Expert opinion from University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau
Comment: In issuing his proclamations about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, David Seymour has a disconcerting habit of naming famous dead people as his supporters. In August 2023, for instance, he told a crowd at the Moutere Hills Community Centre, “I daresay if Nelson Mandela was alive today he would be campaigning for Act.”
Nelson Mandela’s grandson Kweku Mandela hastened to issue a denial: “My grandfather loved the people of New Zealand and I can say categorically he would not campaign for this today or any other day in the past.”
At a Business NZ conference in Wellington a month later, Seymour went on to claim Kate Sheppard, who led the historic campaign for women’s suffrage in New Zealand, as an Act party supporter: “I have read some of Kate Sheppard’s quotes, and she believed in universal human rights. I suspect she would be voting for us.”
This time Suzanne Manning, the president of the National Council of Women in NZ, put him straight. The campaign for female suffrage, she said, aimed to “empower women to make their own choices and not have men presume to speak for them. Neither David Seymour nor any male politician should feel entitled to that privilege.”
Undeterred, Seymour went on to speak for many of the chiefs who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840: “If they were around today, they would be voting Act.”
The chances of that seem infinitesimal, since Act’s rewriting of Te Tiriti tries to erase Queen Victoria’s Article 2 promise to the rangatira and the hapū of te tino rangatiratanga of their lands, dwelling places and all of their taonga – their mana motuhake as rangatira and kin groups.
It also rewrites the Queen’s promise in Article 3 to give the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand ‘nga tikanga rite tahi’ (exactly equal tikanga) – with her subjects, the inhabitants of England, as exactly the same rights and duties, a very different matter.
As Patuone explained in support of Te Tiriti at Waitangi in February 1840, ‘by bringing his two index fingers side by side, that they would be perfectly equal, and that each chief would be similarly equal with Mr. Hobson.’
As his brother Tamati Waka Nene exclaimed to Governor Hobson, “You must be our father! You must not allow us to become slaves! You must preserve our customs, and never permit our lands to be wrested from us!”
From the historical record, it is clear that the rangatira understood Te Tiriti as placing each of them and their hapū, their taonga and their tikanga on an equal footing with the Governor and the incoming settlers – equality in difference, with their own mana and ways of living.
Just as Act selectively quotes from Te Tiriti to distort the promises that were exchanged at Waitangi in February 1840, so they selectively quote from Nelson Mandela, Kate Sheppard and the rangatira, and latterly, my own work on the Treaty.
I suppose I should be flattered to be among such a galaxy of luminaries, but I do not support a referendum. It would be a travesty of democracy.
The referendum was proposed in the Act manifesto at the recent election, and none of the other parties supported it. 91.4 percent of the electorate voted for those other parties, and only 8.6% voted for Act.
The proposed draft Treaty principles bill is inflammatory, and polarising. It radically distorts the promises that were exchanged at Waitangi and elsewhere between Queen Victoria and the rangatira of the various hapū.
It has already provoked deep mistrust and resentment, which will only get more intense over time.
The process surrounding the Treaty Principles bill is a farce. With 8.6 percent of the vote at the last election, Act has no democratic mandate to advance a referendum on Te Tiriti.
For National to allow Act to draft the Treaty principles bill and for it to be advanced in the coalition agreement was a major mistake.
As Matthew Hooton observes, the draft bill reads “as purposefully disrespectful to the text of the Treaty,” and an insult to the descendants of the signatories. At Tūrangawaewae and Rātana, they made their views very clear.
A debate about Te Tiriti – by all means. But let it be just and impartial, as befits a constitutional discussion, and not conducted on the basis of a bill that is highly partisan, and designed to provoke ill-will and anger.
According to Hooton, “Act’s strategy seems to be to offer fake Treaty principles to the public, generate a few hundred thousand supportive online select-committee submissions, hold six months of heated hearings, hope for civil unrest, and then accuse National of siding with Māori radicals against “mainstream New Zealanders”.
National’s latest move – putting David Seymour in charge of the process of managing the bill – only makes matters worse. I agree with Matthew Hooton that this draft bill is a cynical political stunt. It lacks democratic legitimacy, carries significant risks for the nation, and the select committee will have no chance of impartiality.
It should be boycotted on these grounds – by other parliamentarians, as well by as by potential submitters.
If, like Pontius Pilate, Christopher Luxon is trying to wash his hands of responsibility for his own role in this incendiary situation, that won’t work.
He should listen to his own elders, and put the proposed referendum in the dustbin of history, where it belongs. As Jim Bolger said, it’s a bloody stupid idea.
Might it be possible to turn Seymour’s disrespectful Bill into an opportunity to consider the interpretation and application of Articles 3 and 1 in that order – aspects on which he has something to say and where the Parliament is performing poorly? Palmer and Butler among others have made a start.
Well said Dame Anne
It speaks badly of Christopher Luxon that he allowed this as part of the coalition agreement. He should have stood his ground instead of being so desperate to get into power. Seymour would have folded eventually. I’m sure it’s giving him nightmares now.
Thank you Dame Anne for your wise counsel. I certainly hope Christopher Luxon takes your advice and listens to his elders. If he persists with David Seymour taking this bill to a select committee I shall take your advice and boycott the submission process.
Seymour is openly trying to redefine the debates about the treaty as well as redefine the treaty itself. But don’t be surprized at National’s support by putting the bill forward.
National knows that the world of their history, the world of exploitation, so in our face today by fossil fuel emissions causing increasing climate change, has been revealed as unworkable in building a future for this country. And it is bigger than that, it is global. National will be trying to redefine the words and concepts which have produced a discussion about, and movement toward a more inclusive society over the last few decades.
Take note, not just the treaty. This campaign to redefine is an act of desperation and it is their only hope to get the country ‘back on track’, the track of exploitation, and destruction, and they will be open about their efforts. It might work because we are living in desperate times. And Labour was always unwilling to define honestly what National was doing. We must be able to recognize and call them out on each effort to redefine.
Sage advice. Now, if only it is heard and acted on, while there is still time.
As Hooton also notes, it is not yet too late:
“Luxon should get ahead of the game, using his authority as leader of the country to stop Act’s bill right now.
“If Act rebels, he could then do what he should have done during coalition negotiations and tell them to try their luck with Labour, the Greens and TPM.” https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/national-and-act-are-failing-the-good-faith-test-over-treaty-principles-bill-matthew-hooton/MTKZFN6HPFBFDIT3GIYOKEFWAM/
I’ve learned more from you about Te Tiriti than all the politicians, activists and teachers put together and have the greatest possible respect for your opinions. However, what I can’t reconcile is you’ve also repeatedly said that the Treaty is not a ‘partnership’ in the commercial sense nor is it a treaty between ‘races’ (a colonial construct etc) and our judiciary got it wrong in 1987. I took that to suggest it has been misrepresented and misinterpreted ever since.
Why then, is a public discussion about what the principles/articles really mean and how they should be interpreted ‘stupid’?
It certainly makes Luxon look weaker than ever. Semour will be even more incentivised to withdraw support from the triumvirate and force the rump to negotiate every new law they may try to pass. Another election by next Xmas anyone?
If you don’t leave your past in the past, it will destroy your future. Live for what today has to offer, not what yesterday has taken away.
An interesting comment in an opinion piece by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN in the NYTimes this week … “A Titanic Geopolitical Struggle Is Underway” “Yes, this is no ordinary geopolitical moment.
“On one side is the Resistance Network, dedicated to preserving closed, autocratic systems where the past buries the future. On the other side is the Inclusion Network, trying to forge more open, connected, pluralizing systems where the future buries the past. Who wins the struggles between these two networks will determine a lot about the dominant character of this post-post-Cold War epoch.”
Have you ever thought that maybe Anne you aren’t fostering reconciliation between treaty partners but feeding grievance. In an earlier item in Newsroom you commented that one of the outcomes of the Treaty was that Government used it to buy land cheaply from Maori then sell it a large profit to settlers – which sounds awful. But what you didnt mention was that the “profit” on land sales was used to build ports roads and railways to build schools and hospitals – all of which are essential to land actually having any value. Land without infrastructure is essentially valueless (in the economic sense).
When you look at our history through a full telling of the facts what first seemed utterly unreasonable actually is just plain common sense. It is this telling of only the part of the story that fuels grievance without telling the part that explains that is doing great harm to race relations in this country.
I’m of Irish and Scottish ancestry – my ancestors went through far worse at the hands of the English than anything that happened here in Aotearoa – but is there any point in lying awake at night angry about that? The end result was that the English created modern no-tribal societies in both Ireland and Scotland and through out much of the old British empire. The process was not admirable in many places but the result generally was. […]
We collectively need to be confronting the challenges in our collective future instead we seem to be putting our energies into recreating some mythic version of the past based on a large lot of massaged versions of history. You wont die yesterday but you might tomorrow – and never was there a time when we collectively need to be forward looking than now.
Jacinda managed natural disasters Luxon has disasterous allies to manage.
Dame Anne nails it.
Hooton, Salmond, du Plessis-Allan and O’Sullivan all agreeing; something must be up.
Yes, this is a political exercise by Act to enhance, or perhaps create, a position as the seemingly ‘true democrats’ of Aotearoa. And while the method is dubious at best, and more aptly described as cynically manipulative, there are two reasons why the process can and should go ahead.
The first is clear – we have a MMP political system designed to give small parties a voice. For those that lament Act’s initiative, the target of your wrath should be MMP. And, I think you are wrong. This is our system and we should accept how it works, even when the issues are contentious.
The second reason is that National/Act won and Labour lost. In my view, the reason was the rejection of co-governance and the perceived threat of disenfranchisement. I respect that this is my interpretation of the issue that sunk labour, but as someone who fought against the fiscal cap in the 90s and have been proud of our rich cultural heritage, I did not feel comfortable with the direction we were being led down. For me, this seems a useful time to debate the issue of treaty when it is top of mind for the population.
So I find it hard to understand the criticism of the proposed debate. The garbage argument of ‘wasting parliament’s time’ is so purile, and so often trotted out, it doesn’t need an answering. But here goes – the treaty is big and important, and we should discuss it.
The argument that Act is a blunt and ugly instrument has more legs, but sometimes the best conversations start from the most unpromising propositions.
Or is it that we fear having the conversation? It is a lot easier to focus on the rate of inflation, speed limits, and the odd train crash somewhere else in the world.
I cannot fathom an answer to all this and hope others can add some enlightenment. However, I do hope the debate happens and is useful.
I respect Dame Anne’s scholarship and sympathy for Maori culture and lifestyle and all it has to teach us as a nation. We are a truly fortunate country. The Treaty, te Titiri, broke new ground in it’s concern for native and settler. A historic document, it states very simply that the peoples of NZ are to be treated equally in every respect. It is an instrument of it’s time but also a foretaste of democratic intent. Of course it was betrayed almost as soon as it was signed, and the exploitation and humiliation which followed profoundly affects our situation and thinking today.
Thanks to the courage of politicians in the 1990s, settlements have been agreed which have acknowledged the exploitation. As Queen Te Ata said at the time, these did not achieve all that was asked for, but for the sake of the country they were accepted; a profoundly generous attitude, and humbling in it’s declaration of Maori magnanimity.
With this in mind could we now start afresh by respecting the intent of the Treaty, i.e. it’s democratic thrust, and allowing it to remain a founding document? Secondly, could we then look at what democracy means in the 21st century, and in particular what it means for NZ. We clearly need a debate, one which respects the different elements we embody from the distant past and from more recent times which have brought such a great diversity of cultures and understandings to our shores. Perhaps in this light we might find the propositions of our new government worthy of consideration, or at least a starting point for respectful discussion and debate.
It seems like a grotesque overreach of powers, by all three coalition parties to varying extents. It’s time we set some sort of limits to what any elected representative can actually do, here in Aotearoa NZ.
As I said in the article, “A debate about Te Tiriti – by all means. But let it be just and impartial, as befits a constitutional discussion, and not conducted on the basis of a bill that is highly partisan, and designed to provoke ill-will and anger.”
If National and the PM decided that in order to gain power, they’d allow a debate over Te Tiriti to be initiated, they should at least have ensured that it was dignified, well-informed and impartial. That would have allowed for a measured and thoughtful discussion.
What we have instead is a debate based on a bill that is based on a deliberate distortion of the text of the Treaty, run by one very small party that is responsible for this mischievous proposed legislation. That is not how constitutional matters should be handled.
Allowing Act to draft the bill, and then handing it over to their leader to run the Parliamentary process is not just ‘bloody stupid,’ as Jim Bolger has said, but given the high stakes involved, irresponsible.
There are substantive debates to be had over recent interpretations of the Treaty by the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal, but there is almost no chance of a sensible discussion under these circumstances.
By putting David Seymour in charge of the Treaty Principles bill, the PM has put the fox in charge of the hen-house. What on earth is he thinking?
All that will happen is a polarisation between extreme positions on both sides, and that is dangerous for inter-ethnic relations, social cohesion and faith in democracy in New Zealand.
I was having a conversation the other day about the worrying start to our New Year when I was told “the problem with our country is that”, & he pointed to a sign on the wall in Maori. I asked what he meant & then the bile started. You can counter with historical facts but that just bounces off a thick brick slimy wall I no longer want to go up against. I’ve decided, unless the conversation turns racially nasty, discussing the principles of the Treaty is off my table. Your last paragraph perfectly sums up, not only my experience, but that of many other reasonable kiwis.