Further to Dancer’s post below, this morning on Breakfast John Key claimed that National never had a deadline for settling Treaty claims and instead only had a deadline for lodging them. This was possum-in-the-headlights stuff, continuing an extraordinary run of gaffes from slippery Mr Key.
Politely put, Key’s done a total rewrite of history. The National Party website could hardly be clearer regarding their Treaty claims policy from the last election:
Complete historical Treaty of Waitangi grievance settlements by 2010. … Claims must be lodged by the end of 2006, with grievances settled by 2010.
And there was certainly no mention of this morning’s radical policy u-turn when Key spoke at Ratana and Waitangi.
Update [17:04]: Key has now produced a media release (currently subscriber only) containing this line:
“This morning, in attempting to distinguish between our current position and the formal policy document that will follow later this year, I gave the impression that National did not have a date for the settlement of historic Treaty claims. This was wrong.”
Is this a flip-flop speed record?
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress