Waitangi Day 2005: Let's look back to values of original deal

Unfortunately we don't have a document like the American Constitution or the French Declaration of Human Rights to provide us with a lead.

Those grand documents embrace the higher human aspirations and graces such as freedom, equality and liberty. The Treaty of Waitangi is more like a property settlement, and so the collective gaze of its guardians falls more naturally on Hollywood and pre-nuptial agreements.

In the pre-nuptial camp, we have those who place the Treaty as the founding document of the new nation state. Till death do us part.

Then there are those leading the charge for a more modern marriage (one has the pad in town, the other the house in the country), others still hanker for a trial separation under the banner of tino rangatiratanga, and a more bitter and resentful lot who want out and of whom the Prime Minister once accurately tagged as "haters and wreckers".

Marriage, we are told, is supposed to be an evolving process where both parties learn to listen, know when to shut up or just leave the room. There are good times, too; the photograph album is filled with these.

The anniversary comes around. The wet hankies are put aside. The champagne is popped. The good times are retrieved. Memories, mostly. Remember that time you said this and I said that - and suddenly we were hitched. Some photographs are taken so that in five years from now, this day will be remembered and referred back to then.

And so on it goes, as we dance around the Treaty pole debating what its articles mean, their relevance, wrestling with the vagaries of translation and interpretation, and intent. Well, I think we can accept that the Treaty came from good intentions. It was revolutionary in a period of European history not known for its even-handed and respectful approach towards indigenous populations.

Most will agree it was a pretty good starting point for white settler and Maori communities dependent on one another. Good starting blocks, in other words, but is the Treaty the vehicle to take us further down the path of nationhood? Is it sufficiently inclusive? The New Zealand population has grown and changed considerably from the small encampment of Maori and the offspring of mainly white British settlers.

Today, our population has the look of the world about it - black, Asian, Latin, Polynesian and so forth. But in spite of this multi-cultural make-up our sense of nationhood persists in clinging to vows exchanged between British settlers and Maori tribes.

It is difficult to see how the Iraqi refugee or Somali or Cantonese immigrant or Samoan immigrant fits in to that neat little club. And then, why would they want to? When in the next breath that the Treaty is mentioned all they hear about are "broken promises", "reparations", "settlement "; in other words, the language of a broken home.

A document designed to take a nation forward isn't one that is used as a rod for one section of the community to use on the backs of another. In recent decades the Treaty is responsible for creating an expectation in Maori to be part of every conversation in the land, whether it is the resource consent process or local council matters.

And while this is consistent with the Treaty's principle of "partnership" (dominant among the principles winkled out by the Waitangi Tribunal and courts in recent years), this conversation would be more tolerable if, one, there was a legitimate Maori interest at stake, and two, the nagging thought that Maori often hold the veto card didn't exist.

"Partnership" has developed a lopsided sense of entitlement in one camp and obligation from the other. No wonder the Treaty is a more useful vehicle for Maori aspirations than it is for the rest of the community.

As for the rest of us, the one thing we wanted from it - sovereignty and legitimacy - was obtained more than 160 years ago.

As it stands, the Treaty is a day-to-day reminder to Maori of their entitlement and Pakeha of its obligation. For one section of the community it provides hope; for another it is a pain. This is the very real structural imperfection in our society which those we call "red-necks" complain about before they jump on the plane to Queensland.

We don't need a new document, we just need the Treaty to be more inclusive and for it to be read a bit more imaginatively.

We could start by looking at the values that sit behind the original property settlement, and highlight and distribute throughout the community more general aspirations such as "fairness", "opportunity", "sharing", "mutual respect".

Focus on those things and we have a community-wide buy in.

We just need the dominant legal document in this land to breathe a little more deeply and to speak to all.

* Lloyd Jones is a writer who won the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 2001 Montana NZ Book Awards. Other pieces in the series, by writer Philip Temple and Maori Party candidate Hone Harawira, appeared yesterday.