1/9 'Don't listen to Julian Batchelor, he's not an expert. Don't listen to me, I'm not an expert. Go to the experts.' These rare & precious words were spoken by Pere Huriwai-Seger, at the last meeting of the Kaipara District Council. The meeting was a shambles. 
2/9 If you order clowns, you get a circus. The circus started when Julian Batchelor addressed the council. Mayor Craig Jepson claimed Batchelor had approached him & asked to speak, but Huriwai-Seger showed the meeting an e mail that proved Jepson had invited Batchelor.
3/9 & Jepson's friend Clive Boonham spoke at the last meeting, using research provided by that noted scholar, Don Brash. Batchelor says that there's a 183 year old conspiracy to hide the true Treaty. Bonham says that the Treaty lost any legal relevance in 1840.
4/9 As Huriwai-Seger told the meeting, Batchelor has repeatedly claimed that Paul Moon supports his ideas. But Moon along with other experts has spoken out against, indeed ridiculed, the idea that a secret Treaty that was discovered in a Pukekohe attic in 1989.
5/9 Boonham says the Treaty lost all importance after Hobson declared sovereignty over NZ. But British administrators like Attorney General William Swainson & James Busby talk constantly about abiding by & implementing the Treaty in the early 1840s. So does the Colonial Office.
6/10 Boonham committed the ultimate absurdity when he quoted a Waitangi Tribunal report in an effort to prove the Treaty had never been part of NZ's constitution. The Tribunal would not exist if that were so. But if Boonham isn't an expert, how do we identify someone who is?
7/10 I'm not an expert on the Treaty & constitutional law. I read Alan Ward's A Show of Justice & Jock Brookfield's Waitangi & Indigenous Rights to get more understanding of these fields. I'd define an expert as someone who relies on other experts. It's a question of method.
8/10Unlike Batchelor or Boonham, who ask us to trust them as guides to esoteric mysteries, Ward & Brookfield constantly acknowledge other scholars, & give their readers footnotes to follow.Ward & Brookfield's books can be dense & dry, but that's because of their respect for truth
9/10 An expert always relies on other experts. If Ward or Brookfield could have addressed the Kaipara council about the Treaty & NZ's unwritten constitution, they would have situated what they had to say within the body of research on these subjects, not acted like prophets.
10/10 The Dunning-Kruger effect is often discussed nowadays. It asserts that the more incompetent a person is, the less they will be aware of it.Stand up, Boonham & Batchelor. An expert is aware, often painfully, of the limits of our knowledge & the diversity of scholarly opinion
@Parmenides44 1/2 I'm not an expert on the 1840 and constitutional law stuff, so I can only defer to those who are, but I have studied the Waikato War deeply, & it's notable that those who want to extinguish the Waikato's independence, like Premier Domett, hate the TOW & want to disregard it.
@Parmenides44 2/2 On the other hand, those who have built up the Waikato Kingdom, like Wiremu Tamihana, refer to the Treaty as justification for their actions. That tells me that to powerful Pakeha & Maori, the TOW was seen in the 1860s as affording at least some Maori sovereignty.
@Mintando 2/2 So Ngata was no fan of Pakeha. & he would be condemned by Pakeha conservatives today - just as he was at the time - for his land development schemes, which were aimed specifically at Maori & aimed at strengthening them. I think Ngata would realise today he was too pessimistic
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