South Island independence?
AMBER HOUSE - at the centre!™ a Bed and Breakfast Guest House (B&B) in Nelson city centre - handy for Tahunanui Beach, Restaurants, Founders Park and the 3 National Parks of Abel Tasman, Kahurangi and Nelson Lakes in the `Top of the South' Island of New Zealand (NZ).

Economically, the North Island is dragging us down.

One only need look at New Zealand's ‘International Trade’ figures to see this fact.

The latest published figures, straight off the Statistics Department site:

a.) North Islands Balance Of Payments 2003
    Total (in millions) Exported from North Island ports/airports NZ$21,500
    Total (in millions) Imported into North Island ports/airports NZ$28,000
             Trade Deficit; NZ$6,500 millions

b.) South Islands Balance Of Payments 2003
    Total (in millions) Exported from South Island ports/airports NZ$8,500
    Total (in millions) Imported into South Island ports/airports NZ$4,000
             Trade Surplus; NZ$4,500 millions

These figures clearly show it is the South Island and not Auckland that is New Zealand's economic powerhouse.

The South creates the wealth.

The North spends it.

Then there is New Zealand’s massive Tourism Industry which is worth an estimated 7 Billion Dollars each year to the current combined economy.

Now imagine separate North and South Islands, independently governed.

Then go ahead and ask yourself - ‘just how many out of those 2.3 million who visit our shores each year would opt to tour just the North Island, when the South offers them the best, most varied scenery as well as the friendliest natives’?

AmberHouse.co.nz     web                

Yes folks, it’ll be time to sell those shares in Auckland Airport when we go it alone.

The real questions to ask are:
Full independent sovereign nationhood like the Republic of Ireland
or
just internally self governing like Jersey and the Isle of Man
or
a federated state like British Columbia in Canada?

23 October 2007: The South Island's population has topped one million for the first time.
An estimated 1,008,400 people were recorded living in the South Island at June 30 this year, Statistics New Zealand said today.
This is a 1 per cent increase (9600 people) from June last year.

Smacking children not so harmful - study

More unpopular research reported by the New Zealand Press Association...

The so-called "Maori" of today are not the Maori of 1840.

Most of those today claiming to be Maori actually have more of the blood of the colonisers than of the colonised. All have at least some European ancestry.

Even if Maori remained a discrete ethnic group, the Royal Commission’s recommendation that they be separately represented on the Auckland Council is based on an incorrect interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Under this set of assumptions, the Crown is in "partnership" with both a collective "Maori" and with individual Maori tribes deemed to hold mana whenua or "chiefly authority" over a particular locality.

The "partnership" fallacy is based on an erroneous decision of the Court of Appeal in 1987 case involving the NZ Maori Council. It rests on what researcher Alan Everton describes as "nothing more than the opinion of five judges who combined a lamentable ignorance of New Zealand history with a willingness to ignore the Constitutional principle that they were appointed to apply the law, not make it."

The Lange Labour Government's artfully sketchy references to "the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi" in the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986 allowed these activist judges to conclude from the Treaty’s black letter clauses that it created "something akin to a partnership."

Yet Article I of the Treaty of Waitangi ceded sovereignty to the Crown "absolutely and without reservation."

Article II sets out the protection of existing property rights under the sovereign power acknowledged as henceforth prevailing in Article I.
It guarantees: "Te tino rangatiratanga/full authority over their lands, forests fisheries and other property [the correct translation in 1840]" not just to the chiefs but to "ki nga tangata katoa o Niu Tirani," that is "to all the people of New Zealand ."

It is only by dishonestly ignoring the words "to all the people of New Zealand " that "tino rangatiratanga" supports a claim under the Treaty that Maori retained their sovereignty, thus becoming "partners" with the Crown in some kind of sovereignty-sharing relationship.

Article III further underscores this position in granting to "the Natives" (not just to the chiefs) "all the rights and privileges of British subjects." Clearly, individual Maori could not enjoy such rights yet continue to be ruled in tribal style by chiefs.

There can be no possibility that the Treaty of Waitangi created a "partnership" or perpetual group rights for New Zealanders of Maori descent. Having signed the Treaty, the chiefs became not "partners" but subjects of the Crown, as did all other New Zealanders.

As subjects of the Crown - that is to say New Zealand citizens - today’s Anglo-Maori are entitled to the same rights as everyone else. In terms of political representation at any level of government, this means the right to stand as a candidate, the right to vote for a preferred candidate, and the right to make individual or collective submissions to elected representatives and public bodies.

Ngati Whatua’s demand for mana whenua representation is similarly flawed. It is often asserted that Ngati Whatua "gifted" the land on which Auckland City now stands to the Crown, thus entitling them to be involved on an ongoing basis in running the city.

The land was not "gifted" at all, but sold to the Crown for cash and goods. Once something is sold, it’s gone for good, and the seller has no further claim over it. In any event, like so many early land sales, Ngati Whatua’s claims to ownership at the time of sale are tenuous at best.

Ngati Whatua were not the first occupants of the Auckland area. Originally based further north, they colonised the locality around 1750 by exterminating its former occupants, Te Waiohua, rather than cheating them with pen and ink.

What goes around comes around. In the 1820s, the Tamaki Isthmus was repeatedly invaded by musket-toting Ngapuhi. The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand records that as a result: "much of the isthmus was abandoned as tribes sought shelter in the Tainui region."

Historian, RCJ Stone, notes: "fear of Ngapuhi prevented them [Ngati Whatua] from occupying their old home for many years afterwards, indeed, not until Auckland was founded [in 1840] did they feel safe."

Ngati Whatua thus sold to the Crown land they’d cravenly fled from more than a decade before. Land they neither occupied nor controlled in any meaningful sense. This placed the Governor and his troops between Ngati Whatua returnees and renewed hostilities from Ngapuhi. Payment from the Crown also underscored to neighbouring tribes that the mana of the land remained with Ngati Whatua.

While a clever stroke of business from both a practical and a Maori perspective, this hardly supports demands from Aucklanders of Anglo-Ngati Whatua descent for special political representation, even if this could be justified under the Treaty of Waitangi, which as we have seen it cannot.