Rob Paterson
Rob Paterson is a retired lawyer who lives in Tauranga.
Many people are making valid protests about Waitangi claimants with very slight Māori bloodlines (ethnicity) and are looking for a formula on how to address this anomaly. Well, here’s the solution: it’s called the Ethnicity Equalisation Scheme.
For openers, we must address the quixotic definition of Māori in the S.2 Māori Affairs Amendment Act 1974, which most sensible people consider to be farcical, because this legal fiction seeks to create a statutory Māori race.
If claimants are going to use any level of Māori ethnicity for Waitangi claims, etc, then a scheme is required to have authenticated certified documents to ensure the whakapapa is accurate, with birth certificates, driver’s licences and passports, etc, endorsed and showing the degree of ethnicity attributed to claimants. This must be the minimum prerequisite requirement for obtaining any payments from Waitangi claims. In addition, DNA testing would be mandatory.
All this evidence to be actioned at the cost of the claimant.
It follows that when looking at a tribe of say 2,000 ‘members’, there must be supporting documentation and evidence for each and every tribal member with lists made available for public inspection and then the ethnicity of the whole tribe must be averaged out.
In a worked example, should the perceived grievance claim or any other claim for some reason be successful and for example assessed at say 32 million dollars, then, if the average Māori ethnicity of the tribe is 1/8th, the payout would be only four million dollars and the 28 million dollar balance would be withheld along the same lines as the ‘contributory negligence doctrine’ to the extent of 7/8th representing the ethnicity percentage other than Māori and these funds should be returned to the NZ taxpayer via the government, i.e., not paid out.
That would be a fair and equitable outcome, because taxpayers are entitled to know that all those who are claiming to be statutory Māori are really what they claim to be. They must provide accurate documentary proof, because word-of-mouth mumbo jumbo is not good enough. If part-Māori don’t want such endorsement as to their ethnicity, they need not apply. The choice is theirs. Current assessments would indicate that no one can claim to have 50 per cent Māori ethnicity; therefore, the so-called Māori race exists only by a statute that can be revoked by a 51 per cent vote in parliament. Other than by virtue of the statutory definition, everyone in New Zealand must therefore currently be classified as non-Māori.
***********************
As a sequel to the Ethnicity Equalisation Scheme article, the question has been raised as to whether the scheme could be applied to other race-based issues and the answer is yes: this certainly should be done, especially in relation to various race-based land and asset settlement deals.
When you compare the 1967 and 1974 Māori Affairs Amendment Acts provisions you will note that the 1974 act redefined “Māori” to mean a person of the Māori race and includes any descendant of such person. The change broadened the definition compared to the previous definition contained in the 1967 act, which relied on a specific blood line quantum such as being half caste or more. So why was that necessary? Well, by 1974 it looks like no one could meet the genuine half-caste blood line criteria, so it became pressing to create the statutory fiction definition of “Māori” to satisfy the grievers and appeasers.
Conclusion: On the basis of any international legitimate/legal definition of race, as opposed to the inane 1974 statutory fiction, it appears that no one in New Zealand can claim to have 50 per cent Māori ethnicity. It follows that with regard to the Māori parliamentary seats created in 1867 then prospective candidates or voters would no longer qualify and thus, render these seats void and non-existent. Of course, the seats should have been abolished long ago, certainly at the very latest with the advent of the 1993 MMP legislation.
The same argument applies to the iniquitous Māori ward representation on local authorities, race-based sports teams and even the current rort-based Marine and Coastal Area Act 2011 (MACA) applications and so forth. The list is pretty well endless. The statutory Māori definition is a legal fiction that is costing New Zealanders billions of dollars.
Summary: Definitive DNA testing is the answer as it is the only reliable accurate legitimate process to give a proper assessment of eligibility.
