National hits the road with Treaty message

National Leader Don Brash has taken the message from his Orewa speech on New Zealand nationhood to Rotorua, in the first of a series of provincial tours.

"National wants New Zealand to be a modern democratic society, with one rule for all in a single nation state. The alternative is a racially divided nation, with two sets of laws, and two standards of citizenship, that the present Labour Government is moving us steadily towards," said Dr Brash.

"A whole range of legislation now includes reference to Treaty principles without any explanation of what those principles are, or how they work. That is why today I am announcing that the National Party will be commissioning research into the complex task of removing racial preferences from legislation, starting with the Resource Management Act.

"This research will be started immediately and will be made public when completed.

"Any body can see that it is simply absurd to suggest that a speech asserting the principle of "equality for all before the law" is divisive and racist.

"Others have claimed that I was trashing the Treaty. Yet I explicitly stated that the Treaty's three simple clauses must be upheld. That the Treaty is a founding document is obvious to all. But the Treaty alone is not an adequate constitutional basis for a modern state.

"Some have suggested that none of this matters, because some of the race-based preferences are relatively trivial. But the plain fact of the matter is that the public of New Zealand has witnessed a parade of race-based political correctness over the past decade or more - cultural safety in nursing, taniwha stopping roading projects, consultations with iwi blocking routine university research, frogs being escorted by groups of Kaumatua, and so on.

"Individual cases may be trivial, even laughable, but collectively the pattern is concerning and never-ending. National will put a stop to this, and refocus government assistance on the basis of need, not race.

"I am heartened by the public reaction to National's message, from both Maori and non-Maori, but there is still a long way to go. This provincial tour is just the start of the work ahead," said Dr Brash.

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