What an ex-Labour minister thinks of Labour & the Treaty

Shelflife 1966

We have this rather extraordinary liberal preoccupation with everything Māori while we push Pakeha culture aside. Māori are having a whale of a ride on the back of the Treaty. What the Treaty doesn’t say they make up, and the liberal intelligentsia are “yes, yes, rah, rah”. The courts chime in from time to time. So you won’t see much movement on monarchy, for example, from Māori, who want to maintain the link with the Crown, or from the wider New Zealand public…..

…..Why should I be? I’m only jumped on by ignoramuses – people who believe in big government and people who think te reo and separatism are the answers to Māori problems. After World War II, we were empowering Māori, but then we slipped into welfare mode, and Māori have been the biggest and most conspicuous of the losers from modern policies. That is what worries me. I didn’t attend integration rallies in the United States in order to come home to find Māori pushing for separatism and separate treatment. What irritates me most of all are the liberals who marched alongside me when we wanted to stop rugby contact with South Africa because of apartheid; those same people now say, ‘Let’s do some separatism, just a little bit”. If we want to ruin this country, that is the way to do it. Not only because it’s wrong, but because it is proven not to help Maori…….

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