Richard Prebble has resigned from the Waitangi Tribunal, calling it “a rogue entity,” and a “self-perpetuating industry of grievance,” rewriting history to suit a radical agenda.
“The Tribunal now says Māori were promised economic equality. No government anywhere has ever delivered economic equality. As we will never have it, the Tribunal has created an endless grievance that can never be met,” Prebble said.
He says the Tribunal has “turned the Treaty upside down” and ruled that Māori never surrendered sovereignty and must be treated as a separate ruling authority.
Prebble writes: “There were chiefs who had been to Australia and England. Chiefs who signed the English text. Chiefs who did not sign because they said they would not cede sovereignty. No chief, including Hone Heke, who may have regretted signing, ever said that sovereignty had not been ceded.”
He condemned the Tribunal’s revisionist claim that Queen Victoria agreed to govern New Zealand “in partnership” with 650 chiefs—an idea completely absent from the Treaty.
“Partnership is a 20th-century invention,” he said. Instead of interpreting the Treaty as a historic agreement, the Tribunal has twisted it into a socialist manifesto to justify unlimited handouts and political separatism.
He warns that the Tribunal’s latest 10-year strategic plan calls for more claims, more funding, and more members—despite its original purpose being to settle grievances, not create new ones.
“I will not participate in turning the Treaty into a socialist manifesto. It is time for the Prime Minister to lead and uphold that there is one Treaty, one country, and one citizenship.”
Centrist Ltd.