Time to say "Enough!"
I've made a few jokes about Maori collecting water in KFC buckets, but it seems that they're actually so serious about water claims that the government is allowing worries about court action to delay implementation of the sale process for the power companies.
This is absurd, crazy, or just plain outrageous - take your pick.
The Treaty of Waitangi talks about lands, fisheries and rights, but not about water. That's pretty simple, because nobody owns it. If now, 172 years later, Maori want to claim the water, because they can see a dollar in it for them, then they can just piss off!
Unless they want to cough up at least half of all the money spent building dams, power stations and drinking water infrastructure ever spent in this country, then they have no right to now turn around and seek ANY compensation for anything to do with water.
Who knows what Maori thought about water 172 years ago? Nobody now, that's for sure. Given that the same bodies of water existed then as now, it's pretty much assured that settlers were using water from the same sources as Pakeha, and they did not seek any recompense for it, so it seems that even way back then, the Maori who signed the Treaty understood that water is a resource for everyone.
The puerile argument some Maori make of: "If water isn't owned, how come it is charged for?" is idiotic. You are paying for the cost of treating and delivering the water. If you want to take your KFC buckets and catch rain or take water from the Hunua Stream with it, go ahead - it's free!
As to wider water rights, no matter whether legislation is required to get rid of it, the idea that Maori have any claim whatsoever to water must be dismissed.
Almost as bad, I see in the Herald today that Maori are about to lodge a challenge to the sale of the Crafar farms to Pengxin.
On what basis are they challenging? Should Maori have been allowed to buy it for less?
Another absurd abuse of the Treaty process.
Some Maori - yes, I am looking at you, Hone Harawira and your pals - are determined to turn New Zealand into a third world country.
From the changes of layout of the Waikato Expressway to avoid a taniwha, to the illegal occupations of private land in Northland, to the endless delays to vital projects due to Waitangi claims, Maori are ruining our economy, and the economy is already pretty shaky.
The dumbest thing of all for a people of which over 40% rely on benefits is that when there's no money left in the bucket, there will be no benefits.
World dairy prices are down, and revisions have already been made to payout levels, and our manufacturing sector is heavily in the crap, with only a small net percentage of businesses seeing an improvement coming. We cannot afford a handbrake on the economy like the Maori claims that are being spuriously made.
The worst part of all is that most of claims seem to be being made just to show that they have power, rather than any real attempt to improve the lot of their decile one members languishing on the dole in Whangarei and Glen Innes
Copyright © Alan Charman