Some matters demand attention, no matter what important stuff one is already working on. Such is the case with Dr Muriel Newman’s Centre for Political Research, on this occasion turning up weighty issues of democracy, sovereignty and Maori political ambition. Muriel’s incisive article on the advance of Maori privilege under the Labour patronage is deeply disturbing and if we don’t pay it some attention our efforts for climate realism will seem as nothing. And who wants that?
Reposted from NZCPR Newsletter. Emphasis added.
In a speech in November 2000, the former Labour Party Prime Minister David Lange warned that if governments attempted to accommodate the increasingly audacious demands for sovereignty by the Maori tribal elite, they would end up threatening democracy itself.
“Democratic government can accommodate Maori political aspiration in many ways. It can allocate resources in ways which reflect the particular interests of Maori people. It can delegate authority, and allow the exercise of degrees of Maori autonomy. What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both.” Continue Reading →
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