McCully flies to aid of US Eagle in bid to solve Palestine crisis

By Clayton O’Toole

Dynamic Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has flown to the aid of Washington in a new bid to end the Mid-East crisis.

‘Dynamo’ Murray told Secretary of State John Kerry, just before Kerry flew to the Middle East, that New Zealand would support the US.

He said New Zealand has been in the Multinational Force of Observers (MFO) maintaining peace in Sinai for over 30 years — and could do more.

(US-brokered talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down in 2010 in a dispute over continuing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank)

Mr Kerry, who arranged for Mr McCully to stand on a beer crate during the audience, said he was ‘absolutely underwhelmed’ by the offer.

He also asked Mr McCully to take his regards back home to Tasmania.

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti Coast councillors have toured of one of Aotearoa's unique buildings, the heritage - listed Rotunda at the former Otaki Health Camp, the country’s first.

Jeremy Smith reports that the 105-year-old, eight-sided rotunda predates the Health Camp.

It wasn't actually built in Otaki, but was one of two built in Rotorua in 1915 as part of a military hospital, on the site of Rotorua’s present public hospital.

Later they were taken to Otaki for the opening of the health camp in 1931.

Full story in the main column (December 19).

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.

Kāpiti and Coast Independent

O’Toole’s Story of the Week

McCully flies to aid of US Eagle in bid to solve Palestine crisis