Always Speaking: the Treaty of Waitangi and public policy, Veronica Tawhai and Katarina Gray-Sharp (eds)

‘Always Speaking’: The Treaty of Waitangi and public policy, Veronica Tawhai and Katarina Gray-Sharp (eds). Wellington, Huia Publishers, 2012. 400 pp, NZ$45.00 (paperback). ISBN 9781869694814

In 1922, Āpirana Ngata remarked that the Treaty [of Waitangi] ‘is on the lips of the humble and the great, of the ignorant and of the thoughtful’ (Ngata quoted in Hill 2004, p. 129). Eighty-two years later, from a different political perspective and for different political reasons, Trevor Mallard (2004), made the same point—borne out in Tawhai and Gray-Sharp's edited collection—the ‘Treaty is both bigger and smaller than many people think’.

The book's 17 chapters demonstrate the breadth of Māori policy concern, the depth of Māori involvement in the policy process, and the limits and possibilities of the Treaty contributing to ‘a society where indigeneity and modern democratic processes can meet’, as Mason Durie proposes in his foreword to the book (p. ix). For many of the book's authors, the Treaty contributes substantively to this kind of society, where Māori expectations of governance, rangatiratanga and citizenship are, to varying degrees, admitted into national liberal democratic practice. Chapters on whānau development (Irwin and Workman), rangatahi courts (Taumaunu) and economic development (Henare) show the Treaty ‘always speaking’ in explicit policy context. For example, Henare proposes that the Treaty is increasingly less concerned with nineteenth and twentieth century grievances, but with defining ‘the good life’ (Henare, p. 261) in relation to ‘economic sovereignty’, among other considerations.

In contrast, Hayward's chapter on the Treaty and local government, and Bargh's chapter describing Māori exclusion from international trade negotiations, show that governments can dismiss altogether the proposition that the Treaty ought to have a policy ‘voice’. For these contributors, and for Smith (cultural and heritage landscapes) and Kenney (maternity services), the Treaty's ‘voice’ is preliminary to just policy outcomes, yet insufficiently heard in the policy process. Indeed, political exclusion explains the Treaty's silence in some policy domains, while Pīhama and Mika's chapter on broadcasting is an instructive case study in the ongoing campaign to give the Treaty substantive policy influence to ‘speak’ authoritatively in the same way that Waldon proposes in his chapter on the rights of Māori children.

Reid (good governance: the case of health equity) contextualises the argument for a stronger Treaty ‘voice’ by proposing that good governance is, itself, a Treaty right. In setting out a series of tangible policy outcomes that one might expect of good governance, she provides examples of how the Treaty might ‘always speak’ in practical terms. However, in her argument that: ‘Māori have the right and duty to monitor the Crown’ (p. 46) [in its good governance], Reid reflects the limited and limiting bicultural perspective that Māori and the Crown are neatly separable entities with the collective right to rangatiratanga superseding, rather than complementing, the rights of liberal citizenship that can be drawn from the Treaty's third article.

The Treaty can only truly ‘speak’ in contemporary public policy when the ‘dual’ or ‘differentiated’ citizenship implicit in indigeneity's engagement with liberal democracy is admitted as a way of ensuring that Māori are able to participate fully at every level of the policy process (O'Sullivan 2007). If exclusion is reasonably one of the book's recurrent themes, it would have been profitable to discuss, in specific policy contexts, the merits of reconceptualising ‘Crown’ as a construct that must, by liberal definition, find ways of admitting Māori as citizens of the nation state, as complementary to the corporate claims of rangatiratanga.

The book's obvious conceptual problem is that it questions as much as it supports the proposition that the Treaty is ‘always speaking’ in public policy. Some chapters demonstrate the assertion in Durie's foreword, that ‘the importance of the Treaty of Waitangi lies less in its historical significance and more with its relevance to contemporary issues’ (p. x), while others do not. For Durie's proposition to hold, one must establish a much greater real, rather than ideally imagined, ‘voice’ for the Treaty than many of the book's authors believe is actually the case. The subtitle to Knox's chapter on land development: ‘the erosion of tino rangatiratanga’ (p. 213) well illustrates the point—the Treaty is not ‘speaking’ if its ‘voice’ is being eroded.

Nevertheless, the misalignment between the book's title and substantive arguments does not diminish its scholarly significance as one that provides an interesting, comprehensive and wide-ranging review of Māori public policy interests. It is invaluable to have, in the one place, the book's breadth and depth of scholarship and policy commentary to show that the Treaty is an important instrument in contemporary policy-making, even if its influence is not to the extent that many of the book's contributors propose.

Overall, the editors have done a fine job in bringing together these instructive and well-informed contributions from authors with established expertise in their fields.

D O'Sullivan

Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia

Email: [email protected]

© 2012 D O'Sullivan