and institutions’ and that Hobson had promised that any Maori land unjustly acquired in pre-Treaty transactions would be returned.⁷⁹ Colonial Secretary Lord Normanby stipulated that there should be an independent protector of aborigines to safeguard Maori interests, especially in negotiations over the sale of their land.⁸⁰ From all this, the Muriwhenua land Tribunal deduced the principle that ‘the Government should be accountable for its actions in relation to Maori, that State policy affecting Maori should be subject to independent audit, and that Maori complaints should be fully inquired into by an independent agency’.⁸¹

Being accountable, the Crown needed to provide redress for Treaty grievances. Redress was required in order to restore the honour and integrity of the Crown and the mana and status of Maori. Writing in 1987 about historical tribal grievances where the prejudice may be so extensive as to be impossible to compensate, the Tribunal’s chairperson described the purpose of redress as being to ‘rebuild the tribes and furnish those needing it with the land endowments necessary for their own tribal programmes’. That approach, he continued, ‘seems more in keeping with the spirit of the Treaty and with those founding tenets that did not see the loss of tribal identity as a necessary consequence of European settlement’.⁸²

Clearly, redress has to be considered by the Crown when, under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, the Tribunal finds that claimants have been prejudiced by an action or omission of the Crown. Indeed, the Act and its important retrospective amendment of 1985 are an embodiment of the principle of redress; a recognition that the Crown should redress past breaches of the principles of the Treaty.

(5) The principle of equal treatment

The principle of equal treatment applies not only to the Crown’s treatment of Maori and other New Zealanders but also to the Crown’s treatment of Maori, one with another and one iwi with another. In the Tribunal’s Maori Development Corporation Report, the Crown’s duty to act impartially as between iwi was identified:

The issue of inter-tribal rivalry was debated at Waitangi and had been discussed amongst Maori for several years previously. The missionaries had long endeavoured to mediate between the tribes and, in explaining and promoting the Treaty, led Maori to believe that, on its acceptance, a new order would follow in which disputes would be settled and all tribes provided for fairly.

These assurances were influential and, at the debate at Waitangi, crucial. Many Maori there called upon Governor Hobson to ‘go’ and to leave the country to the Maori. Hobson recorded that the speech of Tamati Waka Nene ‘turned aside’ that feeling. After referring to

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79. Waitangi Tribunal, Muriwhenua Land Report, p 390

80. Orange, p 30

81. Waitangi Tribunal, Muriwhenua Land Report, p 390

82. Waitangi Tribunal, Waiheke Island Claim (Wellington: Government Printing Office, 1987), p 41