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Diverting the Sword of Damocles: Why Did the Crown Choose to Settle Māori Historical Treaty Claims?
Author(s) -
McDowell Tiopira
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/ajph.12517
Subject(s) - treaty of waitangi , treaty , law , political science , legislation , settlement (finance) , government (linguistics) , politics , business , linguistics , philosophy , finance , payment
In late 1994, the New Zealand government announced an ambitious plan to settle Māori historical grievances relating to breaches of the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between Māori and the British Crown in 1840. Why did the Crown choose to settle Māori historical treaty claims in the early 1990s, and what did it hope to achieve by settling Māori grievances? This article explores Crown motivations for settling Māori historical treaty claims, focusing on the period from August 1992 to November 1994 identified as crucial to the development of the Crown's treaty claims settlement policy, but which has received scant attention. It concludes that while the Crown publicly offered a series of moral, legal, social and political principles to explain its motivations and objectives in settling treaty claims, the Crown's primary motivation was to divert Māori away from their legal rights, to contain the Crown's fiscal liabilities, to maintain the acceptability of treaty claims settlements to the non‐Māori public, and to “wind back” Māori rights and Crown obligations embedded in legislation.