Editorial: Keep the day but change our attitude

If proof of a widespread disillusionment with Waitangi Day were needed, it is provided by the wealth of alternatives now being offered. Options of little value are receiving undue consideration in the wake of the sometimes undignified and often misguided goings-on at Waitangi over the past few years.

What should be a celebration of nationhood and the partnership between Maori and Pakeha has become a turn-off for many. It all makes for the saddest of comparisons with the mood across the Tasman on Australia Day, or that in the United States for Independence Day.

Proposals to remedy this malaise take two main forms. First is the idea, advanced by United Future's Peter Dunne, that February 6 should be renamed New Zealand Day. It has, of course, been tried before, between 1974 and 1976. It need not be tried again. Name-changing of this sort amounts to ineffectual tinkering.

If the date of national observance remains the same, the focus will always be the Treaty of Waitangi and race relations, whatever the day is called.

Others, therefore, want a different day to be the occasion of national commemoration. The dates most often mentioned are Anzac Day and May 24, the day, in 1854, when our first House of Representatives sat. Neither is appropriate. We commemorate our war dead on April 25, and that day should be reserved as such. May 24, on the other hand, marks an event that is never going to animate, let alone inspire. It hardly compares in significance to one of the hallmarks of this country's distinctiveness - its founding by a treaty between the first occupants and a colonial power.

That, in fact, leads to an unavoidable conclusion: as much as we might consider moving or renaming our national day, it is a fruitless exercise. Quite simply, February 6 is the logical date for national observance - tensions and all. To suggest otherwise is to deny the central role that the Treaty of Waitangi has played, and continues to play. Even shifting the day to another date would not avoid debate on the treaty, so pivotal has it become.

Waitangi Day, in fact, needs not so much to be relocated as to be rethought and remodelled. It should be highlighted by the sort of events that distinguish Australia Day, not disruptive behaviour at Waitangi and a narrow range of multicultural festivals. Every January 26, Australians celebrate their national day with the release of an honours list, the swearing in of new citizens, and a wide array of high-profile sporting events and concerts. Cities and towns across Australia make their own citizen-of-the-year awards and organise community get-togethers. The common boast is that there is something for everyone to enjoy.

New Zealanders are said, of course, to be less inclined to display patriotic fervour than Australians or Americans. But, seemingly, only on their national day.

Maori and Pakeha are quite capable of observing their common nationality when something as uncontroversial as sporting pride is on the line. Or of feeling unified and fiercely patriotic when thrown together thousands of kilometres from home. On such occasions, there is none of the wariness, trepidation and lethargy that accompanies Waitangi Day. With a little rethinking, it could yet be the same on February 6.