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Maori MPs have clashed in Parliament last night over a bill setting a deadline for lodging historic Treaty of Waitangi claims.
The Maori Purposes Bill makes September 1, 2008 the deadline for new historic claims and it passed its third reading on a vote of 104-9.
Only the Maori Party and the Greens voted against it, and they have strongly opposed the bill since it was introduced to Parliament in June this year.
Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples said the deadline was "an arbitrary and politically-contrived imposition" which was being enacted without any consultation with Maori.
"It is yet another, if not the most severe, example of a government prepared to run roughshod over Maori for any price," he said during the third reading debate.
"It is one partner, the Crown, imposing the rule of law of their parliamentary majority over the other. This is a classic example of might is right."
Dr Sharples said his party had previously attempted to have the deadline changed to September 1, 2020, but the Government had refused to listen.
"Over and over again, the tyranny of the majority overpowered Treaty justice," he said.
Labour's Maori MP Shane Jones said he had heard enough of the Maori Party's "florid claims".
"There is no tyranny in Aotearoa you can speak of," he said.
"This bill states the inevitable - claims for compensation because of historical grievances are drawing to an end."
Mr Jones said the bill was based on a vision of New Zealand looking to the future, not one that locked the country into constant arguing about the past.
"We must rise above that bout of historical discord and focus on our role in the world," he said.
"We will never go there by listening to dated, tedious, predictable speeches that lack inspiration and rationality... we must free our young people from the tripe we hear every day about colonialism, and grievance that breeds a festering sore in the minds of our young people."
- NZPA
