KEY POINTS:
Although I know I should have made the effort, I have never been to Waitangi on Waitangi Day. So I decided on Tuesday to watch the coverage provided by Maori TV.
I am glad I did. I sat for several hours entranced. I was not so much entertained
as informed and educated and very soon agreed wholeheartedly with a young Maori visitor to the Treaty Grounds that those who weren't there were "missing out on a really good day".
I also became persuaded that Waitangi Day can and should evolve into a genuine national day of celebration of New Zealand by New Zealanders, similar perhaps to Independence Day and Thanksgiving in the United States and Australia Day over the ditch.
I have known for years from fellow journos who have the nous to look beyond the obvious that there was much more to Waitangi Day than we ever see in the press or on television.
And while our two national TV channels played their usual trashy imported afternoon programmes, the superb Maori TV coverage confirmed that abundantly.
Later, of course, the two principal channels gave us the usual diet of protesters protesting, policemen policing, politicians politicking, Titewhai Harawira talking nonsense, and the weather, ignoring all the other fascinating things going on around the place.
But top marks to Mark Sainsbury for his Close Up programme on what Waitangi Day really means and what it perhaps should mean and might come to mean to us Kiwis. Because this is something to which all of us who care about our country should give some serious thought.
We need a national day. We need a day on which we can all have a holiday and on which we can celebrate in whatever way we like all that is good about New Zealand and being New Zealanders, to look at what we have achieved as a nation rather than at what's left to do.
And Waitangi Day would be the day to do it. Not only is it the day on which our nation was founded, it is an anniversary that involves us all.
The foundation document was a pact entered into by Maori and the Crown, and today "Crown" in fact means all of us.
As the Governor-General, Anand Satyanand, said on Tuesday: "On this, the most significant date of our national calendar, let us acknowledge that we have many reasons for genuine celebration. And in that spirit, let us commit ourselves as New Zealanders to honouring this day and making it meaningful - not only for the future of our nation's children, but for all the children of our nation's future."
There is no need to change the name as Norman Kirk did in 1974. In fact, to do so would largely defeat the idea of a national day. As actor Tem Morrison told Sainsbury, "If you try to create something out of nothing, then there is no foundation".
The problem is, of course, that most New Zealanders see the Treaty and Waitangi Day as a Maori thing.
To a large extent that has arisen from the protests, the violence, the mudslinging that have marred so many Waitangi Days.
These, I think, were necessary to draw attention to the issues in contention, but if Tuesday is any indication, then their time has passed, except for a handful who will continue to protest because that's what they do, and those for whom enough is not and never will be enough.
There is a sense in which it might be best to let Waitangi Day simply evolve into our national day, but there must be things we can do to help the process along; to convince all New Zealanders that Waitangi Day is not just a Maori thing at all but a time for us all to acknowledge and celebrate what it means to be a New Zealander.
Our politicians national and local, the media, our churches, Government agencies, ethnic societies, service organisations, community groups - and anyone else who cares - would do well to start thinking about that.
* New Zealand's Anglican bishops met in conclave at Nelson last weekend before ordaining that diocese's new bishop. And they honoured the ministry of Richard Randerson after his announcement that he will retire in June as dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland and assistant bishop of Auckland.
In the absence of any mention elsewhere that I have seen, and in view of this column's comments on the "agnostic" controversy Bishop Randerson became embroiled in a week or so ago, it is only fair to record what his fellow bishops had to say of him.
"As bishops of this church, we regret the way in which the media and talkback hosts have caricatured Bishop Randerson as an agnostic and unbeliever," they said.
"We know, first-hand, that his faithful ministry over 42 years as vicar, social justice commissioner, bishop and dean has consistently reflected the conviction that the nature of God is revealed in Jesus Christ, whom we call Son of God.
"Bishop Randerson has spoken clearly and personally about the reality of the resurrected Christ.
"We celebrate the capacity of the three tikanga [cultural strands] of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia to interpret and live out that Christ-centred faith - with freedom to express it through different images of God, and respect for the diverse ways that God is experienced and known in our midst."
