Talk:Treaty of Waitangi Act

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[edit] 1985 Amendment

I think this section has more material in it than sources can really back up - the section it refers to in Treaty of Waitangi claims and settlements doesn't describe controversy in particular surrounding the 85 amendment - the more notable controversy arose when people began to discuss what they would actually do about the historical claims - early 90s, when the Waitangi Tribunal started issuing historical reports, and in particular the fiscal envelope hui. If we can cite some sources from 1985 arguing those points, fine - otherwise it's a bit ahistorical to apply (unsourced) 1990s arguments to a 1980s issue. Time limits and settlement caps aren't part of the 1985 debate, they're part of the extralegal process that followed on from it ten years later. --Tirana 00:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

My claim that it was controversial was based on the debates on the amendment, which went beyond the usual 'we are the opposition so we oppose this' stuff. Now that I really think about it, you're right about it becoming a big deal in the early 1990s rather than straight away.

The debates are interesting in that National seemed to have a much better idea than Labour of what would happen, and how people would react - Labour said that claims would increase for a little while and then die out again, whereas National predicted an 'avalanche' of claims and a Pakeha backlash, which is pretty much what did happen. We probably don't need to go into that, but I would like to re-expand the paragraph a bit to further emphasise that it was from this point on that the Tribunal became important. Nice work expanding the page, by the way. --Helenalex 02:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)