KEY POINTS:
I have attended three different hearings of the Waitangi Tribunal this year and each hearing had a very different focus.
Two of them seemed to be productive and likely to assist in fostering better relationships between Maori and the Crown without severely damaging relationships between neighbouring iwi or within hapu and whanau.
In late April the tribunal convened a judicial conference at Waitangi to consider the readiness of Ngapuhi claimants to proceed to a hearing of their historical claims.
A large gathering of people heard the Ngapuhi-nui-tonu Design Group present a memorandum on a preferred hearing process.
The claimants themselves - with lawyers relegated to seats in the audience - spoke of how they would like the tribunal to go about its hearings within a single inquiry district, which they named Te Paparahi o Ngapuhi.
One of their key submissions was that the people of each area should have control over how their claims were presented.
Lawyers and historians, although necessary to the process, should not dominate proceedings and thus marginalise tangata whenua.
The primary role of the tribunal in historical claim hearings is to hear the grievances of Maori against the Crown and so it is Maori themselves who should be heard.
Chief Judge Williams acknowledged the work of the Design Group and agreed that hearings could start in the not too distant future.
At the beginning of this month, at Orakei marae, the tribunal was hearing the closing submissions of claimants in the Wai 262 claim.
These proceedings were dominated by lawyers, but properly so on this occasion.
The lawyers were summarising the key points of evidence presented by claimants from six iwi on important contemporary issues concerning Maori cultural knowledge systems and the interface between tikanga Maori and intellectual property law concerning native flora and fauna.
This was the conclusion of many hearings spread over many years in different parts of the country.
There was a keen questioning by tribunal members of lawyers for the claimants as the tribunal sought to tease out the practicality and purpose of claimant submissions on mechanisms to enhance tino rangatiratanga over flora and fauna and cultural knowledge systems.
Crown counsel submissions and those of interested third parties were also being scrutinised.
When the Wai 262 report is published its contents are unlikely to please all parties.
Nevertheless, the tribunal process certainly focused attention on a wide range of matters of great importance to many Maori.
It is crucial that the Crown should move away from dealing with contemporary issues merely by government officials going through the motions in endless consultations but without ever sharing real power or investigating co-management possibilities.
I have hope that important progress may be made as a result of these hearings.
Then there has been the tribunal hearing on the Tamaki Makaurau settlement process, held in March. The tribunal report on this hearing has just been published.
It is, and always has been, obvious to most Maori and to informed observers that the Crown's Treaty settlement policies are flawed in many respects and that the redress offered to claimant groups is paltry.
That is why there was such an overwhelming and resounding rejection by Maori of the policy when it was discussed at the "fiscal envelope" hui in 1995.
Despite that fierce opposition from Maori, National and Labour governments from 1995 to 2007 have implemented the key planks of that settlement policy through the Office of Treaty Settlements.
With reluctance, many iwi and some hapu have decided to enter direct negotiations with the office.
There are no signs that a policy more generous to Maori is in sight - on the contrary, there is plenty of evidence of "Treaty fatigue" among vocal Pakeha and a strong desire by most political parties to get the whole process over as soon as possible.
Yet the tribunal has allowed urgent hearings from claimants seeking to overturn whatever settlement offer the Crown has agreed to make to iwi who have negotiated.
Such hearings can only reward the most shrill claimants, most of whom condemn the whole Crown settlements policy and care not a whit if they cause or exacerbate intertribal animosities.
The Government is so tight-fisted about the redress it offers that there are more than enough Crown assets in all regions of the country, and especially in Auckland, to satisfy any iwi that is prepared to travel along the Office of Treaty Settlements route.
The relationships between neighbouring iwi that Judge Wainwright and her colleagues purport to be concerned about cannot possibly be enhanced by their impractical recommendation that the office should simultaneously negotiate with all groups that may have some ancestral historical connection to the Auckland area, regardless of whether or not they have had an actual presence in the central isthmus redress area since 1840.
The tribunal should stick to its knitting. Historical claims inquiries and contemporary legal policy issues are its strength.
Encouraging claimants to pay law firms to fire arrows at Crown settlement policies cannot be a good use of the increased funding that the Budget allocated to the Tribunal.
* David V. Williams is a professor of law at the University of Auckland and a researcher of legal history and Treaty claims. The opinion above is a personal one.
