KEY POINTS:
Just when it seemed we'd experienced that rare event - a Waitangi Day full of sweetness and light - along comes the Government and sicks up all over the paepae.
What possessed two Northland-based Maori Labour MPs, Dover Samuels and Shane Jones, to suddenly join Prime Minister Helen Clark and feign shock, amazement and annoyance that Treaty Ground visitors had to pay a $12 entry fee.
As a former Minister of Maori Affairs, Mr Samuels should have been well aware of the situation. As an ex-officio member of the Waitangi Trust Board while minister, he should have known exactly why the cash-strapped board has always been forced to charge visitors. Ditto the Prime Minister, another ex-officio board member.
Then again, as trust chairman Jeremy Williams pointed out in yesterday's Herald, the biggest governance problem on the trust has been the non-appearance of the three ex-officio Government ministers, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Conservation and the Minister of Maori Affairs.
If the Government now believes entry to "the cradle of the nation", as former governor-general Lord Bledisloe described it, should be free, then why didn't it announce its plan to fund the decision as the feel-good highspot to what had been, until then, a fisticuff-free day of commemoration.
Instead, the festivities ended with the Prime Minister and her two bully boys bizarrely whacking the trustees around the ears for continuing a practice of levying entrance charges which began 70 years ago.
Ironically, the one day of the year the politicians are on the Treaty Grounds en masse is the only day the entry fee is waived.
Instead of berating the trustees, politicians of all hues should be hanging their heads in embarrassment that it's taken them so long to address the issue. Maybe that's why they're trying to blame others now. Then again, when you see the rat-nibbled, water-damaged state of the actual Treaty itself, you're reminded how slow several generations of leaders have been to honour our Treaty past.
Indeed the Treaty Grounds itself has only survived intact thanks to the foresight of Britisher Lord Bledisloe, who as governor-general in 1931 bought the property secretly out of his own pocket to save it from being carved up for housing development. Successive governments until then had not seen any need to secure the historic site.
A year later Lord Bledisloe wrote to prime minister George Forbes, "formally" gifting the nation "New Zealand's most historic spot 'Waitangi' together with 1000 acres of land belonging to the estate of which it forms a part".
A trust board was set up, with Lord and Lady Bledisloe as life members along with the prime minister and two other ministers as ex-officio trustees. Also there were, and are, descendants of the families - Maori and Pakeha - who signed the Treaty. A 1958 amendment allowed a representative of the family of James Busby, whose house it originally was, on to the trust.
Lord Bledisloe gifted further surrounding land for planting in income-earning exotic forest, and for a native bird and plant sanctuary and sporting facilities. He also gave money to a renovation fund. It was Depression time and other donations were rare. Local volunteers kept the dream alive. In 1937, entry fees were introduced.
Apparently the Government has never offered a penny by way of supporting the upkeep of the cradle of the nation. The trust now earns around $2.8 million a year from rents from an adjacent hotel and golf course and admission fees. Four years ago the trust asked for Government funds to help upgrade facilities without success. On the eve of this week's commemorations, the ASB Community Trust made a $7 million grant to fund a new visitors' centre, part of the trust's $22 million modernisation programme.
Helen Clark now says: "I would like to see people able to enter, what in effect, is the birthplace of our nation without a fee." Most of us would agree. But as the trust chairman says, if the Government suddenly feels so strongly about it, why didn't she and her two ministerial trustees, front up at a board meeting with their funding solution in hand.
