Mike’s Minute: The Waitangi Tribunal strikes again

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The Waitangi Tribunal strikes again.

At a time when the office that looks after the money that gets handed out to Māori to head off to court is in real trouble because they have run out of money, the Tribunal is pumping out report after report, costing Lord knows how much, to achieve virtually nothing.

This latest report deals with the Government's actions around a Tomorrow's Schools Review, in which the Tribunal has decided they breached Treaty principals.

By the way, the report is a first in the sense it is printed entirely in Māori. There are English versions of chapters 3-7, which is nice of them, but the approach gives you some indication of where their heads and world view is at.

It also deals with a review that happened over the period 2018-2022.

So, a couple of things about that - that's another Government. That Government is no longer running the joint. So, what was it the Tribunal was expecting Labour to do?

The second fairly significant point is that not only does it deal to a Government that no longer exists, like all its other reports, it's non-binding. In other words, it's an opinion and that’s about that.

Given what we saw last week from the Government with the customary rights decision by the Court of Appeal, which is an actual court that makes binding decisions, you have to wonder just how hard the Tribunal is pushing the envelope and asking for trouble.

All of this is taxpayer funded and in a country that has less than no money and purse strings that are constantly looking to be tightened, how much longer can urgent hearings be held that offer taxpayer funded opinions with little, if any, standing and deal to a time that has passed with absolutely no chance of anything at all coming out of them?

50 years ago, the Tribunal was set up to deal with historic grievances. It made some sense and did some good work and righted some very large wrongs.

In the modern day, this whack-a-mole report, gravy train isn't so inspiring.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.