For people overseas, you know how it's a popular simplification that here in Aotearoa New Zealand we did way better than every other colonial nation when it came to our relations with the indigenous population?
Well, for the sake of communication, let's ignore that that's actually bollocks. We've got our cool Treaty that made us better. The Treaty Principles Bill seeks to redefine how our Government follows that Treaty. How, you might ask? Why, by COMPLETELY IGNORING LITERALLY EVERYTHING IT SAYS of course!
The bill is being pushed by the ACT party, who are treating the Treaty of Waitangi like the USA's founding document, as if every founding document ever written exists to codify a set of rights for all citizens equally. That is not what Te Tiriti is! Te Tiriti is a document codifying the relationship between Crown and Māori, in such a way that at least the Te Reo version explicitly ensures that Māori are not erased.
It is not a founding document meant to lay down human rights. Know what does that here? The Human Rights Act. The Treaty is what says "hey you pākehā, you can settle here, just don't fucking trample māori in the process."
And yes, it's more complicated. The Crown have never followed Te Tiriti. Not properly. And the English language version was explicitly written not to be a correct translation and by the English text the Crown has more rights than the chiefs agreed to. But putting that aside for a second, we have a treaty, and in recent decades there has been a push to do so, in part by the establishment of the Treaty Principles by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 which laid out specifically how the Government is meant to follow the Treaty and uphold Māori rangatiratanga, which is most widely agreed to mean sovereignty. The following are the 1975 Principles:
The acquisition of sovereignty in exchange for the protection of rangatiratanga.
The treaty established a partnership and imposed on the partners the duty to act reasonably and in good faith.
The freedom of the Crown to govern.
The Crown's duty of active protection.
The duty of the Crown to remedy past breaches.
Māori to retain rangatiratanga over their resources and taonga and have all citizenship privileges.
Basically, Māori did not cede sovereignty, they keep their land and treasures, and the Crown is supposed to be in partnership and consult Māori. Māori are guaranteed a voice in government and in decisions. That's why we have Māori electorates in our elections! Māori, as per current law, are guaranteed representation in Parliament. Whether or not it's enough is another topic, but they're at least guaranteed something.
ACT, through the Treaty Principles Bill seeks to go in the complete opposite direction. They have three principles they want to replace the 1975 ones with:
The New Zealand Government has the right to govern all New Zealanders
The New Zealand Government will honour all New Zealanders in the chieftainship of their land and all their property.
All New Zealanders are equal under the law with the same rights and duties.
Principle 1 is pretty insidious - because the New Zealand Government means, in this context, the representation of the Crown. Whom there has been much controversy over lately, with the Prime Minister and head of ACT's coalition partner National saying - against the academic consensus - that the Crown has absolute sovereignty. The point of Principle 1 is to erase the idea that Māori have any sovereignty over themselves, or that they are in any way their own group outside of a Crown hegemony.
Principle 2 is again pretty insidious. It puts all property rights on equal standing. I might point out that Māori lost 74% of the entire North Island between 1860 and 2000 (having had 80% of it in 1860, and at most 4% of it in 2000), and what of it was gifted to the Crown for specific purposes was not returned after those purposes were done. When does this Bill decide "their land" begins in time? Now, when almost all Māori land has been stolen? After all, this Government have recently removed the rule that said Māori could still claim seashore rights despite not having had exclusive use of it which the criteria normally requires, if their land had been stolen. Y'know, that thing that typically prevents one from having exclusive use of one's land! And they're using their recent Fast Track Proposals Bill to cut Māori out of decisions that affect what land they are recognised as having. Under these rules, an Iwi has to defer to the Crown wanting to build a pipeline through fucking wāhi tapu (sacred land) (WHICH BY THE WAY IS NOT SOMETHING I MADE UP, THAT'S A RECENT NEWS STORY) because they would have no codified right to disagree, especially not under the Fast Track Bill which literally allows the Crown to decide arbitrarily that the Iwi is being too precious and ignore their objections entirely.
The story I linked? To illustrate this, the above two principles seek to unequivocally side with the Council, the Crown, on the pipeline, and remove all avenues for Tūhourangi, Ngāti Tūmatawera, to fight back and protect their land from a Crown body that does not in any way respect them or the graves of their tūpuna. Because well, they can say nope, the government has a right to do this, and the land belongs to the Council, never mind it was stolen.
Principle 3 is just a dogwhistle. That's not the point of the Treaty, not remotely, and it's already covered by the Human Rights Act. In fact, it goes directly against the Treaty, because, as is painfully fucking obvious, the whole POINT was that Māori were not culturally annihilated by the hegemony of a much larger power! The whole point was to make explicit that Māori, as per this agreement, have certain fucking rights to make sure they're not overwhelmed!
And it's obvious that this interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi removes literally the entire point of the Treaty. The Treaty Principles Bill is one side of a codified relationship seeking to unilaterally eviscerate the protections supposedly built into that relationship for the other side. The Crown signed a contract, saying they had to respect Māori. And now that progress is meaning it might be slightly followed, the Crown's representatives in the coalition Government are seeking to make sure the Crown no longer has to follow any part of that contract.
If New Zealand is supposedly better than other colonial nations, this government is trying to do everything possible to change that and get rid of the one thing that demands the Crown and Iwi be equal. The one thing that means we did better? Yeah, that is the thing they're trying to get rid of.
