KEY POINTS:
The Lord loves a trier, as the old saying has it, but there's no reason that the Immigration Service or the Waitangi Tribunal should.
Tribunal judge Carrie Wainwright has thrown out a case brought by Rosina Hauiti of Tauranga, who wanted her Tongan husband recognised as a taonga under the Treaty.
Wainwright came to her conclusion based on the law, saying the Waitangi Tribunal is not the place for immigration issues. But any conclusion based on common sense would also have found Hauiti is pushing her luck way beyond the bounds of probability.
Her counsel, former immigration minister Tuariki Delamere, is professionally obliged to further his client's interests, but presumably he has the grace to blush in private at the gall of his claim that Mofuike Fonua, whom Hauiti married barely a month before his work permit expired last November, is a taonga as defined by Article 2 of the Treaty. That's the clause that refers to "lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties" in the English version (the "other properties" bit is rendered as "[nga] taonga katoa" in the Maori version).
It seems hard to imagine that "other properties/taonga katoa" was ever intended to refer to illegal overstayers. Sensibly, Wainwright agreed. And does Hauiti really consider her husband her property?
Maori with legitimate claims before the Tribunal are angry that time is being wasted by a "vexatious" claim.
Let's hope the High Court, to which Delamere earlier said he planned to appeal if Wainwright didn't see the application his way, will give him short shrift, too. This is seriously silly stuff.
