‘Recovering racist’ slams Treaty bill, supporter says some Māori should be charged with treason
Thursday, 13 February 2025
Non-Māori in New Zealand have no idea of their own history, but want to tinker with constitutional arrangements, select committee for Treaty Principles Bill hears.
At the hearing, a former Labour prime minister and former National minister metaphorically linked hands in opposition to ACT leader David Seymour’s bill.
An anti-co-governance supporter of ACT’s bill has shared the identity of the greatest Māori to ever live, and says some Māori should be charged with treason.
Former New Plymouth mayor and “recovering racist” Andrew Judd has launched a blistering attack on ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, saying Pākehā have no idea of their own history.
Judd, a Pākehā and high-profile supporter of Māori Treaty aspirations, spoke to the justice committee considering the bill in oral submissions.
It came as Labour and National formed a one-day-only grand coalition, as former National minister Hekia Parata and former Labour PM Sir Geoffrey Palmer linked hands - metaphorically - in opposition to David Seymour’s bill.
Judd said in his own journey as a recovering racist, he realised Pākehā “don’t understand our past”.
“It’s abhorrent that, in this day and age, we haven’t moved on from anywhere. Cook might as well have arrived yesterday.”
Judd said the Waitangi Tribunal was not perfect but had worked for 50 years, and was better than politicians trying to change Pākehā and Māori relationships.
“In the main, we, as non-Māori, have no idea of our past. Nothing. And here we are talking about changing constitutional relationships.”
He called for a “reboot February 7”, which meant the day after Waitangi Day the nation starts discussing a system that empowers the Treaty and encourages tangata whenua to control their own destiny.
“Let’s show the world that little old Aotearoa down here is ahead of the game.”
There are numerous Treaty principles, developed through courts, the Government and Waitangi Tribunal over decades. Only decisions from the courts have created a binding precedent on Treaty principles. The principles are used to guide the Government on how to apply the spirit and intent of the Treaty.
ACT’s bill would replace them with the three found here. The law would need majority support in a public referendum to come into force.
After this about-six month phase, the committee will send a report with suggested changes to Parliament for the bill’s second reading - the big debate and next vote.
As part of its coalition agreement, National agreed only to support the bill through this public submissions process. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has promised to “spike” and “kill” the bill at its second reading.
Meanwhile anti-co-governance and pro-bill speaker Julian Batchelor, shared a Powerpoint presentation via Zoom with the committee.
In 2023, Batchelor took an anti-co governance roadshow around Aotearoa, warning of the country’s destruction, Māori dictatorship and tribal rule.
On Thursday he said, according to a “plain reading of the Treaty”, Māori had ceded sovereignty completely and forever. “Not partial control, but entire control, not the British just ruling over the British but ruling over all citizens, including Māori.”
He said when Māori talked about establishing a dual government they were trashing their 1840 elders, breaching the Treaty, “and ought to be charged with treason”.
Anyone claiming that Māori did not cede sovereignty was living in denial, “which is not just a river in Egypt”.
Batchelor went on to include a quote from Sir Apirana Ngata, “the greatest Māori we’ve ever had”, who said that Māori ceded sovereignty.
Meanwhile former PM Sir Geoffrey Palmer spoke as part of a group of King’s Counsel lawyers who wrote a letter to PM Christopher Luxon and Attorney General Judith Collins that sought that the bill be abandoned. King’s Counsel status recognises excellence and is held by the profession’s top lawyers.
Palmer said the process that led to the bill’s introduction was fundamentally flawed.
“What we’ve seen is a bill that’s clogged up the house with more than 300,000 submissions … wasted a tremendous amount of time and money and it’s damaged the collective fabric of the nation.”
Normal policy process didn’t start with a bill, he said, it ended with one. “The important thing to stress here is the dangers of majority tyranny over a minority.”
Former National minister Hekia Parata kicked off the day with equally vehement opposition to the bill.
She said one of the oft-repeated statements supporting the bill was the question of where in the world had ancestry ever been the driver of rights.
“I find that incredibly ironic, because the authority of this committee and the proposal of this bill rests on a kinship-based ancestry, property-owning royal family known in New Zealand as the Crown.”
Parata was a National MP for nearly a decade from 2008, serving as education minister in the John Key Government.
She said the select committee should report back to Parliament that the bill was “irretrievably flawed and should waste no further resources of the House nor our nation’s tolerance”.
Instead we should focus on honouring the Tiriti in modern and forward-looking ways, said Parata.
Speaking for Local Government NZ, Whakatāne district councillor Toni Boynton warned that if passed into law, the bill could send council costs surging.
“This would require significant administrative, legal and compliance expenditure, diverting much-needed resource from our core council business and increasing the cost on our whānau, our ratepayers.”
Select committee hearings, where more than 16,000 applicants to speak were short-listed down to 80 hours of speakers, run till early March.