The Unusual Death Of The Treaty Principles Bill

The demise of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi
Bill was a very rare beast in Parliament – a government bill
that was voted down in the House.

Many non-government
bills are “negatived”, members’ bills for example, often at
the first reading debate.

Such failures surprise few
and have little political import.

Occasionally
government bills are abandoned, either by being formally
“discharged” or by being banished to the bottom of
Parliament’s Order Paper, never to be seen
again.

Retreats like these can be both embarrassing
and the target of opposition jibes.

But a government
bill being allowed to fail? No one I have asked can remember
a government bill that lost a vote, let-alone was
pummelled.

Data from this and the previous five
parliaments shows that from hundreds of bills, no other
government bill has been voted down in the
House.

Voting outcomes are not a surprise, and
governments have options.

They can choose which bills
to debate, and when. A vote that will be lost does not need
to happen.

Losing any vote is embarrassing.

This
is not a confidence or supply vote, where defeat would end a
government, but it makes this the first government in easy
memory that has consciously chosen defeat.

It is
possible to see that choice as the reasonable outcome of
compromise and negotiation.

It could also be the
result of a combination of poor negotiation and political
naivety.

Both analyses will have their supporters.
Both were suggested during the brutal debate.

Below
captures some key moments from a speaker from each
party.

David Seymour, ACT Party, the Bill’s
sponsor:

“Some will say that a Government can change
these policies case-by-case. And, indeed, I’m proud to be
part of a Government that is doing that.

“The problem
is, though, that another Government can just as easily bring
them back if the bad ideas behind these policies are not
confronted.

“And that’s why we see professional
bodies, universities, the public service, and schools
nurturing the divisive idea that the Treaty is a
partnership, hoping it will grow again at some future
time.

“Finally, some critics say that the debate is
divisive. Well, I say it has revealed the division.

“I
say it’s revealed a sizeable minority of New Zealanders who
oppose equal rights, liberal democracy, and treating each
person with the same basic dignity.

“Members of the
House and public of New Zealand, a free society takes hard
work and uneasy conversations.

“I’m proud that my
party has had the bravery, the clarity, and the patriotism
to raise uneasy topics, and I challenge other parties to
find those qualities in themselves and support this
bill.

“We will continue to fight on for the truth that
all Kiwis are equal. Āke, ake, ake.”

Chris Hipkins,
Labour, Leader of the Opposition:

“This is a grubby
little bill, born of a grubby little deal. It has had a
colossal impact on the fabric of our nation, and this bill
will forever be a stain on our country.

“What I do
take pride in is the way New Zealanders have come together
over the last six months to say, loud and clear, ‘This is
not us; this is not Aotearoa New Zealand’.

“Today,
National and New Zealand First join the opposition to this
bill, but they can claim no victory, no virtue, and no
principle; they get no credit for finally starting to fight
the fire they helped to ignite.

“Today, their votes
will fall on the right side of the ledger, but they will
forever be on the wrong side of history when it comes to
this bill.

“Not one National MP should walk out of
this debating chamber today with their head held high,
because, when it comes to this debate, they led nothing,
they stopped nothing, and they stood for
nothing.

“This is a bill based on a mythology – a
mythology that is far too easily turned into outright lies:
the myth of Māori special privilege.

“Life expectancy
seven years lower than for other New Zealanders is not
special privilege. Being twice as likely to die from cancer
as others is not special privilege.

“A higher rate of
childhood hospitalisation, 40 percent of Māori living in
the highest areas of deprivation compared to just 10 percent
of Europeans. These are not signs of privilege.

“But
too often these statistics are twisted to suggest that
Māori are wanting the Crown to save them.

“I’ve been
up and down the country in recent years speaking to Māori
all over New Zealand, and that could not be further from the
truth.

“How ignorant, how blind, and how wrong those
statements are. Māori have been very clear: what they’re
asking for is partnership, for the Crown to walk alongside
them and to embrace by-Māori, for-Māori
solutions.

“Māori want to do the mahi themselves, and
they want the Crown to stop acting as an impediment to that.
I say it’s time we listened and it’s time we acted on
that.”

Marama Davidson, Green Party
Co-Leader:

“In fact, there was a particular moment in
the select committee submissions where we even had an ACT MP
attempt to drive a migrant away from centring Te Tiriti,
where the Muslim community leader Anjum Rahman was asked if
she was comfortable – by that ACT MP – with new migrants
potentially being left with different rights to
Māori.

“She said, ‘I reject your framing. I reject
your question. This is a way to try and sow division between
communities and we see you’, is what she said.

“She
said, ‘When you go to ethnic minority communities and try
and promote division between our community and theirs, we
hear you when you say, Oh, your community suffers racism
too, and [they get] special treatment’.

“And she said
in her submission, Māori did not get special treatment.
They [did not get] privileges. They are getting the rights
that were promised to them, and the help that should have
been upheld in a very minuscule way.

“I am so pleased
that the people came and spoke. We are proud to stand here
today to oppose the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi
Bill. Toitū Te Tiriti.”

Paul Goldsmith, National
Party, Minister of Justice:

“The outcome of the vote
today has been known since the Treaty principles bill was
introduced.

“National has consistently said we’ll not
support it into law, fundamentally because we regard the
bill, which seeks to impose a particular interpretation of
the Treaty of Waitangi by simple majority and referendum, as
a crude way to handle a very sensitive
topic.

“National believes in equal citizenship and
equal opportunity for all New Zealanders, and we hold that
there are better ways to defend those principles than
through this bill.

“Some of the submissions were truly
remarkable. It’s equally true that the bill has provided a
convenient vehicle for political campaigns, on all
sides.

“And that is politics. We’ll hear all sorts of
hyperbole today, as we already have from the Leader of the
Opposition, about how terrible it is for National to allow
this bill to even be introduced.

“That is just froth
and spray. Coalitions require compromises. National opposed
the bill and would have preferred it not to have gone
forward.

“ACT wanted to have the bill passed into law.
None of us got what we wanted. That is life under MMP. Our
country is not so fragile that we can’t withstand a debate
about the role of the Treaty.

“The guiding principal
is that, in our efforts to honour Treaty of Waitangi
commitments, Treaty settlements, and to acknowledge tangata
whenua, we should never lose sight of the basic expectations
of people living in a modern, democratic society, such as
equal voting rights, equality before the law, and, broadly
speaking, an equal say in matters affecting their lives and
in the world around them.

“There can be a tension
between those two things, between honouring commitments to
Māori flowing from the Treaty and the basic expectations of
equality in a modern democracy.

“This is a tension
that we can’t just gloss over and ignore. Our proposition is
that as a nation, we should be serious in our commitment to
the first, but, in doing so, should be careful never to lose
sight of, or drift too far from, the second.

“People,
ultimately, have choices: where to live and where to invest.
For our country to continue to succeed, those basic
expectations of equality before the law must
remain.”

Casey Costello, New Zealand First

“I
want to reflect on what it is we are here to debate. Despite
the absence of any judge or academic being able to clearly
define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the ACT
Party believed it could.

“Despite what has been
suggested in the purpose of the bill, legislation would have
taken us back into the courts, which is the last thing this
country needs. To put this issue before the courts is
exactly what we needed to avoid.

“We have heard that
in the forming of a coalition Government, there are
compromises.

“There have been compromises, and New
Zealand First knows that, because we have been part of those
coalition agreements on many occasions.

“We know that
we can agree to disagree on many aspects. Even if we agree,
which we don’t, and even if it were to pass – and it won’t –
a subsequent Parliament could change the definitions and so
the cycle would continue.

“The unintended consequence
of this legislation – something that does not need
legislation.”

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke

“The
real issue is not this bill, nor is it doing a haka or
practising our indigenous customs in Parliament.

“The
real problem is that this institution – this House – has
only ever recognised one partner, one culture, and one
language from one Treaty.

“When will the rules of this
House acknowledge the laws of this land: tikanga and Te
Tiriti o Waitangi?

“That is the real question of
privilege here. At our darkest hour, we could have chosen to
fight this, but we chose to survive this.

“This bill
hasn’t been stopped; this bill has been absolutely
annihilated.

“So where to next? These past two years
have been completely about survival. This next chapter needs
to be about steps to thriving, and our road map to our next
destination has never been so clear.

“For us to
thrive, our job over the next few months will be to create
bills, policies, and legislation to remove significant
barriers that disallow Māori from accessing their basic
rights – not privileges.

“Aotearoa hou isn’t a
fantasy. It’s a place where there is unity, and the road map
has no roadworks on it and it doesn’t stop us from accessing
our basic rights, like proper healthcare without a two-week
wait.

“It’s not having to decide whether to learn our
language with student debt.

“This is tino
rangatiratanga – control over our daily decisions that we
make. Brick by brick, we will move from surviving to
thriving.

“Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora! Ka mate
te pire! Ka ora te iwi Māori! We had two choices: to live
or to die. We chose to live. Ka ora tonu tātou āke ake
ake!”

You can read the full debate in Hansard here.

You
can watch the full debate on Parliament TV [here
https://videos.parliament.nz/on-demand?id=6351160e-008a-4c9b-b75d-08dd787b78ae&keyword=treaty%20bill].

*
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