replacement:

What status do you give the Treaty?

1. It is very important. 2. It is important. 3. It is unimportant. 4. It is irrelevant10.

We also added an item asking:

How much do you know about the Treaty of Waitangi; would it be:

1. Detailed knowledge

2. Fairly Detailed Knowledge

3. Some knowledge

4. Basic knowledge

5. No knowledge

Item two:

This item was one of nine (e.g. education, military, environment, job training) as part of a question that asked people to choose between increasing taxes in order to increase government spending on these nine areas or cutting spending and taxes.

Special assistance for Māori and Pacific Islanders

1. Greatly increase 2. Increase

3. Keep as it is

4. Cut

5. Greatly cut

Concerns about this item were that it used the term ‘special assistance’. It was not clear what ‘special assistance’ referred to other than, as previously discussed, evoking meanings that were likely to elicit particular responses in relation to privilege and advantage. Another concern was that it included two population groups, likely to confuse the issue and the subsequent responses. We revised this item by having it refer only to Māori and by being more specific about funding.

Public funding for Māori language, marae and other activities

1. Greatly increase 2. Increase 3. Keep as it is 4. Cut 5. Greatly cut Item three:

Would you be strongly in favour, in favour, neutral, against, or strongly

against…Giving Māori special land and fishing rights to make up for past

injustices

1. Strongly in favour 2. In favour

4. Against

5. Strongly against

Again, one of the concerns was the terminology, specifically the use of ‘special land and fishing rights’. We suggested relatively minor changes; taking out ‘special rights’ and replacing it with a more specific and hopefully less evocative phrase. We do however recognise that changing the term ‘giving’ to ‘compensating for or returning’ has our value framework attached. We supported this change by placing the issue within what we believe was an item designed to garner people’s views on restoration and redress. In this context ‘returning’ was seen as more appropriate than ‘giving’ and is in line with the Waitangi Tribunal’s brief (Waitangi Tribunal, 2007b).

Would you be strongly in favour, in favour, neutral, against, or strongly against…Compensating for or returning land, fisheries, other resources to Māori, where injustices have occurred

1. Strongly in favour 2. In favour

3. Neutral

4. Against

5. Strongly against

Refusal and don’t know options were available for all these items.

Participants were happy with the revised and new items and expressed an interest in the findings. Participants generally considered the questions to be phrased appropriately.

They felt that the survey was not reflective of how Māori would approach values and

that the findings would not provide much information on Māori values. They did

however believe that it was important to raise and discuss issues of values.

Data collection

The 2004/5 New Zealand Values Survey collected data by Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) system from New Zealanders aged 18 years and over. Data collection took place between 9 December 2004-24 March 2005 and the response rate was 51%11.

Findings

More than two thirds of the respondents thought that the Treaty was important or very important (68% in total) and around a third thought it was unimportant or irrelevant (32%). Significantly more Māori (83%) than non-Māori (63%) thought that the Treaty was either very important or important.

Around one in five people described their knowledge of the Treaty as detailed or fairly detailed. Just under half (45%) said they had “some knowledge” and just over a third (36%) felt they had little or no real knowledge.

Forty three percent were either in favour or strongly in favour of compensating for or returning land, fisheries and other resources to Māori where injustices had occurred; just

11 _{For a detailed description of the sampling design, respondent selection, data collection and processing,}

see the Public Life Values Report on Centre for Social Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation website: http://www.shore.ac.nz/projects/Public%20Life%20Values%2023.11.05.pdf.

under a third (30%) were neutral and just over one in four (27%) were against or strongly against.

Those who said they had little or no knowledge were evenly spread in terms of how they regarded the Treaty; those who regarded the Treaty as important were more likely to say they had some knowledge or detailed knowledge and to be in favour of returning resources to Māori where injustices had occurred.

Twenty three percent wanted an increase in public funding for Māori language, marae and other activities, nearly half (47%) thought funding should be kept the same and thirty percent thought that it should be cut or greatly cut.

Respondents who reported detailed, fairly detailed or some knowledge of the Treaty were more likely to assign the Treaty an important status and were more likely to support public funding of the specified activities and to support redress where injustices had occurred than respondents who reported little or no knowledge of the Treaty.