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Speaker 1: Treaty Principles Bill on its way to the gallows, as

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Speaker 1: the Select Committee came back Friday and suggested it wasn't

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Speaker 1: getting its support. It was voted past first reading. Of

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Speaker 1: course it won't get passed round two. What I learned

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Speaker 1: out of this was several things. One, this country is

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Speaker 1: not up for much of a debate around complex and

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Speaker 1: big ideas. We are myopic in our approach, we hate

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Speaker 1: or we love, and middle ground as irrelevant. There was

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Speaker 1: a venom and aggressiveness to a lot of the submissions.

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Speaker 1: To what else did I learn from those who submitted

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Speaker 1: that actually knew what they were talking about as opposed

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Speaker 1: to people merely offering an opinion. It very quickly became

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Speaker 1: clear there is massive, massive disagreement over interpretation. And but

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Speaker 1: these were the scholars, the lawyers, the historians, experts. They

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Speaker 1: couldn't agree. Now that to me was the big, big clue.

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Speaker 1: If the learned can't agree, surely that means we need

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Speaker 1: something legally speaking to define what we're dealing with. There

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Speaker 1: is a major case in Christ Juche at the moment

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Speaker 1: between Night Tahoo and the Crown over water rights. It

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Speaker 1: is in the court because there is nothing definitive in

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Speaker 1: law as to what the treaty does and doesn't do.

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Speaker 1: We seem to accept that the Parliament is the ultimate court.

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Speaker 1: Yet on the treaty we appear happy to litigate for

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Speaker 1: decade after decade, have a tribunal that's wildly tainted and

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Speaker 1: nothing like a proper court. And each and every time

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Speaker 1: we dabble in this area, you and I are picking

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Speaker 1: up the tab. The other outworking, of course, is the

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Speaker 1: ongoing grief and ants. This is a very divided country

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Speaker 1: at the moment. This is not a harmonious nation with

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Speaker 1: an agreed legal stance around the treaty. But putting it

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Speaker 1: out to a vote the way Act wanted was a mistake.

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Speaker 1: It's too important for that. I mean, pick and mix

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Speaker 1: democracy never works. The other thing I learned politically is

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Speaker 1: it should never have seen the light of day if

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Speaker 1: it wasn't going all the way. This goes to the

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Speaker 1: luxe and negotiation skills or lack of them. It was

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Speaker 1: either dead before it started or it got the full treatment.

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Speaker 1: What we got with this half baked, deeply divided mess

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Speaker 1: that ended up achieving basically nothing. Even those who argue

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Speaker 1: all but it started the debate you're wrong, because if

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Speaker 1: it's floated for another day, and it may well be,

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Speaker 1: we won't carry on where we left off. We'll have

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Speaker 1: to start all over again. For more from the mic

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Speaker 1: Asking Breakfast listen live to news talks It'd be from

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Speaker 1: six am weekday, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio