If a week is a long time in politics, two years is practically geological. Following on from last week’s turnaround on foreshore and seabed legislation, it seems we have a new foreign affairs policy on Tibet – and freedom of speech for that matter.

The last time Tibet came up in New Zealand politics was when Key declined to meet the Dalai Lama when he visited New Zealand last year. At the time reporters called Key out on a promise he’d made on the 2008 campaign trail that he’d do so, but Key replied that he simply “wouldn’t get a lot out of that particular meeting”.

That may be so – and it’s not like his predecessor was any less evasive – but Key’s apology is not just a backpedal on the issue of Tibetan annexation. It is also the latest in a string of diplomatic handwaving over clashes between Chinese officialdom and freedom of speech in New Zealand. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, Rewa…

Now to a current problem that gets to the heart of today’s mismanagement of Treaty relations. Just after the closing of Parliament last year, when MPs couldn’t debate the issue, the Government released its proposals for dealing with the foreshore and seabed following a legal decision that overturned 125 years of settled law.

The simple option was to legislate to establish the Crown ownership that almost everyone believed already existed. Instead, the Government has come up with a convoluted notion called “public domain”. On the face of it, it sounds good. But it leaves room for much more than just limited recognition of “customary rights”, and in fact embodies vast powers, including the right to a Maori veto. Read the rest of this entry »