Sir Grappler Truth Teller OAM
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Australian Politics
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Anyway - back to the Waitangi Tribunal and how it changed....
Very interesting..........
The Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 established a tribunal which was to adjudicate claims, made by "any Maori", that acts or omissions of the Crown arising after the enactment of the legislation were contrary to "the principles" - not defined - of the Treaty of W ~ i t a n g i .
The Tribunal, as envisaged in the original legislation, bore no resemblance to a court of record; it had powers of recommendation only and it could not issue judgments or decisions but only prepare reports addressed to the Minister of Maori Affairs.
The Tribunal's 'obscure' existence changed fairly dramatically in 1983 when it released its first major report, Motunui.16 The hearing of this claim was innovative in a number of ways, but in particular due to the fact that it was heard on a marae.
In 1985 the parent Act was substantially amended, backdating the Tribunal's powers of inquiry to acts and omissions of the Crown arising since 1840.The Tribunal was substantially enlarged and was empowered to commission research reports and appoint counsel to represent ~laimants.1~In 1987 it released two important reports on the Orakei20 and Waiheke Island claims, which were then succeeded in the following year by its arguably even more important and undoubtedly controversial Muriwhenua Fishing Report. Insofar as the Tribunal can be said to have had a golden age, when it was probably the dominant institution involved in the complex processes of resolving Maori claims and grievances, it would have been in the years between the release of the Manukau Report in 1985 and the Muriwhenua Fishing Report in 1988. Since that time, however, the picture has become somewhat more confused and the role of the Tribunal more problematic.
The Tribunal's purely recommendatory role has now been modified in a number of contexts in that it has been given some binding determinative powers. These binding powers have developed in an ad hoc manner as ingredients of broader negotiated settlements, and do not in any way reflect any carefully determined policy decision to broaden the Tribunal's powers or to convert it into a more judicialised institution.
The first of these arrangements came in 1988, when legislation was enacted to give effect to a settlement negotiated between the Crown and Maori negotiators relating to Crown land transferred to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), that is, state-owned commercial organ is at ion^.^' The Tribunal was given a binding power to order the 'resumption' of such land in appropriate circumstances, even where it had been on-sold to third parties.
A subsequentnationwide negotiated settlement, this time relating to the sale of timber-cutting rights in Crown-owned plantation forests, led to further binding powers being conferred on the Tribunal by statute in 1989.23 Lastly, in 1990, further binding powers were conferred on the Tribunal regarding the assets of the state-owned railway system, vested by statute into a company akin to a state-owned enterprise.24 These binding powers have simply been grafted on to the Tribunal's existing structure without changing the Tribunal's essential nature as a permanent commission of inquiry. No right of appeal exists, for instance, even in those circumstances where the Tribunal might be exercising its binding, as opposed to its ordinary recommendatory, powers. "
That'll do for now - can't ask too much of your double amoeba brains ...
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