KEY POINTS:
There was plenty of strong language but no real surprises in the Waitangi Tribunal report on the agreement between the Crown and Ngati Whatua o Orakei to settle the claim to large parts of Auckland.
Anyone following the disputes that have emerged since the agreement was announced last
year would have been aware that there were good reasons to doubt the fairness of the process. Specifically, the Office of Treaty Settlements, which ran the negotiations, had sidelined the claims of several other iwi.
In the tribunal report, Judge Carrie Wainwright left no doubt about the extent of these shortcomings. She said the treatment of the competing claimants had been "cavalier" and "unfair", and the Office of Treaty Settlements had been generally unco-operative.
The solution, as Judge Wainwright sees it, is to stop the process so that at least five other groups - including Ngati Te Ata, Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Marutuahu, Te Kawerau a Maki and Te Taou - have a chance to enter negotiations on their claims.
Treaty Negotiations Minister Mark Burton has been cool on this idea, and there is no mistaking the dilemma that he faces.
On the one hand, he can reject the tribunal's recommendation and push on with the Ngati Whatua settlement, which will certainly rankle with the other claimants.
On the other, he can halt the process to give the other tribes a fair chance of putting their case, which will certainly delay settlement, possibly by years, and prove immensely frustrating to Ngati Whatua who have, by all accounts, done everything right in seeking a settlement in the most realistic and expeditious way possible.
It is a fine mess, and while the officials who were judged to be so cavalier and unfair must take some of the blame, the real cause lies with the Office of Treaty Settlements itself.
It has been said before, and is worth repeating, that the office was set up as a result of impatience among politicians and the population at large with the slow pace of the Treaty settlement process. The idea was to have a fast track that could bypass the sometimes laborious and necessarily slow historical work of the Waitangi Tribunal.
All of this is understandable in a country eager to put to rest the ghosts of its past. But impatience is not a good counsellor when trying to unravel the complicated strands of history.
As one historian remarked, without an accurate historical account it would be difficult to achieve a fair settlement in Auckland which would compensate for the Crown's acknowledged Treaty breaches.
Therefore the Government should do as Judge Wainwright recommends and give the other Auckland tribes a chance to put their case fairly.
Obviously this is of crucial importance to Auckland, but also it contains a lesson for the country as a whole.
Eager though everyone might be to finish the Treaty settlement process, it is much more important to make sure it is done right. Settlements bulldozed through without regard for history are unlikely to last, and grievances from the 19th century, instead of being finally resolved, will be passed on to yet another generation.
The best way to avoid this is to make sure that complex claims, especially those involving more than one group of claimants, go to a full hearing of the Waitangi Tribunal, rather than the Office of Treaty Settlements. Although it is slow and cumbersome, the tribunal has the expertise to address historical complexity and also the moral authority to give confidence that its recommendations will endure.
