Diverting the Sword of Damocles: Why Did the Crown Choose to Settle Maori Historical Treaty Claims?

In late 1994, the New Zealand government announced an ambitious plan to settle Maori historical grievances relating to breaches of the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between Maori and the British Crown in 1840. Why did the Crown choose to settle Maori historical treaty claims in the early 1990s, and what did it hope to achieve by settling Maori grievances? This article explores Crown motivations for settling Maori historical treaty claims, focusing on the period from August 1992 to November 1994 identified as crucial to the development of the Crown's treaty claims settlement policy, but which has received scant attention. It concludes that while the Crown publicly offered a series of moral, legal, social and political principles to explain its motivations and objectives in settling treaty claims, the Crown's primary motivation was to divert Maori away from their legal rights, to contain the Crown's fiscal liabilities, to maintain the acceptability of treaty claims settlements to the non-Maori public, and to "wind back" Maori rights and Crown obligations embedded in legislation.