‘I am tangata whenua. This is my land,’ Peter Williams tells Treaty Principles Bill hearing
Friday, 14 February 2025
It’s Valentine’s Day at the justice committee hearing on the Treaty Principles Bill and Hilda Halkyard Harawira asks if people would treat their romantic partner like the bill treats Māori.
Broadcaster Peter Williams says he is tangata whenua, and there has been plenty of intermarriage and interbreeding over the past few centuries between peoples.
And a Palmerston North City councillor gives his advice on how to emphatically dump the bill - including a raft of apologies, and mea culpa from PM Christopher Luxon.
Broadcaster Peter Williams has come out in support of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, saying, despite his Glaswegian heritage, he’s tangata whenua too.
Justice committee oral submissions on the bill continued on Friday, Valentine’s Day: Williams one of dozens of submitters offering relationship advice under the nation’s founding document.
Williams said since the late 19th century, all immigrant groups to this country “have mingled and merged, intermarried and interbred”. We are all people of this land, he said.
His own ancestors arrived from Glasgow in 1848 - so his “attachment, heritage and love for this country” was deep-seated.
“Yes, a saliva test taken through Ancestry.com says I’m 91% Scottish but that’s patently ridiculous, I should be graded 100% New Zealander… I am tangata whenua. This is my land, I’m privileged to share it with more than 5 million other Kiwis.”
Williams said it did not make sense that “a modicum of Māori blood” could give some people political and economic advantage over others. “It must not be allowed in modern New Zealand.”
Earlier on Friday, Hilda Halkyard Harawira had some relationship advice - asking if people would want something like the bill in their relationship.
“Would your wife, your partner, accept a downgrade in his or her mana? I don’t think so.”
And as for Hobson’s Pledge members, she warned that the members’ kids could establish their own relationships with Māori. “They will all have Māori mokopuna, one day.”
Halkyard Harawira - a Far North district councillor, whose partner is Hone Harawira - blasted ACT’s proposed law as damaging the Government’s relationship with Māori.
Don’t ask ACT to translate any part of the Treaty, she said.
“They are not reo experts… I have a free Māori lesson for you - taringa kohatu means stone ears, why do you not heed the largest hīkoi of 100,000 people who marched to Parliament?”
In a follow up, she offered an “English lesson”, as well. “ACT says Māori have preferential treatment. Yes, we do - but we call it racism.”
Dumping a bill is hard, but don’t go back
When it came to permanently dumping the bill, an emphatic method was important, according to Palmerston North City councillor Brent Barrett.
“The form of the bill’s rejection is crucial to the durability of that rejection.”
He recommended the bill be withdrawn, three apologies be issued and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should make a further public statement.
It was “a gross abuse of power” for Parliament, formed after the Treaty was signed, to even propose to refashion the Treaty.
Once the bill was withdrawn, there should be an apology to all New Zealanders, to Māori and to King Charles himself, he said.
“I see this bill as a legislative attack on our nation’s heritage, reputation, future and inception.”
Luxon’s statement should acknowledge the bill was far too high a price to pay for political power, Barrett said.
Meanwhile, on the question of relationships, East Coast property developer Craig Nisbet said he was confident that all his Māori friends, “many of whom support the bill”, would vigorously defend him if he was called racist for supporting it, too.
“There is nothing racist inherent in expecting the rule of law, and honest business practice and common decency to be practised irrespective of race.”
Nisbet said he had first-hand knowledge of people using the Treaty and the rules developed from it to unnecessarily delay development projects, causing significant costs.
One such project was nearly derailed at the last minute by a handful of “radical, disaffected, ill-informed Māori hoons” - who argued the Treaty supported and empowered their behaviour. “My argument - it wasn’t.”
It’s grooming, not a healthy relationship
Barbara Blake, speaking for Te Tiriti is Us, an anti-bill group of Pākehā seniors, said older New Zealanders were being groomed by right-wing lobby groups to believe a narrative of Māori privilege and takeover. “We find this cynical and absolutely immoral.”
She said ACT leader David Seymour’s description of the Treaty as a treaty between races was untrue. It was a treaty between people who lived here and people who wanted to settle here, Blake said - genetic makeup was irrelevant.
“To make this debate about race is, we believe, a calculated effort to create social division - particularly designed to worry older New Zealanders.”
Meanwhile, Far North District Council mayor Moko Tepania said the bill could do damage to relationships between Māori themselves.
The proposed second principle, upholding any different rights included in Treaty settlements, would “pit iwi and hapū against each other”.
Tepania said, if passed, the bill would mean iwi that had settled their Treaty claim would have “more mana to work with us than our unsettled [iwi]”.
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 in law with the three found here. The law would need majority support in a public referendum to come into force.
Select committee hearings, where more than 16,000 applicants to speak were short-listed down to 80 hours of speakers, run till early March.