise for Braveheart.

He's always apologising for summat isn't he?

So are you saying that the Scotts are the Maoris of Britan

That was pretty much what I was hinting at. Ever been to a housing scheme in Wester Hailes, Easterhouse, Drumchapel, South Nitshill, Blackhill etc?

[Steam]

The best outcome would be for the whole thing to be abolished and the Treaty of Waitangi written out of legislation and relegated to a status it should have occupied years back; an interesting relic.

Aside from being illegal, requiring the consent of both parties who signed it, it'd be a disaster for New Zealand.

A small group of people are already angry, it wouldn't take too much to push the extremists over the edge.
I don't think you realise how angry some people are out there.
Look at the amateurish and hilarious Urewera "terrorist training camps".
What if they had actually been competent, careful, secret, and had been training terrorists, teaching people how to make bombs, cover their tracks, organise properly.

How expensive is a ton of fertilizer? How much is a 200 litres of diesel? You don't need to be very organised either. Three or four people who knew enough not to talk.

They would've wreaked havoc.
And of course then there'd be crackdowns and revenge on maori communities etc, and can you say Hello Northern Ireland?

A legal, equitable settlement through the Waitangi Tribunal is our best chance of getting out of this without violence.

[homer]

Riffer, I'm responding in reverse order, cos I'm not smart enough to mess around with quotes.

That's debatable. My ancestry is from England and Scotland. When can my Scottish side expect reparation from the English for however many years of oppressive rule?? Or the English from the Romans?? At what point do you say "Fuck it, that's the way the world was at the time"?

Regardless, this settlement will do nothing to help "everyday" Maori (my laptop can't do the little sign on the "a", sorry Steam) leading the country in:
Alcoholism
Child Abuse (and killings)
Leaving School with little to no qualifications
Teen pregnancy
Drugs
Crime

The Maori I know personally are hard working, honest people struggling to be good parents like most parents in NZ.

This $500,000,000 will be "managed" by the "Leaders" of the Tribe, who will probably invest in smart things (Like the Warriors league team) and working class (and lower) Maori will get precisely no benefit from it.

I don't know what the answer to Maori's problems are, but throwing half a billion at them (which most will never see) can't be it. And will only cause resentment for all other NZ'ers who are struggling.

And how many Carbon Credits were Maori trading in 1840 or earlier???

EXACTLY : never want anything till its going to make money A

[Mully]

How much is a 200 litres of diesel?

About $1000 if you listen to my trucking companies. Bastards keep raising their fuel surcharges.

A legal, equitable settlement through the Waitangi Tribunal is our best chance of getting out of this without violence.

Equitable to who?? That's my whole point. This "settlement" is not going to help Billy and Jo Hohepa raise their kids. It's more likely to piss them off, with fuel and food prices going through the roof.

[cowpoos]

Half a BILLION dollars.

As a Treaty Settlement.

No, that's not divisive at all.

Fuckers.

And I've just realised that Ngai Tahu have a 50 fucking year "Top up"clause in their 1994 settlement.

In the Grand scheme of things...let it go!! the government have appeased a wrong..trying to make it rightr...and half a billion dollars is not at all a large sum of money!! the treasury looses and finds amounts similar within weeks!! and besides..its like $125 dollars per person!! and its not like the money will be sitting dead in a bank acount somewhere..it will be staright back into the economy in some form or another..

If you want a group of people to whinge about...how about middle income NZ that has a heap of bills and hire purchases they can't afford...drive pretentious cars...have 3-4 kids...earn a good income...but also clain 100-300 a week in 'WORKING FOR FAMILIES' I mean for fuck sake...if you and your partner decide to have children...step up and be a fucking role model to them and look after them by you own devices!!! sort your finances out..because normal socially responsibe citizens get sick of handouts for the sake of it!!

I over heard a conversation a while back...this Fella has a wife and 5 kids..nothing wrong with that..he calims $280 a week from working for families shit on top of his wage...now thats what happens...the funny bit...a few mins later he starts whigning about his tax's going to low life bums!!

daft prick.....anyway.

[avgas]

That's really easy to say when you're on the top of the pile, and less easy to say if every day you see the grandchildren of thieves living on the land their grandfathers stole from you.

And what about those of us that have moved here in the last 150 years, bought land legitimately and not only worked the land, but also work for the country making it to the position that it is no. Are you saying the fact the land was obtained illegally and purchased legitimately that there are no rights to the new owner.
Sorry your argument is flawed purely in the fact that Maori were here only twice as long as we have. So they have the same rights as the rest of us - its called equality.
Yes i agree the Maori are innocent victims, but right now they are not setting levels of acceptance in treaty disputes, and the only way all the tribes will be happy according to your logic is to reverse the last 150 years. Making 3.7 million more innocent victims call the non-maori NZers.
I'm sorry i feel that Maori deserve nothing from NZ and its people, they have an issue with the crown (which a good 90% of NZ do not support anymore), they should go to queenie and sort it out with her.
As for your reference to chinese invading NZ, i suggest both you and your teacher research china a bit more - in particular the american/french/latin/japanese conssessions in china, the rape of Nanking, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mongonlia, Tibet, the 1000's of political movements......then you realise that not only has china had its fair share of shit - but it also has moved forwards for the better of the country. Where as NZ is lets the minority DICTATE our lives.

[avgas]

[size=4] the treasury looses and finds amounts similar within weeks!! and besides..its like $125 dollars per person!! and its not like the money will be sitting dead in a bank acount somewhere..it will be staright back into the economy in some form or another..

Haha this is classic - while i think the rest of your comment it a bit borderline for me. I felt this is well put.
As for the forget it part poo's, mabey your right. And I'll tell you what if they stop claiming i will also forget.
But i have a feeling that my great grandchildren will still be sorting this shit out.

[avgas]

And of course then there'd be crackdowns and revenge on maori communities etc, and can you say Hello Northern Ireland?

Nah they stopped before us. Forgive and forget

[mangell6]

The best outcome would be for the whole thing to be abolished and the Treaty of Waitangi written out of legislation and relegated to a status it should have occupied years back; an interesting relic.

and other relics like the NZ Constitution!


There is a major difference between being "conquered" and negotiating a treaty. i.e. not conquered.

Not being so good at history, but I seem to remember that only individual landowners (the male) were allowed to vote in the 19th century. Maori do not have a concept of individual ownership therefore cannot vote.

Good to see that at least someone can get one over the government for a change.