Devolutionary Proposals and Treaty Principles

This, then, was the background to the 1987 announcement of the Crown’s intention to hand significant power to iwi authorities. The decision was based, essentially, on a key convergence: both Maori and state leaders, having seen devolution and partnership schemes work with reasonable success on a number of planes, were now prepared to take such experiments much further. This did not necessarily mean coincidence of motives. With Maori leaders determined to explore all possible options for pursuing rangatiratanga, the government was, on one level, seeking to take advantage of Maori aspirations in order to mitigate the worst effects of its free-market policies. Both ministers and officials hoped especially that some degree of political and financial supportpage 207 for rangatiratanga would help persuade iwi to take on the burden of ‘Maori welfare’. For Maori, in turn, major devolutionary concessions to institutions of tribal governance would at least partially meet what they had long been asking for. The scheme would address both political and economic/fiscal matters of concern to both Crown and Maori.

Major devolution to Maori was initiated, too, in the context of a broader restructuring of the public sector in the name of greater efficiency, accountability, cost-effectiveness and minimal government. ‘Positive Maori development, with its focus on tribal responsibilities for health, education, welfare, economic progress, and greater autonomy, fitted quite comfortably with the free market philosophy of a minimal state, non-government provision of services, economic self-sufficiency, and privatisation.’ The public service’s various functions were to be made transparent, and this would be followed by delegation of delivery of ‘non-core’ services to quasi-state and non-state bodies, including iwi.

The grand design of Prime Minister David Lange’s 1984 Labour govern ment, taking it a very great distance from the social democratic ideals of the party’s origins and membership, was generally called ‘Rogernomics’ (coined around the name of hard-right Finance Minister Roger Douglas). The beginnings of market-driven policies, including ‘corporatisation’ within the public service, had been introduced by the so-called ‘interventionist’ Muldoon government. But following Labour’s election, these policies now became part of an urgent imperative to reorganise the way things were seen and done throughout New Zealand society. The supremacy of the individual, the removal of welfare statism, the minimalisation of the state and virtually unchecked freedom for trade and industry all began to be implemented through very many rapid, often ill-considered reforms. Precedents in the United States, Thatcherite Britain and elsewhere provided guidelines, although the New Zealand response to the international crisis of capitalism often exceeded overseas versions in zeal, scope and adverse impact upon (especially) the poor and the marginalised.

Rapid withdrawal of the state from as many areas of social life as possible was seen as a particularly pressing need by those running this ‘right wing revolution’. A number of key Crown services and institutions – including postal services, telecommunications, electricity, coal, railways, air transport, forestry and state housing – were to be ‘corporatised’. This meant, in essence, that they were put on a business footing to operate mostly untrammelled by ‘public good’ requirements. The ultimate intention was to privatise them, leaving the state with responsibility only for ‘core’, non-commercial public-service functions (which would also be placed into competitive and businesslike mode). Meanwhile, corporatised divisions of state, generally called State-Owned Enterprises, would be able to engage competitively with other enterprises on a ‘level playingpage 208 field’, unfettered by state interference. Operating as private businesses, their overriding goal would be profit, and the successful ones would be ideally placed for later sale to private interests. The public good was reinterpreted in a way that both reflected international western developments in updating capitalism – including those in what had once been the Mother Country – and took them in extreme and (in the case of Maori) innovative directions.

The right-wing ideologues in control of the government and key departments, especially the Treasury, were particularly enamoured of the fact that Maori were traditionally grouped into ‘private’ entities. This could help override ideological difficulties posed by the collectivised nature of Maori institutions, the concept of collectivity being repugnant to those planning to atomise life in New Zealand. Moreover, expedients were needed during the huge task of overturning the broad socio-political post-war consensus (with its remnants of collective endeavour and its welfare-state commitment to sustain people ‘from the cradle to the grave’) and replacing it with fully fledged individualism, competition and minimal ‘safety net’ welfare provisions. Tribes (and by extension, sub-tribal groupings) and other Maori entities could, then, be reconfigured into ‘private authorities’ with which the Crown could work on a practical basis and to which it could legally and accountably devolve many state functions.

The government would begin by seeding such franchised entities with sufficient resources to allow them to provide to their own people many of the services which had previously been the prerogative of the Crown. Iwi authorities could look after the affairs of their people wherever those people were. Maori who had become so detribalised that they had lost all connections with their iwi, or those who chose to identify primarily with urban authorities, could be ‘serviced’ by other means, devolved or not. Ultimately, iwi (and other devolved) authorities were expected to break free of Crown financial assistance and therefore from any governmental controls beyond the minimal requirements of the downsized state. Thus it was that the rangatiratanga-based aspirations of the Hui Taumata seemed, to many elements of the Maori leadership, attainable under the very Rogernomics policies which (with the message of ‘short-term pain for long-term gain’) were putting large numbers of Maori out of work.¹⁸

The fourth Labour government had a number of reasons for its iwidevolution proposals in addition to those outlined above. It may have ignored its rank and file on core social democratic values, but to retain any kind of significant membership base it needed to deliver on some of the ‘moral and ethical’ policies it had been developing in recent years. These included the notion of ‘Treaty partnership’ with Maori, which dovetailed with the ministers’ devolutionary and de-statising agenda. The government also needed to addresspage 209 the fact that Mana Motuhake’s serious inroads into its traditional Maori support base did reflect widespread Maori concerns to secure meaningful recognition of rangatiratanga. It was aware that Maori support could be further eroded as a result of the effects of Rogernomics on people’s livelihoods unless it offered major concessions. Increasingly, then, the relationship between Crown and Maori was officially defined by references to partnership and the emerging ‘Treaty principles’ which would guide its development.

The government needed also to address the longstanding Maori demands for the Crown to investigate its historical breaches of the Treaty and to negotiate appropriate compensation. In line with its election promises, and under intense pressure (as evidenced by the Turangawaewae hui the previous September), in 1985 Labour secured passage of the Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act, extending the Waitangi Tribunal’s jurisdiction back to 1840. While the Tribunal had already been taking history into account in its findings, the new situation would soon mean an escalation in its work and considerable publicity about colonial injustices against Maori. Tribes held out hope for sufficient reparations to re-establish economic bases from which they could advance the autonomist cause. However much Rogernomics would devastate the most vulnerable sectors of Maoridom, rangatiratanga was undoubtedly becoming increasingly respected by Crown and pakeha alike. In late 1985, Sir Paul Reeves was appointed the first Maori Governor-General, a symbol of Crown–Maori partnership in an emergent bicultural New Zealand. On 23 June 1986, Cabinet instructed that all future legislation should take into account the principles of the Treaty and that departments needed to consult appropriately with Maori on all significant matters relating to the application of the Treaty.

The Environment and State-Owned Enterprises Acts of 1986 and the Conservation Act of the following year all formally recognised the ‘principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’. The Maori Language Act ‘placed Maori on an equal footing with English as an official language’ in 1987. It was early that year that ministers, officials and Maori leaders held breakthrough discussions on making iwi the major Maori partners of the Crown for promoting Maori social, economic and political development. The DMA now set out a ‘mission’ for ‘giving effect to the Government and Maoridom’s aspiration to achieve Rangatiratanga’. This was the Crown’s way of acknowledging that – as the NZMC and other Maori organisations, as well as the Tribunal, had been arguing – the ‘spirit of the Treaty’ transcended its actual (and sometimes contradictory and outdated) words. The Treaty needed working through at both conceptual and practical levels.¹⁹

Pending major devolution, many types of partnership arrangements and configurations were enhanced, negotiated or discussed. The Healthpage 210 Department was one of the first public service agencies to respond proactively to the government’s directives to consult with Maori on significant matters. The Director-General insisted on the Treaty’s ‘special significance’, and talked of providing ‘appropriate services’ that took into account health perspectives ‘firmly based’ in Maori culture. The department responded to a resurgent interest in Maori healing techniques, for example, by quickly providing guidelines to the medical profession.