Lange: "The treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts.”

 

“It is with no disrespect for Maori feeling for the treaty that I have to say it means nothing to me. It can mean nothing to me because it has nothing to say to me. When I was in office I understood that the government had succeeded to certain legal and moral obligations of the government which signed the treaty, and that in so far as those obligations had not been met it was our responsibility to honour them. But that is the extent of it.
    "The treaty cannot be any kind of founding document, as it is sometimes said to be. It does not resolve the question of sovereignty, if only because one version of it claims one form of sovereignty and the other version claims the opposite. The court of appeal once, absurdly, described it as a partnership between races, but it obviously is not. The signatories are, on one side, a distinctive group of people, and on the other, a government which established itself in New Zealand and whose successors represent all of us, whether we are descendants of the signatories or not. The treaty cannot even resolve the argument among Maori themselves in which one side maintains that you’re a Maori if you identify as such, and the other claims that it’s your links to traditional forms of association which define you as Maori.
    "As our increasingly dismal national day continues to show, the treaty is no basis for nationhood. It doesn’t express the fundamental rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and it doesn’t have any unifying concept. The importance it has for Maori people is a constant reminder that governments in a democracy should meet their legal and moral obligations, but for the country taken as a whole, that is, and must be, the limit of its significance.
    "Here I come to the dangers posed by the increasing entrenchment of the treaty in statute.
    "The treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts. It is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place, and the public interest in it is the same as the public interest in enforcing any properly-made agreement. To go further than that is to acknowledge the existence of undemocratic forms of rights, entitlements, or sovereignty.
    "The treaty is a wonderful stick for activists to beat the rest of us with, but it could never have assumed the importance it has without the complicity of others. It came to prominence in liberal thought in the seventies, when many who were concerned about the abuse of the democratic process by the government of the day began to see the treaty as a potential source of alternative authority. It’s been the basis of a self-perpetuating industry in academic and legal circles. Many on the left of politics who sympathise with Maori aspiration have identified with the cause of the treaty, either not knowing or not caring that its implications are profoundly undemocratic." 

~ former Labour Prime Minister David Lange from his year 2000 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture. Quoted by Gary Judd in his post 'Treaty is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place,' in which he concludes by reciting Lange's accurate observation that "The treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts.” 

"In the real world," Gary points out, "there are no principles of the Treaty. They exist only in a fantasy world created by the 1972-1975 Labour government’s Treaty of Waitangi Act. The magical possibilities of this fantasy world have expanded since then to the point where ordinary New Zealanders feel threatened by those who would claim on the basis solely of their identity, or who they identify with, that they have a superior place, and that democracy must be relegated to a subordinate position."