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The Waitangi Tribunal strikes again.\xa0

At a time when the office that looks after the money that gets handed out to M\u0101ori to head off to court is in real trouble because they have run out of money, the Tribunal is pumping out report after report, costing Lord knows how much, to achieve virtually nothing.\xa0

This latest report deals with the Government's actions around a Tomorrow's Schools Review, in which the Tribunal has decided they breached Treaty principals.\xa0

By the way, the report is a first in the sense it is printed entirely in M\u0101ori. There are English versions of chapters 3-7, which is nice of them, but the approach gives you some indication of where their heads and world view is at.\xa0

It also deals with a review that happened over the period 2018-2022.\xa0

So, a couple of things about that - that's another Government. That Government is no longer running the joint. So, what was it the Tribunal was expecting Labour to do?\xa0

The second fairly significant point is that not only does it deal to a Government that no longer exists, like all its other reports, it's non-binding. In other words, it's an opinion and that\u2019s about that.\xa0

Given what we saw last week from the Government with the customary rights decision by the Court of Appeal, which is an actual court that makes binding decisions, you have to wonder just how hard the Tribunal is pushing the envelope and asking for trouble.\xa0

All of this is taxpayer funded and in a country that has less than no money and purse strings that are constantly looking to be tightened, how much longer can urgent hearings be held that offer taxpayer funded opinions with little, if any, standing and deal to a time that has passed with absolutely no chance of anything at all coming out of them?\xa0

50 years ago, the Tribunal was set up to deal with historic grievances. It made some sense and did some good work and righted some very large wrongs.\xa0

In the modern day, this whack-a-mole report, gravy train isn't so inspiring.\xa0

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