Archive Article: Land Rights July 10th 98.
December 23, 2008

One of the problems with the land rights debate in Australia is the impression it gives that this has been an Australian problem only. In fact, other countries have also had to come to terms with the way that land was taken away from their indigenous owners. Professor Keith Sorrenson, until recently Professor of History at the University of Auckland, has just written an essay entitled Waitangi: New Zealand’s Enduring Struggle (published by the Australia-New Zealand Studies Centre, at Pennsylvania State University).

When British explorers went around the world, they were told by the British Government to do a deal with the local indigenous people. They were sent to make money; not to create more responsibilities for the Crown.

The colonists who arrived in Australia claimed that the land was empty and that there was no one with whom to make a deal. This fiction, of course, generated the Mabo case.

In New Zealand, the British made a deal with 530 Maori chiefs (five of whom were women). This is the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty has three main provisions: Maori ceded sovereignty to Queen Victoria; Maori were guaranteed the “full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands, forests, fisheries and other properties” and they yielded to the Crown an exclusive right of preemption to buy any land they wished to sell; and, finally, they were granted the rights and privileges of British subjects and offered royal protection.

Unfortunately for Maori, there were two versions of the text. The English language version has been the one followed. Most Maori chiefs signed the Maori language version and so did not know fully what they were agreeing to. When they found their land was being taken from them, there were conflicts.

In a sense, the conflicts – though not in physical form – continue to this day. Since the 1970s, successive New Zealand Governments have been trying to solve this problem. Professor Keith Sorrenson, who is himself part Maori, explains very well the complicated problems which have arisen.

The Waitangi Tribunal was created in 1975 to sort out Maori claims. Considerable sums of money have been paid over to Maori. I was recently lecturing at Waikato University and I was interested to see that this Crown land has now reverted to the Tainui people. The local police station is also now a tenant of the Tainui people and so has to pay them rent.

The Tribunal cannot deal with land that since 1840 has gone into private hands. It can only deal with Crown land. But the Tribunal’s pace of work has had to increase because the new right economic rationalist governments in New Zealand have been selling off government assets and so claims have needed to be lodged while the government still has the assets. The Tribunal has, after all these years, only dealt with about 20 per cent of the 650 claims on its books. In short, Australia is not the only country trying to sort out the land rights issues of its indigenous peoples. Professor Sorrenson reckons that the New Zealand problems will not be settled during the current generation.

BROADCAST ON FRIDAY JULY 10 1998 ON RADIO 2GB’S “BRIAN WILSHIRE PROGRAMME” AT 9 PM, AND ON JULY 12 1998 ON “SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE” AT 10.30 PM.