Tens of thousands of people gathered at parliament to protest the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. (Photo RNZ)
After a drawn-out saga, the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill was finally laid to rest on Thursday amid cheers from the parliament floor and gallery. It took nothing less than a mass movement to drive the nail in its coffin.
Here’s Kassie Hartendorp from ActionStation on an exhausting year and a half of countering the threat to Te Tiriti.
From the very beginning, it was obvious to us at ActionStation that this bill was a vehicle for the ACT Party to remake Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its own image.
It was clear that David Seymour hoped to roll out a plan similar to his successful End of Life Choice Bill — but this time, to focus on replacing the court-established Treaty principles with ACT Party policy.
It was a calculated strategy:
- First, pick a bill that is difficult to object to. After all, not many Te Tiriti experts love the existing Treaty Principles, viewing them instead as a watered-down interpretation of the document’s real intent. They would prefer to call on the Crown to honour the original Te Tiriti text. For Seymour to restrict the bill to a discussion of “principles” helps embed the assumption that Te Tiriti as written can never be honoured and must always require diffuse interpretation.
- Then frame the argument with a value that sounds reasonable, universal, and morally superior. In this case, it was the value of so-called “equality” repurposed to erase the blatant inequalities that the evidence repeatedly shows advantage non-Māori and negatively impact Māori.
- Leverage media that will reproduce the “equality” framing without interrogating whether it has any factual basis. Roll out your talking points without ever having to answer questions like: Which of our current laws do not apply to Māori? What is the separate set of laws that apply to Māori only and work to their advantage? How exactly does acknowledging whakapapa equate to inequality to the detriment of Pākehā and non-Māori?
- Exploit the many gaps in knowledge that exist because our schools failed to teach colonial history. Make sure your distortions of Te Tiriti fall into those gaps, while posturing as a big, brave man sticking it to the uppity natives. Whip up a sense of victimhood among non-Māori.
- Drag out the bill process as long as possible, so you get maximum airtime. Call this airtime “a debate” even though you refuse to listen to alternative points of view, or provide evidence to counter the historical, legal and constitutional body of research which says you’re wrong.
- And then the grand finale: try to turn the majority of non-Māori against Māori, so they eventually vote to dismantle Te Tiriti o Waitangi and have it re-written along your party lines.
There have been countless attacks on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and ngā iwi Māori from this government. But, this bill and ACT’s strategy to promote it, was especially important because it was aimed squarely at winning public opinion.
Most politicians know that when you have won over the public, you have a mandate to push through policy details. But when so many people rallied against this bill, they denied Seymour and a racist minority the ability to claim that the public was on their side.
When we at ActionStation saw this bill included in the coalition agreement, we turned to our First Nations tuākana from so-called Australia, namely Larissa Baldwin from our sister organisation GetUp!
They had recently been through the wringer with the Voice referendum. Initially called for by First Nations leaders, it had been hijacked by the far right. There was a concerted campaign from far-right actors to spark fear, claiming that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities were dividing the country. The campaign successfully drove down public support for an Indigenous voice in the Australian constitution.
Our tuākana told us the aftermath of losing the referendum was worse than they could have imagined. The spiritual and emotional impact was so severe that many in their communities didn’t want to leave the house or go to school.
I attended a hui of community organisers seven months afterwards, and the pain among First Nations people was still palpable. Chillingly, the referendum created something of a scorched earth policy, meaning that future laws protecting Indigenous rights will be almost impossible to achieve in its wake.
We were told to do everything in our power to stop such a referendum here, and we were given advice on how to do that. We followed every word, and I believe their lessons gave us the ability to get ahead of the racist far right here. He mihi nunui ki a koutou, e ngā tāngata o Te Whenua Moemoeā.
When we started our efforts against the bill, there was no guarantee from the National party that they would vote it down.
At the beginning of 2024, Christopher Luxon was making non-committal statements that gave him the ability to wriggle in any direction. While ACT was leading this particular charge, National went ahead with legislation that brought back referendums on Māori wards, among a host of other legislative changes to remove references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and dismantle Māori rights.
So National wasn’t ideologically opposed to the Treaty principles bill — they just hadn’t committed to taking it all the way. Therefore, our collective task was to make sure that the bill was shown to be so ill-informed, and so unpopular, that the only option was to kill it, and then turn out in force for the select committee submissions.
At first, I thought that the whole thing was a distraction, but as time went on, I came to see it as the main event. Not because other bills weren’t just as dangerous, but because this was the vehicle that the racist far right were using to shore up popular support.
Around the world, we’re seeing a rise in far-right, neo-fascist groups. They have a clear playbook where they scapegoat marginalised communities (migrants, trans people, Indigenous people) and embolden violence towards them. They drive up fear among everyday people, weaken civil society, and eventually the rule of law. The Treaty principles bill was an attempt to create a public mandate to weaken our constitutional law. While this bill had its own unique local flavour, groups similar to ACT are doing this all around the world.
The bill targeted Māori, but it was also dangerous for everyone. While imperfect, the existing Treaty principles protect our public good. They’ve been used as a legal mechanism, for example, to provide checks and balances on rampant privatisation and the corporatisation of public assets.
As academics like Ryan Ward and Rupert O’Brien explained, the principles have become a roadblock to governments wanting to sell state assets, forestry and mining rights, energy and water supplies.
If the Treaty principles bill had been successful, it would not just have killed our Te Tiriti relationship in law, but also cleared the way for the government to open up our natural resources and publicly owned assets to corporate exploitation. It’s a lot easier to strip a country of public assets, when they are drawn into a carefully curated race war.
It’s true that the fight still isn’t over for Māori nor anyone who genuinely respects Te Tiriti o Waitangi. An insider said to me that David Seymour has 12 different ways to win this thing, and the Regulatory Standards Bill is certainly one of them.
For us at ActionStation, the next battleground is the referendums that could lose us Māori ward seats in 42 different councils this October.
But before that fight begins, let’s take a moment to celebrate what we just achieved together. We defeated a well-funded, bad-faith attempt to turn our country against our founding agreement.
We revitalised the democracy that was being used against us, by breaking multiple records and encouraging people who had never submitted before to get involved.
We refused to be deceived by the far right, and chose kotahitanga over division. While the world watched (thanks to Hana-Rāwhiti’s searing haka), we showed that as Māori, and as a country, we will not be dragged backwards.
Our north star is always the belief that, thanks to the tireless efforts of Māori kātoa, we have reached a tipping point where more people than ever respect Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
I come from an iwi whose cultural revitalisation strategy over 50 years ago has changed our rohe in remarkable ways. I have seen the quiet confidence of the kōhanga generation instilled with a vision for the future that is grounded in te ao Māori.
I have seen the impact of Te Tiriti educators who fill the knowledge gaps among us, so that we can all stand stronger in who we are.
I have sat in a reo class at our marae where whānau had returned for the first time in decades. I have watched non-Māori soften when they learn that Te Tiriti is an act of generosity which invites their families to call this place home.
Neither David Seymour nor Christopher Luxon have chosen to truly listen to te ao Māori, nor to experience and understand our hopes for a united nation. But in their arrogance and hunger for power, they underestimated how far our whole country has truly come. May they be reminded again soon. Toitū He Whakapūtanga. Toitū te Tiriti.
Kassie Hartendorp (Photo supplied)
Kassie Hartendorp (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Pareraukawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is the Director for progressive, people-powered organisation, ActionStation. She has been the strategic lead on the organisation’s Treaty principles bill and Māori wards campaigns.
Thank you for reading E-Tangata. If you like our focus on Māori and Pasifika stories, interviews, and commentary, we need your help. Our content takes skill, long hours and hard work. But we're a small team and not-for-profit, so we need the support of our readers to keep going.
If you support our kaupapa and want to see us continue, please consider making a one-off donation or contributing $5 or $10 a month.
With few of our citizens capable of quoting te Tiriti articles and fewer still competent in te reo Maori, promulgating the need for a referendum on Mr. Seymour’s version of its meaning is analogous to promulgating one on the validity of Einstein’s relativity calculations.
Given the magnitude of donation to its electoral campaign, ACT’s 8.5% overall favour and 2 electorate seats [one of which was adroitly obtained by National stepping aside in Epsom] is a relatively modest political accomplishment. It has no electoral majority mandate to impose a referendum which threatens to subvert the fundamental axiom of racial and social equalibrium on which our country was colonised and the document which underpinned this.
David Seymour claimed that the debate he opened up with his Treaty Principles Bill would be good for the country, and I for one was always of the opinion that he was right about that. However the outcome of that debate was not at all what Seymour had planned or anticipated. For him it was a complete disaster. In opening up the constitutional question he has exposed the previously unrecognized strength and power of New Zealand nationalism (which cannot be differentiated from rangatiratanga or “Maori nationalism”).
That is why I would not be afraid of a a referendum on the Treaty Principles Bill in whatever new form it may be manifest. I cannot predict the outcome of a referendum in terms of whether there might be, say, a 60% majority for or against but I can be absolutely certain that the constitutional debate which would be re-ignited by a referendum would lead to a substantial increase in the consciousness, strength and power of rangatiratanga, just as the parliamentary debate did, only more so. Our situation is unique and colonialism in New Zealand is uniquely vulnerable. In that respect we are unlike Australia.
Which is not to say we need a referendum. We do not. We need to keep on strengthening and growing the organisations which function according to the principles of rangatiratanga. That is something that we can do very well regardless of the actions of the colonialist regime.