I am wondering if the Tauranga-based group that have filed for an urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing are the same, or an associated group who have busied themselves causing grief to the Tauranga port, who want to expand their operations because they need to grow and employ more people and return more dividends to the local economy. 

There must be something waring about being so negative, or destructive, or activist. They won't see it that way. They will argue they are putting things right or addressing grievances. 

But that’s the problem with grievance, isn't it? It's become a gravy train. 

How many tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars do you reckon have been spent in the past 50 years at or around the Waitangi Tribunal arguing about perceived wrongs? 

The Tauranga group want an urgent hearing over the Government's attack on their language and their culture. Nothing more specific than that, just a broad-based attack. 

No matter what you call it, does the Waitangi Tribunal take into account the fact that the policies are the result of a democratic process? Plus, the main outworking of the new Government so far around this issue appears to be the desire to have Government department names in English first. The fact they have been English first for decades, if not forever, doesn't seem to have been an issue worthy of the tribunal up until now. 

The ACT Party are looking at a referendum on the Treaty, but that is a long way off. So, is the whiff of an idea as yet enacted, and indeed may never be enacted, an attack also? 

Is it not time to ask a few questions around the tribunal, given it is now 50 years old and the vast majority of the settlement business is sorted, and we have moved into the broader area of activism? 

How much activism do we want? How much are we prepared to pay for it, and what is the value of this activism? In other words, what's actually changed? 

Based on the fact it's seemingly never-ending and they have no legally binding ability to change anything anyway, as we approach the 50-year mark are we asking about the value of the exercise in its totality? It seems as angsty as it ever was. Has having a tribunal made New Zealand a better place? 

The good bits were those who used the original historic mechanism to argue their case, settle their claim, get their apology, and move on. 

Those tribes are the stories we want to hear more of. But what we seem left with are the agitators, the stirrers, and the troublemakers, and the Waitangi Tribunal seems funded and ready to indulge their whims. 

To what end? For what good? 

For how long?