Venu Menon
Wellington, September 18,2023
ACT Party leader David Seymour’s call for a nationwide referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi puts alliance partner National in a quandary.
Seymour made the call at his party’s 2023 election campaign launch in Auckland on Sunday.
National’s Christopher Luxon had taken the olive branch to Te Paati Maori when he told the 53rd Parliament that National was open to working with the Maori Party and harked back to the era of founding leaders Tarianna Turia and Pita Sharples.
But Seymour appeared set to rock the waka by his uncompromising posture on what he called the politics of identity.
“The scourge of identity politics means a person can be responsible for things that someone else did 200 years ago, but not something that they did last week,” he noted.
That scourge [of identity politics] revolved around the Treaty of Waitangi, according to Seymour.
Te reo Maori was one of many languages spoken by New Zealanders. “The way to turn a treasure into a form of torture is to impose it on people by force,” Seymour said to applause from the crowd, adding: “And perhaps, with the very best of intentions, to write division into law.”
Seymour said he was opposed to the promotion of one language “to the detriment of others.”
In a clear reference to the Labour government’s move to preference the Maori community over others in the health delivery system, Seymour noted: “[We must ensure that] two babies born side-by-side in the same hospital have the same choices and chances in life, no matter their background.”
It is worth noting in this context that Green Party candidate Tamatha Paul, standing from Central Wellington, has argued: “We should make no apologies for prioritising those who’ve been failed by particular systems. Indeed, we should have a conversation about the shameful statistics that are experienced by people within the health system, particularly Maori and Pacific.”
Paul said the prioritisation of Maori and Pacific within the health system was “a conversation started up by those who want to make race a political football.”
She said this election had seen “the dehumanisation of our identities, rather than asking questions about how do we support our frontline health core workers? How do we make sure that our hospitals have enough resources so that you’re not sitting in an emergency room for six hours?”
But Seymour contended the Treaty of Waitangi had been interpreted arbitrarily by “a small group of lawyers, public servants and iwi leaders” to mean a partnership between two races.
“No society in history has ever succeeded, based on treating people differently by race,” Seymour declared.
“Whether your family arrived [in New Zealand] 15 generations ago, or one, we all matter. We all have a stake in the future of this country,” Seymour told the party faithful while building his pitch for a referendum on the Treaty.
Seymour argued Parliament should define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi that it first voted five decades ago. “The people should have a chance to ratify the principles [of Waitangi] in a nationwide referendum.”
Once the principles were defined, the decks would be cleared for ending “race-based laws,” removing the discrimination inherent in a Maori health authority, Three Waters and the Natural and Built Environment Act.
“Getting our identity right may matter to a child born today [in New Zealand] more than anything else,” Seymour rounded off his address at his party’s election rally.
Seymour was clearly taking aim at Labour as well as Te Paati Maori, whose platform centred on identity politics and envisioned a “Te Tiriti [Treaty]-centric Aotearoa.”
The Maori Party, founded in 2004 as a splinter from the then governing Labour Party, was part of the National-led government from 2008 to 2017.
Te Paati Maori advocated the recognition of iwi ownership of the country’s water and natural resources. The party has two MPs in Parliament, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi. It gained an additional member when a Labour government minister, Meka Whaitiri, defected to the party recently.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
