Venu Menon
Wellington, February 15,2024
Parliament witnessed a spirited debate on the proposed Treaty Principles Bill.
It was clear that ACT leader and Associate Minister of Justice David Seymour, smarting after the Waitangi Day onslaught on the contentious bill, was determined to have his say on the matter under legislative mandate.
He drew on parliamentary history to note that, while “the courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, the Public Service, and many others have had their say” since the Treaty of Waitangi Act was passed half a decade ago, Parliament has remained silent on the subject.
“The Government is introducing a Treaty Principles Bill to democratise that process of defining the Treaty principles because, for the first time through this representative House of Parliament, all New Zealanders will have a say about what our founding document and our constitutional future means.”
Seymour appeared to be laying out the vocabulary of the referendum he hoped to bring before the New Zealand public, which he foresaw would be the natural culmination of the Treaty Principles Bill.
The snag in that scenario was that following the Waitangi Day debates around the thorny issue, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon appeared to have stepped back a bit and seemed inclined to renege on his commitment to back the bill to the Select Committee stage in Parliament.
But both Seymour and NZ First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who was standing in for the PM in the House, were careful to rule out any perceived subversive motive of undermining the Treaty of Waitangi.
“The Treaty of Waitangi, or Te Tiriti of Waitangi, as our founding document, is enormously important to our past but also to our future and our conception of ourselves as a country,” Seymour told the House, adding, “It is impossible to abolish the Treaty.”
For his part, Peters went on record with his assertion, in reply to Green Party leader Marama Davidson, that “the statement that we’re getting rid of the Treaty of Waitangi is categorically false.”
But it was significant that Peters invoked the “greatest scholar ever to come to this House on this matter, Sir Apirana Ngata.”
Peters’ assertion came with a taunt to the Opposition: “ He’s our authority. Who’s yours?”
That rhetorical question was a loaded one.
In 1922, the Maori leader and Member of Parliament, Sir Apirana Ngata, penned an explanation to the Maori version of the Treaty. That explanation was translated into English in 1963.
“The Treaty confirmed Government purchases of lands which is still being done and it also confirmed past confiscations. The Treaty sanctioned the levying of rates and taxes on Maori lands, it made the one law for the Maori and the Pakeha. If you think these things are wrong and bad then blame our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful,” Sir Apirana Ngata wrote in his concluding remarks on the Treaty of Waitangi.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
