Justice at Ihumātao?

I'm no more familiar with the situation at Ihumātao than anyone else, and certainly no less so than the Prime Minister (but at least I've visited the place), but it strikes me that two things said by two minor party leaders over a decade ago explain what’s happening out in Ihumātao more than many things I’ve read in recent weeks.

Let me start by framing why those two comments are important, and why the site's history has some importance.

Depending on the Team you bat for, Pania Newton's protest at Ihumātao has been explained as simply a standoff between uppity Maori and the property rights of Fletcher's (that should be sorted out by the police); or an argument between Maori that has already been settled by the Waitangi Tribunal (that should be sorted by the police), or an argument about culturally valuable landscape (that could be settled by the Prime Minister visiting, holding hands with everyone, and then taking away the title to Fletcher's property).

None of those positions acknowledge the importance of the two comments that have been, unfortunately, either dismissed at the time, forgotten or never heard.

The first was by Richard Prebble, who (trying to make amends for earlier serious blunders)went around the country in the early 2000s pointing out that while the Waitangi process was making lawyers and iwi leaders rich -- a top table aristocracy he called The Browntable -- ordinary Maori "haven’t even got a schnapper" out of the process.

And he was right. The Waitangi process was set up by the odious Doug Graham et al to deliver loot to iwi leaders -- often in the name of injustices to which several other iwi had legitimate claims -- which Graham et al hoped would shut them up. Is it any wonder that many of those who never saw a schnapper are up in arms at being ignored? 

Because when you look at in this way, Doug Graham's Waitangi process was never about delivering justice, but just about buying people off with money in brown paper bags (a process that "Inmate Graham" would possibly be familiar with in his other context as a convicted fraudster). 

But Pania Newton and her colleagues are not interested in money in brown paper bags. What they want, or claim that they want, is justice.

And that's the point of the second comment, which came, as it happens, from me: in my role (as I was then) as Libertarianz leader. We Libertarianz pointed out that Doug Graham's Waitangi process was all about rewarding grievance. But never about delivering justice. Why would you expect justice from a process not designed to deliver it? From one delivered like a welfare cheque, designed simply to buy silence? 

As we Libertarianz argued, the process was flawed from the start: if Maori had legitimate claims, then they could and should be heard in mainstream courts so that justice could be done, and would be seen to be done. And if they didn't, there was no need for the Tribunal (or for Doug Graham).

Instead, since justice was done, if at all, only by accident, many feelings of injustice still remain.  And those feelings have burst out now at Ihumatao -- where, let's be fair, many of the issues Newton has raised have never been properly addressed in any court of law. 

And since those feelings and many like them remain right around the country, whatever the Prime Minister does now with Ihumātao will set a precedent, and ramp up (or down) expectations right around the country.

I doubt she is up to it. But it is perhaps appropriate that Ihumātao is the place that (perhaps) could set a precedent, for good or bad, because Ihumātao is also the place of first human settlement in these islands.

We mark such places very poorly. I harbour neither hope nor expectation, but it would be nice if something could happen in the coming weeks appropriate to that momentous arrival. Something, perhaps, that could also reflect the coming to these islands of justice, and the rule of law.

Maybe Ngai Tahu should return the dosh?

After five “full and final settlements” from the taxpayer, South Island tribe Ngai Tahu has now got their hand out for a sixth—as a $68.5 million “top up” of the $170 million gifted them in 1997 by convicted criminal Doug Graham.

But perhaps, argues Mike Butler, instead of another handout based on a bogus history, it would be more appropriate if the taxpayer were to receive a refund—“demanding the return of the $170 million paid in 1998 on the grounds that it was paid in error.”

Or after this sixth “settlement,” on which a government needing a Racist Party for votes will assuredly capitulate, will there in another decade or two be a seventh?

The (First) Hooey From Helengrad

Since this government, at the invitation of its coalition partner, has opened the door to a “constitutional conversation”  that is rapidly emerging as a Treatyist monologue, I thought it might be interesting to post my on-the-post report from the last time a government set out to have the Treaty of Waitangi incorporated in a written constitution—back in early 2000, in the first months of the new Helen Clark Government. 
Curiously, back then, all the usual Treatyist suspects were agin’ incorporation since, they said, it would “confine” the Treaty. I invite you to consider what’s changed since then … ¹

The Hooey From Helengrad
(originally written for The Free Radical magazine, 2000)

In almost the first breath of her maiden speech, new Attorney General Margaret Wilson boasts she will amend this country's constitutional arrangements. With almost the first breath of this new government a debate is organised in parliament to discuss 'Building a Constitution.' Can any one doubt that these two events are linked?

Whatever the reason for them being gathered there in the Parliament Buildings for this auspicious yet hastily-assembled event— and many confessed to being more than a trifle unsure themselves what was afoot— 117 official 'invitees' four Maori gate-crashers and your lonely reporter took part in the conference. Wilson's former employer, the University of Political Correctness at Waikato, was itself well represented at the hui, as were other 'leading academics' such as Jane Kelsey, 'respected jurists' such as Eddie Durie, enough former Ministers, Prime Ministers and Governors General to form a faded sort of portrait gallery, along with tangata whenua with “real mana” such as lawyers Moana Jackson and Annette Sykes, and councillor and gate-crasher Atareta Poananga.

The large number of brown faces present — not all of them invited — contrasted with the extremely small number of people there who were not sucking off the state tit in some way.

I counted ten. At most.

Outside, a Libertarianz welcoming party including an eight foot high Statue of Liberty greeted invitees. To symbolise Wilson’s intent, liberty was suffocated with a giant condom. Inside, as a reminder of the power a good constitution is supposed to tie up, those attending could contemplate decorative pilaster panels displayed gorgeously rendered 'fasces,' the bundled stick motif adopted by the Romans and used ever since as a symbol of absolute political power. The contrast — to me at least — was striking.

For power was certainly on the agenda, or at least how to dole it out, and liberty was, as we suggested — largely uninvited to proceedings.

There was much criticism of the conference, ranging from Professor Jon Jensen, who called it a 'covert Waitangi plot'; to David Round: "If these overpaid mischief makers are allowed to drag our constitution off in their direction then New Zealand is finally stuffed"; to Roger Kerr: "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it"; to Annette Sykes: It's all a colonialist plot to hegemonise Maori (or something similar).

Margaret Wilson's view is that the 'accepted units' of constitution building are cultures, not individuals; that the fiction of “group rights” outweighs the substance of individual rights. The many calls for Maori sovereignty would not have disappointed her, but there were astonishingly few who favoured incorporating the Treaty into any new constitution. Geoffrey Palmer was one exception: "If the treaty is in a written constitution,” he puffed, “then it can protect rights against the legislature." Doug Graham by contrast: "We shouldn't incorporate a law that is so open to misinterpretation." Such incorporation, said Shane Jones, might of course “tie down the Treaty's mana' as a 'sacred covenant”—or as Ngatata Love said "I say what my tikanga is, not the law." (Translation: if law is clear and objective, then witchdoctors won't be paid a fortune to give this week's interpretation of ill-defined concepts like 'taonga.')

Roger Kerr stood athwart Wilson’s would-be juggernaut, arguing: "The basic issue is not brown versus white, but the individual versus the collective." Annette Sykes spoke in response for the brown collective, decrying a world which contrasts the "western 'one' and the non-western 'many.'" She proposed instead a balkanised apartheid state where 'the many' would be controlled by a 'hapu paradigm,' with all power shared amongst hapu leaders, who have a 'fluid' approach to power. No one mentioned Bosnia.

There were outnumbered voices I occasionally agreed with, often with some surprise. Tipene O'Regan: "All states commit theft. A constitution should protect us from that." Tom Lamby, Jonathan Darby, Rod Deane, Peter Shirtcliffe, Stephen Franks, and of course Roger Kerr each in his own way said that many are saying of government 'what are they going to do to us next?' and that consequently there is a need to limit government to stop it stepping on us. We should have one rule of law for all, they affirmed, with liberty and individual rights protected, and contracts upheld. Sykes’s response to this line was an eruption: "If we promote individual rights, then we can forget about our collective responsibility to the unborn"! Moana Jackson told us all that property rights are a myth, dreamed up and used to subjugate Maori. No one mentioned Zimbabwe, but Simon Upton at that point leapt to his pen, no doubt excited to hear an echo of his own previously expressed notion that rights are merely 'social constructs.'

A similar view of rights wasn't the only thing shared by these two — Upton spent the afternoon enthusiastically excavating his nasal cavity while wiping his trophies on his seat. Occupying that seat later on was Moana Jackson, gripping the sides fiercely as he no doubt treasured the many things he now shared unwittingly with Simon.

The most heated session took place over the issue of local government. Unsurprisingly, the head of Local Government Ross Jansen came out strongly in favour of bigger local government. Kerr and Franks came out strongly against, the latter describing Jansen's proposals as "a breathtaking crystallisation of the level of naivety that characterises much of this conference — and if that gives offence, I intend it!" It did give offence, and he was drowned out by the Jansenists. No one mentioned Adrian Chisholm, but by then no one could pretend they didn't know how big local government had smacked this man, because Chisholm was there thrusting into as many hands as he could shake copies of Deborah Coddington's Free Radical story showing what Auckland’s unrestrained council officers had done to him.

But in the end there was neither heat, nor light on display at the Hooey. Just mush. The overall impression of the event, as one participant said, was that it was not actually a debate at all – merely lots of people talking past each other. There was an aimlessness to the whole affair, a sort of purposeless action that suggested the purpose itself was contained somewhere else; that what we were seeing was a giant trial balloon, a test to see how well the issue would go over.

It did not appear to go over well, Clark conceding at the conclusion "that we're acting in the absence of any compelling demand to do anything".

Let us maintain our vigilance.

This post originally appeared in issue 41 of  The Free Radical magazine, 2000. It has been lightly revised.

PS: If enough of you are interested, I’ll pull out what I called “The Speech They Didn’t Want to Hear” that I tried to deliver on the day. Naturally however, they didn’t want to hear it.

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1. Mostly, the confident assurance of the Treatyists that under current arrangements, the Treaty will end up confining what one would normally expect of a constitution.

Queen's Birthday Dishonours List

The folk selected for honours on the Queen's Birthday Honours List don't usually interest me.

But I think it's high time for a Dishonours List.

And Douglas Graham, LOMBARD, is the ideal candidate to be first on that list to have his honours stripped.

So why isn't he? And who else would you nominate?

Schadenfreude, thy name is Graham

A few years back, a friend’s father arrived home from a meeting to select National’s successor in the blue ribbon seat of Remuera after Alan Highet’s retirement.  Said friend’s father, “It’s always been said we could elect a donkey to stand for National in this electorate and it’d still get in. Well, that’s we’ve done this year.”

The donkey they selected was Douglas Montrose Graham, former Minister of Injustice, known to some in the past as Lord Montrose, and (after a guilty verdict in the High Court today) now known only as Inmate Graham.*

Because this mellifluous piece of human excrement, this canker on justice and bloated sack of self-importance, has today been found guilty of fraud.

Not for what he did as Minister of Injustice in the Shipley Government, when he mandated that defendants have their assets confiscated by the state, even before they’d been found guilty.

Not for what he did as Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations in the Bolger Government, when he took millions of dollars out of the pockets of New Zealand taxpayers to give to tribalists for things those taxpayers didn’t do.

Not for what he did as Minister of Apartheid, lecturing NZers at one point during his reign “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better.”

Not because after a lifetime in the trough he retired to Tuscany to write his memoirs in Italy—and demanded a further sinecure from the taxpayer to pay for sojourn.

Not because he came out of retirement to tell taxpayers “You better keep paying your taxes” so he could be kept in his retirement in the style to which a lifetime of troughing had made him accustomed.

He was not tried in court on any of those things, more’s the pity, but the bastard did finally find himself in court for defrauding investors of Lombard Finance—his defence, ironically enough, was one of incompetence—and was tried and today found guilty.

Guilty of helping to defraud investors of $127 million. [Full judgement here.]

No, it was not for any of those many other things of which he was culpable. But it’s enough.  This is an entity who has never made on honest living, his entire wealth having come out of the pockets of unwilling taxpayers and deluded investors.  Such a life demands a deserving final chapter.

Never could schadenfreude have come to a more deserving dirtbag. The only tragedy is that hundreds of investors had to lose their life savings to make it happen.

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* He won’t be, of course. Being guilty of fraud causing losses to investors of around $227 million will never attract a custodial sentence. Jail is for people who attend a different class of social function.

It’s those fantastical ‘Treaty of Waitangi Principles’ again

Here we are again, having the same tired, washed-out old arguments:

YET AGAIN WE SEE all the political classes jumping into the trough for a mud wrestle over the so-called “Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi,” with the National Party wanting to diminish their impact in the partial sale of SOEs, the Maori Party wanting to use the bout to boost themselves, and Browntable iwi  leaders hoping to further feather their nests.

The impossible-to-define "principles of the Treaty" were a late and pragmatic addition to law some twenty-five years ago—and a leading lesson in the dangers of pragmatism in politics. As you might not know, the “the principles of the Treaty” are not part of the Treaty at all, just a recent accretion adding great confusion and a huge amount of expensive litigious activity. Not least  because to this day they have still not been adequately defined.

FOR THOSE UNAWARE OF the history of these “Principles,” you might be surprised to hear that were never there at the Treaty’s signing; they only emerged in recent times, and only because of the appalling political judgement of a former ACT Party luminary. A rushed addition to legislation that for the first time put the destructive ideas of “biculturalism” and race-based political “partnership” on the table, into the courts, and into the bank accounts of folk who saw the “Principles” as their main chance at piles of money.

So take a bow Richard Prebble while we tell the story of the birth of these “Principles” that have poisoned politics ever since.

Like Rodney Hide when he first got his feet under a ministerial table, Richard Prebble was so excited to “get things done” he didn’t care how he did them. So when, as Minister of State-Owned Enterprises in the Fourth Labour Government, he wanted to sell state-owned enterprises (a good thing), to quieten down the race-based dissent that started to affect the Labour’s relations with its Maori voting base, he asked his colleague Geoffrey Palmer to insert a section in the new State-Owned Enterprises Act the phrase “principles of Treaty of Waitangi,” insisting that “decision-makers” must have regard to these Principles. Here’s all their now infamous Section 9 said:

Nothing in this Act shall permit the Crown to act in a manner that is inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

What were these Principles? No one knew.

Had they ever been defined? No, they hadn’t.

Did these two clowns have any idea what they might have started? Not a bit of it.

So in order to get the sales under way, these two simply brought these Principles into being without ever defining what these Principles are.

RICHARD PREBBLE DIDN’T CARE. He just wanted to sell things. And Geoffrey Palmer didn’t care, because his life’s work was based around writing legislation so vague, so ambiguous, that it allowed the courts to define things any way they wanted to. This, said the Idiot Palmer, is how you make law “flexible”: by giving the courts bullets which they could elect to fire in any direction they wished.

So much for the legal acumen of Geoffrey Palmer and the political nous of Richard Prebble.  Because in the time it takes to say Motunui, a huge number of claims based on these newly-fangled Principles were rapidly being manufactured and presented, and the courts were beginning to dream up all sorts stuff to fill up Palmer’s empty vessel.

This is where  the fictions of “biculturalism” and race-based political “partnership” were born.  And this was the beginning of the deluge of claims based on these twin fictions—a deluge unseen by the twin geniuses how gave birth to the legislation  (“In the course of a relatively few years,” said the woeful Palmer for example, “most of the outstanding issues in this area will be settled. Most of the claims now are known…” )

The result is that to this day no-one knows with any kind of clarity what these “principles” are supposed to be. They were a legal fiction waiting for courts to define and redefine, and for litigants to quarry in an attempt to make their fortune—which they did, in their droves.

And because, over time, they were inserted in all their vagueness in virtually every piece of quasi-constitutional legislation written since, they became a poison that soon infected every piece of legislation they touched.

What that poison did—as subsequent court cases quietly morphed these “principles” into something ever more lucrative for the lawyers who lived off them—was to transfer the Treaty’s clear and straightforward promise of legal protection of and the recognition of rights into the sort of vague, indefinable mush that help lawyers afford large launches. 

THE NET RESULT OF evoking principles that didn’t exist was to to create a Treaty that had never existed at all, except in the wet dreams of a lawyers and activists. And lo, a whole Gravy Train was created to feed off this New Thing.

It’s been a hard Train to stop now it’s got rolling.

It set the platform for a whole generation of youngsters to join the Grievance Industry and become, as virtually their sole occupation, professional Maoris. Three of this ilk, ironically, are now propping up John Key’s National government and throwing a tantrum over this very issue.  Many others simply see the tantrum as yet another opportunity for a lucrative dip into this trough.

And it allowed the then Minister of Injustice Doug Graham to mellifluously opine a few years later that “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better.”

That this piece of human excrement  is on this very day before the law courts for fraud—for which his defence has been to limit his dishonesty by talking up instead his incompetence—is perhaps an appropriate contemporary comment on the fraudulent “Principles” themselves.

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure

RUSHED LEGISLATION HAS CAUSED much damage over many years. Rodney Hide’s rushed super-sized council legislation—whose lack of clarity is now giving cockroaches space in which to feed—is only the latest, and a particularly egregious, example.

As an eager new local government minister, Rodney Hide wanted to get things done. What he was told to do was to super-size Auckland’s councils—and he took to the job like a new puppy with his first bone. A puppy whose eyes had yet to form.

Dear Rodney was so violently opposed to any idea of an elected race-based Board on his new super-sized Auckland Council that he threatened to resign on the issue.   But since he so desperately wanted to get things done, the excited minister rushed through his first piece of legislation in all of his fifteen years in parliament … which called for his new council to set up an appointed race-based Board.

What a dickhead.

That’s a change from bad to f’ing awful.

Nearly half-a-million ratepayer dollars to be paid to a Browntable full of racially-appointed troughers, simply to give effect to an idea of race-based political “partnership” that is both disgusting and historically indefensible.

And it was this local government minister and ACT Party leader that made it possible.

Yes, Virginia, I did say historically indefensible.

No, Virginia, there is nothing in the Treaty mandating any kind of political “partnership” or racial power-sharing.

Yes, Virginia, as both local government minister and ACT Party leader Rodney is responsible.

AUCKLAND’S STATUTORY MAORI BOARD would not even exist were it not for Rodney’s legislation and the destructive ideas of “biculturalism” and race-based political “partnership”—and where these notions came from was the result of rushed legislation several years ago by yet another ACT Party luminary.

Take a bow Richard Prebble.

Like Hide, Prebble was excited to get his feet around the cabinet table.  And so excited was he to “get things done” that when he wrote his legislation allowing the streamlining and easy sale of state assets (i.e., the State-Owned Enterprises Act), to quieten down the race-based dissent the sales caused he and his colleague Geoffrey Palmer simply inserted into their legislation the phrase “principles of Treaty of Waitangi,” insisting that “decision-makers” must have regard to these without ever defining what these principles were.

So much for the political acumen of these two. (“In the course of a relatively few years,” said a woefully misguided Palmer for example, “most of the outstanding issues in this area will be settled. Most of the claims now are known…” )

Because problem was, to this day no-one knows with any kind of clarity what these “principles” are supposed to be.  They were a legal fiction waiting for litigants to quarry in an attempt to make their fortune—which they did, in their droves—and a poison that soon infected every piece of legislation written since.

What that poison did—as subsequent court cases quietly morphed these “principles” into something even more lucrative for the lawyers—was to transfer the Treaty’s clear promise of protection of ownership into the sort of vague, indefinable stuff that lawyers love and other cockroaches can feed off.

In evoking “principles” that didn’t exist, it created a Treaty that never did.

It set the platform for a whole generation of young people to join the Grievance Industry and become, as virtually their sole occupation, professional Maoris. (Which is the the only “profession” the new occupants of Rodney’s race-based Board actually have.)

Even more damaging, it quietly transformed the idea of self-ownership of one’s own resources (as promised by the Treaty) into the idea of shared political management, by race, of everyone’s resources (which was never countenanced in the Treaty at all).  This was the notion of race-based “partnership” that over the last few decades has become the fuel of fully-fledged legal separatism—and the legal fuel on which Auckland’s new Statutory Board will rely when they get to the High Court.

Just a few years after the gravy train was well and truly rolling, then Minister of Injustice Doug Graham mellifluously opined that  “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better.”

Richard Prebble certainly got things done. What he should have done however is get things right.

How ironic that it will be his blunder as minister that will hasten the demise of his successor as party leader.

“There is no room for separatism in New Zealand” [updated]

I read that John Key told concerned National Party members over the weekend

    “it is important for us to reaffirm to our membership ... what we're doing and what our core fundamental beliefs are."

Being naturally curious to know what those fundamental beliefs might be, I read on, discovering that the only principle on offer to be the blunt statement: “there is no room for separatism in New Zealand.”

Reflect on that for a moment.  The New Zealand Prime Minister has just announced that one of his party’s fundamental beliefs is there is no room for separatism in New Zealand, while presiding over a government that is propped up by a race-based party who sits on race-based seats—a government that administers a Maori Affairs department; a taxpayer-funded Maori television station; sundry taxpayer-funded Maori radio stations; a “whanau-based” welfare system; “TeachNZ” scholarships for Maori students; Maori quotas in the civil service; Maori quotas in education and training; compulsory Treaty studies in schools; veto power over private developments vested in iwi planning authorities; the bogus concepts of “kaitiakitanga,” “mauri,” and “Treaty Principles” contaminating NZ’s laws; millions of dollars given to Maori “community organisations” for things they don’t do; hundreds of millions of dollars given to tribalists for things we didn’t do; and the official abandonment of “one law for all.”

Nope.  No separatism here at all.

Irony is too small a word to use to describe this gap between what was said by National’s leader and what is being done in his name.

Face it, readers, there is only one fundamental belief of the National Party: staying in power. And the number-one fact in evidence over the last eighteen months is this: is they have no idea what they’re in power for.  Which means they’re easy prey to anyone who actually does have principles, however bad.

UPDATE: Just in case you’ve forgotten, it was National’s Doug Graham who, when he was Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations,  told New Zealanders: “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better."

Nope.  No room for separatism in the National Party at all.

Declaration of “rights” to subsidised separatism [update 3]

As you may have noticed, the Government you voted for has signed you up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—something Helen Clark herself was opposed to, citing fears it would create “two classes of citizenship and … give indigenous people veto rights over laws made by Parliament.”

But we already have two legal classes of  citizen, don’t we—something confirmed by Doug Graham when, as Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations, he told taxpayers, “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better."

So one law for all is officially dead. Pita Sharples grand-standing announcement merely throws another shovelful of dirt on that particular colour-blind aspiration.

“Pompous fart” faces jail time

Since the announcement the other day that former Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations Douglas Montrose Graham, KBE, KCMG, LOMBARD faces charges and fines for alleged indiscretions in his directorship of a failed finance company, leaving around 4000 investors around $127 million worse off, the Securities Commission have now preferred criminal charges against him and his fellow directors, who now face potential five-year jail terms.

As I said other day, I can think of few people who would deserve it more.

Perhaps it’s time to recycle a song we used to sing in his honour from out of The Great Libertarianz Song Book, sung to the tune of ‘How Great Thou Art’ . . .  (here’s the original, sung by the late Horrid MaoriSong). The revised lyrics begin thus:

Oh Lord Montrose,
When I look back at all your blunders,
Consider all, the taxpayer’s done for you…

Before heading to this lusty chorus:

Oh, you’re corrupt,
Your thieving knows no end.
Where do we start?
You pompous fart.

Never could lyrics have been more appropriate.

I must dig out one of those Song Books to get the full lyrics. Since I suspect we’ll be singing it many times over the next few months, I’d hate to get any of them wrong.

Doug Graham: LOMBARD

You may be aware that LOMBARD is an acronym. It became popular in 1980s London to describe a certain kind of plonker. It means Lots of Money But A Real Dirtbag.

Never was a bunch of dirtbags better named.  See what I mean: ‘Ex-ministers charged over failed finance firm.’  The name of the company? Lombard Finance. 

Name of one of the directors?  Douglas Montrose Graham.  Lots of Your Money, And A Real Dirtbag.

    “Former National minister Sir Douglas Graham and former Labour minister Bill Jeffries face penalties of up to $500,000 each for misleading investors in Lombard Finance.
    “The Securities Commission is also continuing to investigate the laying of criminal charges.
    “Graham was trusted with setting New Zealand's laws as Justice Minister, as was Jeffries. They later traded on that trust to get people to put their money into Lombard.
    Lombard collapsed, and now the two former ministers face the courts.”

It’s a sad story for hundreds of investors who chose for themselves a brighter future, gambling it on the honesty, integrity and acumen of Sir Douglas Douglas Graham of Lombard Finance.  Like National voters in 2008, however, they were deluded.  They were betting on a pompous arse who has never earned an honest dollar in his life.

Whose entire wealth has come out of the pockets of unwilling taxpayers and deluded investors—deluded by qualities the man never, ever had.

A man who gained access to the trough through the safe seat of Remuera--one of the selection board confiding upon his selection for the seat that National could win there if it put “a donkey” up as a candidate--"and that's just what we've done this year."

Who made his nut as Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations taking millions of dollars out of the pockets of New Zealand taxpayers to give to tribalists for things those taxpayers didn’t do. 

Who as Minister of Apartheid, after giving millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to Ngai Tahu, insisted: “The sooner we realise there are laws for one & laws for another, the better."

Who as Minister of Injustice insisted that defendants have their assets confiscated by the state, even before they’d been found guilty.

Who retired from politics to write his memoirs in Italy—and sucked down a sinecure from the taxpayer to pay for it.

Who came out of retirement to tell taxpayers “You better keep paying your taxes,” to keep him in his retirement in the style to which a lifetime of troughing had made him accustomed.

Who has been in the trough his whole life.

Who clearly had no intention of changing that even in his retirement, however he had to do it, and whichever pockets he had to fleece to do it.

Never could schadenfreude have come to a more deserving dirtbag. The only tragedy is that hundreds of investors had to lose their life savings to make it happen.

"Full & final." Yeah right.

Last night's full and final deadline to lodge Waitangi claims saw over two-thousand new claims come flooding in.  Not that this is a "full and final" deadline -- there's still time for electronic applications to come in: the deadline for these is Friday.

So that's well over two-thousand new claims to get on the gravy train that the Waitangi Tribunal needs to sort through.  At their current rate of settlement, that should take them ... about five-hundred years.

So much for seeing the end of the gravy train.

In any case, neither fullness nor finality have been features of previous settlements, as evidenced even in last night's avalanche which saw yet another claim come in from Ngai Tahu (who have already in their history agreed to four "full and final" settlements from the taxpayer for things those taxpayers didn't do)*, claiming this time that the government's Emissions Tax Scam will rob their forestry assets of "tens of millions of dollars" -- which of course it will, just as it will rob nearly everybody in New Zealand. 

Perhaps we should all make a Waitangi claim?  And then another ... and another.  Or should we just pay homage to Sir Douglas Douglas Graham, lord of the taxpayers' pocket, who when handing over a large wodge of taxpayers' money to the moochers from Ngai Tahu told taxpayers "The sooner we realise there are laws for one & laws for another, the better."

As a standard for both fullness and finality, and for how the law treats those tangata whenua on the mooch, we should remember National's Douglas bloody Graham and the legacy of separatism and paternalism he left behind; and we should certainly remember this sort of serial reneging when we think something as trivial as a deadline will put a stop to the gravy train.   Our memories might be jogged by another serial recipient of "full and final" settlements, Tainui, who were on the mooch again just a fortnight ago-- coming away from their recent negotiations with the guardians of our wallets with their begging bowl full of cash and management rights to the Waikato River.

"Full and final." Yeah right.
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* On this point, see Alan Everton's three-part Free Radical article 'Ngai Tahu's Tangled Web,' here, here and here.  The Waitangi Tribunal's report on Ngai Tahu's 1997 settlement, said Everton at the time, "is a 1.254 page doorstop of rare abstruseness and mind-numbing repetitiveness which is strewn with assertions in search of a supporting fact." Thus was the pattern set for all the Tribunal reports that have followed.

Are the Greens ten feet tall?

"Luckily someone managed to capture on video some of the speeches that high ranked Green candidates gave at the Green Party conference a month ago," boasts the Green's Frog Blog, which luckily enables us to observe the calibre of some of these newcomers who are ranked so highly by their peers. Taken together, they look like a group of people running for the job of class blackboard monitor, with all the poverty of understanding of the modern world that implies. Here's just some of the highlights from their show reels that caught my eye:

• "The Green Party may not yet have achieved total economic and environmental transformation of this country," says self-described “activist, feminist, mother, gardener, writer, teacher, mediator, advocate, and stand-up comic” Catherine Delahunty, but we have pulled down lots of government money to pay our community activists, and "we are the only party with majority pakeha membership that has stood up in Parliament for Te Tiriti O Waitangi." Easy to see why she describes herself as a "stand-up comic," even if the humour is unintentional.
  
• To "fix" Maori smoking, says health board bureaucrat Kevin Hague, "all we actually need to do is honour the Treaty of Waitangi." It's so simple, who would have thought?
  
• What really motivates me to stand for the luddites, says the really unmotivating David Clendon, is "the ability the Greens have, and I think it's unique, to be able to identify complex problems and to see solutions." David, by the way, is a consultant and lecturer in the Resource Management Act, making him very definitely part of the problem.
  
• Under a Green foreign policy, says lecturer and bureaucrat Kennedy Graham -- a subscriber to "the hand wringing school of foreign policy" -- we will not labour under "misplaced fears ... but by reaching out to all peoples, [will] banish those fears together." If only Neville Chamberlain could have had Kenny boy as his adviser when he gave away the Sudetenland for peace -- it really would have been peace for all time, eh?
  
• My motivation for standing, says the baby-faced Gareth Hughes, is my new baby son. "He deserves, when he is older, not to have to ask for the right to bring a child into this world." Whatever that means. Passing over that inanity he concludes, to canned applause, "In 2008, we're going to show that future generations are bigger than politics..." And obviously bigger, too, than things like basic logic.

These are just some of the high ranked Green candidates seeking your vote at this election -- not to mention 856 of their facile one-size fits-all solutions.

And not to mention the Greens' co-leader person Russel (with one 'l'), who told parliament in his maiden speech that "in the Auckland CBD there is a memorial to Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, it is a casino in the shape of a syringe," and who took up parliament's time last week so he could tell everyone how he caught the bus to 'work.' (I looked in vain for the former Green Party high-flyer who only missed the last election because he was sent to jail for grievous bodily harm.)

Anyway, this is the calibre of the "newcomers" to a party which maintains that the welfare of snails should be placed before human beings.

Luckily, someone's been capturing on video some candidates from another party offering something far more sane.