None

• Published date: 09 February 2021
• Publication title: Northland Age, The

Shockingly belatedly, the Māori people are starting to get, and have recognised, what was promised in the Treaty. It doesn’t matter what happened pre-European times. Māori were here first.

I have written before that if readers want some shock horror gut-wrenching and sickening history to read, study the industrial revolution and the lives of the masses and the horror that was forced on them by the ruling rich and nose-in-the-trough politicians. No point claiming New Zealand unless there was a fortune for the moneyed investors and land sharks who were prepared to exploit poor Pākehā and Māori, with the assistance of booze.

I am hopeful that the majority of New Zealand’s very culturally mixed population is steadily coming to grips and rectifying past injustices. Hopefully New Zealand is at the forefront of sweeping redistribution of wealth, essential for human survival in the coming world where an abused environment has to be nursed back to health.

Our present so-called democratic system is heading for sweeping changes, necessary for human survival. The Treaty of Waitangi should say “A fair go and equal treatment for all”.

Surely the dreadful pandemic, still growing in some nations, is a wake-up call for radical change?

The new President of the United States is on to climate change. Will he survive the few holders of the nation’s enormous wealth?

Sam McHarg

Kerikeri

Still a pig

Dress up Minister Mahuta’s statement that she intends removing the petition rights of citizens to challenge a council’s decision to change the voting system and introduce Māori wards any way you like, but at the end of the day this unprecedented historic knee-jerk response is a sad day for New Zealand’s democracy and a clear message that the minority in favour of Māori wards were afraid of the result of a democratic public referendum/poll.

Geoff Parker

Kamo

A slippery slope

I note with alarm that our government is moving to veto our right to a referendum on whether or not we should have Māori wards on our councils.

What is happening to democracy in this country? We have a dictatorial government that is hell-bent on pushing through a Bill under urgency to ban our right to a referendum. To ban the people of New Zealand from having their say on this matter. Why the urgency?

I don’t care who we have on our councils or in Parliament, as long as they are democratically elected. To put people into positions without them having to be elected is wrong.

How do those in council who have Māori...