References to Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi (Repeals) Amendment Bill

I rise to speak on the References to Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi (Repeals) Amendment Bill. It is noted that this piece of work has resulted in three pieces of legislation, which will, of course, add complexity as we progress this bill, but New Zealand First knows it is important that this legislation, which has for too long been avoided, is addressed.

New Zealand First has held a decades-long position that we honour the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as our founding document. However, we have and will always affirm that there are no principles to the Treaty of Waitangi. Legislative interpretation following on from a misinterpreted ruling from decades ago has resulted in decades of the insertion of vagaries and ambiguity in the form of Treaty principle references. These references were less about accountability, responsibility, delivery, or good law and more about placation and tokenism. These references have not propelled us forward as a nation but too often held us back.

New Zealand First has been clear and consistent in our position that this is not an attack on the Treaty itself. We reject nebulous, undefined principles inserted as statutory flourishes. The pepper-potting of Treaty references into laws is not delivery of outcomes for Māori or for anyone; it is opportunity for confusion, delays, inconsistencies, and unnecessary complexity. The three bills being introduced today are a piece of work that is rationalising, simplifying, and, in some instances, deleting superfluous references.

While that side of the House may claim to be the sole voice for Māori, inferring that being Māori means we think and speak in one voice, this side of the House actually knows that we, like all New Zealanders, want to be well served by the law. Despite what these previous speeches would lead us to believe, we lose nothing here; in fact, we gain. We do not need ill-defined vagaries that, in the end, do more for lawyers than they do for Māori. The repeals that are achieved by this bill and the standardisation and strengthening of the other two bills recognise the importance of good lawmaking. Clarity is what is needed.

The Treaty is not a justification for ongoing division. It is not the opportunity to claim faux victim narratives. It is the foundation of the nation that we forged. Our legislation is long overdue for this correction to ensure we are not pulled backwards into the never-ending cycle of despair but propelled forward to tangibly improved outcomes. We have had decades of this principles posturing, and yet to listen to that side of the House, nothing has actually improved. Ignoring actual improvements and progress, that side of the House wants to continue to perpetuate a narrative of despair and division of us and them in order to retain political relevance—political relevance that is founded on conflict between employer and employee, wealthy and poor, tenant and landlord, rural and urban, Māori and the rest.

How dare they continue to demand that, as Māori, we have to choose whakapapa over citizenship? How dare they continue to fight with a death grip on the status quo, depriving any opportunity to strengthen, clarify, and improve legislation at the same time as being critical of the outcomes being achieved? As we stand in this House, where over a quarter of our MPs are Māori, they claim that Māori have no voice, when, actually, they mean that they don’t have the voice they want to hear. [Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Just calm it all down a bit.

I stand with New Zealand First, the party that is led by two of the strongest political voices in this country and who happen to also be Māori. Half of our caucus is Māori; our three in-Cabinet Ministers are Māori. We have a voice, we have power, and we have authority. But, as a reminder to some in this House, it requires showing up every day and using your voice, using the authority given to you by those who voted you here, and most of all, it requires actually doing the work.

It is New Zealand First that is actually prepared to focus on outcomes, and better law is critical to making it easier to deliver outcomes. New Zealand First has always and will always honour our democracy, our nation, and our people. Foundational to this position is workable legislation that recognises we are all equal before the law. He iwi tahi tātou. On behalf of New Zealand First, I commend this bill to the House, with the promise that our work is not yet done.

There are moments in the House when you have to ask yourself, “Why?” Why does this Government detest Te Tiriti o Waitangi so much? Seriously.

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What is it about Te Tiriti that gets so far under this Government’s skin that they are prepared to come back into this House again and again and again to weaken it? Three bills, three attacks, three different ways of telling tangata whenua “Know your place, Māori”—know your place.

Let me remind this Government of something: Māori do know their place. We know exactly where our place is. It is not beneath the Government, it’s not behind the Government, and it’s certainly not as

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to the Government—certainly not as

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We are not subjects waiting obediently for whatever crumbs or scraps the Parliament decides we are allowed to keep. It is

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for anyone to ever think that. Strip away the words like “standardisation”, “consistency”, and “clarification”; this bill is simply about power. Te Tiriti puts limits on the Crown’s power. Te Tiriti tells them they are not the sole authority in this land. Te Tiriti tells Māori that rangatiratanga was never extinguished by the creation of this Parliament. Te Tiriti tells Ministers that there are obligations. That is what gets under their skin. Te Tiriti reminds the Crown that its power is not absolute; no one ceded sovereignty. Our rangatiratanga does not exist because they allow it.

It reminds of the uncomfortable truth that sits in this nation. Muru raupatu? We are still here. Loss of our w’enua? We are still here. Loss of our reo? We are still here. Loss of our economy? We are still here. Attack after attack after attack—we are still here, and guess what! We last longer than you in other places of this Government, and here we are: Te Tiriti attack after attack. Bill repeals—six Te Tiriti provisions, across six Acts: Crown pastoral land, education, energy efficiency, conservation, organic production, taonga species, and smoke-free legislation—go figure—affecting our kaitiakitanga, affecting our tikanga, affecting our w’enua, and our wellbeing. We have increasing poverty, housing issues, and health service issues, and this is this Government’s priority.

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When we look at the whole issue that we’re dealing with here today, we have members of Parliament who, during their years in Hobson’s Pledge would say, “We are one people”, refer to Te Tiriti as an imaginary partnership. Be very clear, we’re real; our mokopuna are real. What this member of Parliament and her Hobson’s Pledge say, I say, is

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What this member of Parliament and her party say, I say, is

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And what her Government does, I say is

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And our people are

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at this Government, which is why we must get them out, and we will ask for the candidate vote to make sure this rotten Government never gets back in again. We will entrench Te Tiriti, bind the Crown’s conduct to Te Tiriti, bind the Tribunal, and invest in Matike Mai, because constitutional transformation presents so many opportunities that this Government insists on blocking. Our rangatiratanga didn’t happen in this Parliament, e kī—e kī. Te Tiriti didn’t begin with his Parliament; they were all here before this Government.

Government can rewrite six parts of legislation; you can’t delete us. You can remove statutory references, but you can’t legislate w’akapapa out of existence, and you cannot remove Te Tiriti from us, as hard as you try. We will ensure that every right of our mokopuna cannot be erased, whichever collection of upokokōhua thinks they can. No upokokōhua will ever remove us. This Government is temporary, this bill is temporary, w’akapapa is not, and that is what we have. There’s really only one place that a bill like this belongs, and that is in the rubbish bin.

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

💬 Tamatha Paul: All right, tell us—tell us what you got.

It’s nice to see you here today. The National Party is quite clear—quite clear—that the Treaty of Waitangi is the founding document of New Zealand. We’re looking at the legislation, and there are all sorts of references to the Treaty: “to honour”, “to have regard to”, “to take into account”, “to give effect to”, and we need consistency and we need predictability in the law. That is what this bill is working to do. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I am almost speechless. I think I can string together a sentence to fill some time to speak to this very important bill, but honestly, I am shocked. I am shocked that we have been in urgency all week. It is now Saturday afternoon, and we’re sitting in urgency to discuss this Government taking Te Tiriti o Waitangi, our founding document, out of 18 Acts. These three bills in front of us today, the worst one up first, where they intend to completely strip it out of six Acts in our legislation, is absolutely disgraceful.

I’ve sat through the last few days in Parliament. First, we dealt with boot camps, where we were going to give punitive punishments to young people in need; instead of offering wraparound support that our whānau need, we’re throwing them into a boot camp. We know that these people, these young people with those needs, are disproportionately Māori. What an absolute punch down. Just throw them away and lock them away—lock them away and throw away the key. Then we had move-on orders. The amount of homelessness living on our streets is growing by the day. Again, a disproportionate amount of Māori are among our homeless, but what this Government is going to do is just move them along. No worries! We don’t need to worry about housing our people or feeding our people or offering social support to our people! We’ll just tell them to go sit and be homeless in the suburbs where we can’t see them.

And now here we are. This spineless Government is appeasing New Zealand First and ensuring that we are changing the references of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 18 pieces of legislation. It comes days after 50,000 people petitioned Parliament against these bills, because, for our whānau, this isn’t the first time we’ve had this. There has been attack after attack after attack on Te Tiriti o Waitangi from this Government. We have had hīkoi after hīkoi, and I commend every single one of those people who has stood up to the ridiculous nature of this decision making. This is not the New Zealand that we are. This is not the people that we represent. This is a Government who is appeasing their coalition partners because they want to win votes. But I’ll tell you what, you’re not going to win any votes out of this, because what this is going to do is show New Zealand that you don’t care about the future of New Zealand and the protection of our founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

To speak specifically to some of the feedback on this bill, I want to speak to what the Ministry of Justice said. The new words that are going to be replaced are “take into account”. They have said this will be considered a lower standard than the previous provisions if replaced. The benefits are low, and the costs fall disproportionately on Māori people. The best option, according to the Ministry of Justice, is to leave the law alone. There is so much work that we can do to ensure that Te Tiriti is honoured in this society, but this Government is taking us backwards.

Every day when I speak to people, they are not talking to me about the importance of the standardisation of references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi; they are talking to me about the cost of living. Our people are struggling day to day. It is getting more and more expensive to live in this country. So we move urgency and then spend five days talking about things that do not address the cost of living in any way! When is this Government going to stand up and put something on the table that will actually benefit New Zealanders? We haven’t seen it yet. New Zealanders haven’t seen it this term, and that’s why, on 7 November, New Zealanders will make their decision and vote this Government out.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill does fulfil one of the coalition agreements between New Zealand First and the National Party. One thing I will not do is the disgraceful behaviour by people that remember that they have a job and have actually turned up for the first time in months. I won’t be weaponising the Māori language. National commends this to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In the following years, my father will reach his 100th year. He was raised on the shores of the Ōhiwa Harbour by his grandfather, Rimaha, who was a priest of the Ringatū faith, for whom a memory of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the following decades when Māori petitioned their members of Parliament for its enactment in legislation, the fighting of the Land Wars, and the subsequent removal of Māori rights and interests under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, was a real memory—not only a person who remembered our history in those early years but a person who also petitioned his local member of Parliament for the enactment of legislation which he felt he was guaranteed under Te Tiriti and under the agreements made by his rangatira and the Crown for access to the Ōhiwa and the kai that it produced for the village.

That is why, in 1971, National Prime Minister Keith Holyoake called the Treaty “the real starting point of New Zealand’s history as a nation.” Keith Holyoake, who is one of the Prime Minister’s I most respect in New Zealand’s history, said, “there can be no true concept of New Zealand unless Māori and European are considered as equal partners in our nation.” Holyoake went on to say that the Treaty was a “genuine attempt to achieve justice for both Māori and Pākehā”. And he reached, in that speech, for an old biblical phrase to describe the way that we should approach it: “the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.”

The point in Prime Minister Holyoake’s speech was that the words of Te Tiriti missed the point of the spirit of the agreement; that New Zealand’s history is peppered with approaches where people have sat down and have been able to say to each other, “We did not get everything right, but it is our job and it is our solemn duty between the Crown and those it represents, to Māori, to find a way forward, which future generations can be proud of.” That is the promise of the Treaty, and that is what is being dishonoured by this bill today.

Jim Bolger’s National Government began the modern Treaty settlement process; Jenny Shipley’s continued it. In 1998, Jenny Shipley said to Waitangi—and I was there as a child with my father, who was a journalist at the time—that it should be a “place where we renew our commitment to honour the Treaty”. She describes Treaty settlements as addressing historical injustices and as a bridge to the future—I was eight years old. Te Tiriti o Waitangi has been a bridge to the future, which has seen me, now, 30 years later, representing the electorate of Manurewa, which is the most populous Māori urban population in the country. I am proud to stand here as a child of the Treaty and to recognise the contributions of the Prime Ministers before me—National and Labour—who have stood up for that vision for me and my generation.

She said there was a “huge silent majority of New Zealanders who understand the responsibility that goes with being a Treaty partner”. I believe in that legacy of the National Party as well as Labour; that two major parties in Aotearoa must stand up for the constitutional principles that guarantee the right of Māori, and future generations of Māori, not only to stand in this House but to have their rights recognised in legislation. This bill takes away those rights in education and environmental rights, and in the rights for things like growing plants, which are taonga tuku iho, which should be guaranteed to Māori for successive generations to come.

It was John Key’s National Government that continued the settlement tradition, and it is no surprise today that, under this Government, there is only one National Minister in the House. There are two New Zealand First Ministers that should have taken the first call on this bill—

💬 SPEAKER: Yeah, just—

There is a convention that there should be, in matters of importance like this, under the Standing Orders, the ability for representatives to speak to an important decision such as this, because this bill does something very concrete that only the legislative process can do by majority in this House: it removes Treaty provisions from six Acts of Parliament. Even though the Waitangi Tribunal has investigated the actual policy decisions that produced this legislation, its conclusions are devastatingly specific: that Cabinet made these decisions without adequately informing itself of the effects of the changes on Māori or Māori interests, and that it was prioritising coalition agreement commitments over the need to make informed policy decisions.

When Christopher Luxon said he was extremely proud of National’s heritage of working to honour the Treaty and restore the honour of the Crown, he was right—it is a proud record of both major parties in this House. National Prime Ministers in the future will not be able to make this claim. This is a shame, and National members should vote against it.

This bill fulfils a coalition agreement of the Government with New Zealand First, and therefore, I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the References to Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi (Repeals) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 41

New Zealand Labour 25; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

💬 SPEAKER: The question is, That the References to Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi (Repeals) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

💬 SPEAKER: The hour is now—well, I think we will progress since we’re all here on a Saturday. I call on the Hon Penny Simmonds.