Slip of the tongue launches treaty website

By RUTH BERRY, political reporter

The Government's PC antidote, Trevor Mallard, went to great pains to stress how balanced its new treaty information programme was yesterday - before accidentally referring to its "activist" sponsorship component.

Launching the programme's website, the State Services Minister meant to note that an "active sponsorship scheme offering assistance to community-based organisations wanting to hold treaty seminars, workshops and hui" was already in place.

But in something of a Freudian slip, Mr Mallard, who promised there was nothing for extremists of any ilk on the website, said "activist" instead of "active".

The ironic twist brought a polite titter from the politically neutral public servants charged with developing the programme.

But it highlighted the sensitivities around the launch of the website , which describes the treaty as an exchange of promises.

About an hour before the site went live, National leader Don Brash slammed the $6.5 million programme as "taxpayer-funded propaganda" that his party would scrap.

"This is an unadulterated sop to Helen Clark's Maori caucus. It was first floated in 1999 and it's only now surfacing as part of a bid to help repair the divisions within the Government over the foreshore and seabed."

Mr Mallard hit back at the launch, promising repeatedly that there was nothing PC about the site, which has been carefully vetted.

He later accused Dr Brash of criticising the site before having seen it.

In fact, both politicians had their facts wrong. National had seen the site when it was given a practice run yesterday morning, and the Government finally committed to the programme last May, a month before the Court of Appeal's foreshore decision.

Labour promised before the 1999 election to establish a treaty education programme, but dragged its heels, worried that it would be accused of wanting to tell New Zealanders how to think.

Late yesterday, National MP Murray McCully said he could not see "much in the way of political correctness [on the site] thus far".

But he said if Mr Mallard wanted to "cause offence" by forcing it down people's throats, he could.

Mr Mallard said the $110,000 site provided an easily accessible way of bridging the obvious information gap around the treaty.

Television and radio programmes are also planned, and an advertising campaign will start this week.

Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres welcomed the site.

"Although there's heaps of information, there's actually very few places in which it is really accessible and well-ordered and well-edited."

Voices from history

* Tamati Waka Nene, Ngapuhi, to Lieutenant-Governor Hobson, at Waitangi on February 5, 1840.

"O Governor! Sit. Do not thou go away from us; remain for us a father, a judge, a peacemaker. Sit thou here; dwell in our midst. Do not listen to what Ngapuhi say. Stay thou, our friend, our father, our Governor."

* Rewa Ngai Tawake, Ngapuhi, to Hobson at Waitangi on February 5, 1840.

"What do Native men want of a Governor? We are not whites, nor foreigners. [We] are the Governor, we, the chiefs of this our fathers' land. I will not say 'yes' to the Governors remaining. No, no, no; return."

The Treaty of Waitangi website