Waikato Times letter of the month

It has been a long time since the last specimen – there seems to have been an outbreak of sanity in the region – but this week has seen a return to form. This letter is so good the paper ran it twice: on Thursday (headlined “Treaty contract not met”) and then again on Friday. Thursday’s one was lightly edited: it has marginally better grammar, is broken into paragraphs and has a correctly inserted apostrophe. It is more readable but makes no more sense than Friday’s version, which must be the original text:

Healing a Country

As an academic and studying the Treaty of Waitangi, I have found two true and proper solutions for New Zealand being misinformed about the Treaty. The Treaty of Waitangi is a formal, written agreement between Maori and the Crown. First, to terminate the contract where “a contract may come to an end, by reason of a failure of a condition in a contract”. There are many conditions in the contract that have not been met, by simply mentioning New Zealand government legislation such as 1864 Land Confiscation, New Zealand Settlement Act and 1846 Surplus (land taken). Another true and positive way to properly make the contract right is to include the weaker partner Maori into the base of the countries set up which is the 1852 Constitution Act. As a result the government was formed because of the conditions in the contract and changing this Constitution Act would make the governments focus every decision based on the contract. Last, as human beings normally like doing good, this is one way we could heal the country.

JAMES BOWMAN DAVIES

Hamilton