It has perhaps been there from the start, 1642, 1767 and all that. Certainly the Clarke government did itself no favours and will struggle to retrieve Maori support in the near future. But what is so galling now is the combination of feigned ignorance and actual ignorance.
Did the Prime Minister really think that reference to the Treaty of Waitangi in NZ legislation is 'largely symbolic'? Or were they all tripping.
Andrew Geddis does a nice demolition job on the PM's intellectual and attitudinal failings and usefully gives a link to a speech by Justice Robin Cooke that serves to remind us how serious the law is.
This unfolding disaster - the alienation of NZ assets through the continued marginalisation of this country's Indigenous Peoples - is not, of course, the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
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