I am amazed that Don Brash could make some of his statements in his letter (The Weekend Sun, June 21, page 42), in particular that it is absurd to say that Queen Victoria entered into a partnership of equals with a group of chiefs on the other side of the world.

Does the former Reserve Bank head honcho know nothing of budgetary constraints? Queen Victoria may not have; but her government of the United Kingdom certainly did. They were deathly afraid of overextending and overcommitting themselves. It's why they handed the Kingdom of Hawaii back to the Hawaiian King after Royal Navy Captain Lord George Paulet annexed it briefly in 1843.

They didn't want to waste money on conquering New Zealand - far cheaper to placate potentially troublesome customers by treating them as equals. As far as material culture goes, of course they weren't.

But the Treaty of Waitangi deals with civil and political rights.

I'd be more interested if Don Brash could explain why it is divisive to give Maori back a lot of land that was illegally taken - but it is not at all divisive for New Zealand to sell NZ citizenship to a US billionaire fly-by-nighter.

Or why it is divisive for a Maori tribe to collectively inherit their land, but not divisive for a millionaire's children to inherit finances and status from their parents.

Wesley Parish, Bellevue