Dialogue: Getting the treaty behind us (or not)

Politicians frustrated at slow progress in Treaty of Waitangi settlements would like to get the treaty behind them. But they can't.

Not only are grievances not susceptible to fast resolution, as Margaret Wilson has acknowledged in her new settlement principles, but since 1990 the treaty's place in politics has moved far beyond grievances. It is now deeply enmeshed in arguments about the constitution, economic development and social equity.

Into this matagouri patch steps Parekura Horomia, with a passion to right wrongs against Maori, remembered from as far back as his barefoot childhood. That passion will make him "minister for Maori." So will the fragility of Labour's hold on the Maori seats.

But Mr Horomia must be more than minister for Maori. He must also be Minister of Maori Affairs in a national Government - that is, he must represent the national interest. No minister has managed this difficult balance.

Act and National will target Helen Clark's rookie minister if he does not lean to the national interest side, like almost all his predecessors. They hope to detach treaty sceptics from Labour's vote.

John Tamihere, star of Waipareira, will be a constant reminder that Maori want him to be their champion.

Not that Mr Tamihere might take Mr Horomia's job. Mr Tamihere's failure to "fess up" all some weeks back landed him deservedly back in the dogbox last Friday. This sort of memory lapse cannot be risked in a ministerial appointment. Dover Samuels' fall showed that.

Mr Tamihere's challenge to Mr Horomia is as a standard-bearer for urban Maori to a minister whose background is tribal and traditional - at a time when the demographic balance looks to be tipping in the urban direction.

In one sense this does not matter. The "gaps" Helen Clark has commanded Mr Horomia to close are wide in country and city alike. He and Mr Tamihere have common cause in that (even if different perspectives).

And, while Te Puni Kokiri, Mr Horomia's department, is below strength, partly because capable Maori are in high demand by other departments, Helen Clark plans to buttress him with support from her department, and in any case will, as chair of the cabinet "gaps" committee and thus "de facto minister," closely follow his work.

But the gaps are not Mr Horomia's only challenge. As minister for Maori he must uphold the treaty in the cabinet. You might expect this cabinet to be sympathetic to treaty ambitions. And it is. But there are limits.

This is not just discomfort at the seemingly endless grievance settlement process and the constant extension by Maori of its alleged scope (for example, to include radio spectrum and petroleum) - at a time when, a Massey University survey found, two-thirds of the population wants the treaty abolished or a strong limitation on settlements.

Key figures in the cabinet have also, since the constitutional conference in April, become acutely aware of the much deeper Maori ambitions embedded in the treaty: demands by some to entrench treaty rights in the constitution; assertions by others that the treaty is the constitution; claims of Maori sovereignty; and models of power-sharing that (as in Fiji now) reject the one-person, one-vote principle.

These ambitions are gaining growing adherence among Maori. But they are anathema to most non-Maori. Such widening and irreconcilable differences have buried Labour hopes of even modest constitutional reform.

Instead, the hope in some Government quarters now is that real progress on the gaps might cool sovereignty and power-sharing demands because people who now feel the majoritarian democratic system has locked them out might then see value in it.

If so, it will take a long time. And even then, Professor Mason Durie warned the constitutional conference, that will not extinguish the treaty - not for Maori leaders anyway.

Which will keep Labour-led cabinets on hot bricks. Mr Horomia is stepping onto the hottest of those bricks.

ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz