Treaty Principles Bill: David Seymour, Simeon Brown and the equity box for the cricket

Monday, 24 February 2025

Treaty Principles Bill hearing gets a lesson on equity from top doctor, who references relative height inequity, cricket and politicians Simeon Brown and David Seymour.

Bill supporters question why some people get special treatment based on their Māori ancestry, and one warns of “civil war” if racial separation doesn’t stop.

A submitter gives entire kōrero in NZ sign language and shares a sneak peek at his life “through my hands”.

It was a brutal diagnosis.

Dr Matt Wheeler, physician, haematologist, said he had met National minister Simeon Brown, and actually went to the same school as ACT leader David Seymour.

It appears they both had a bad case of relative non-tallness.

On Monday, Wheeler, chair of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ Māori committee was explaining inequity via Zoom to the justice select committee hearing submissions on Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill.

“It may not seem like it from Zoom, but if we all wanted to watch a cricket game over a fence, I would easily be able to see over the top of said fence, but the other two probably couldn’t.”

Equality meant they would all get a box to stand on - even though Wheeler didn’t need one, he said.

“I believe that equity isn’t about doing more for one particular group, but doing something different to achieve fairness.”

Wheeler slammed the bill, in a submission blending personal experience and research on Māori health inequity.

New research showed Māori were more likely to be diagnosed and die from the blood cancers leukaemia and myeloma, and also had higher death rates for these cancers, said Wheeler.

Māori had higher rates of stroke, heart failure, rheumatic fever hospitalisations, diabetes, and diabetes-related limb amputation, higher suicide rates, and psychosis cases, he said.

“These disparities are not due to genetic factors, rather the quality of care provided and how government resources are distributed.”

The Treaty bill would exacerbate these health inequities further, he said.

Wheeler said his eldest daughter was 9, and his son was 7 - evidence showed that a non-Māori baby born today would die at the same time as both these Māori children.

“I want that to sink in for a moment. The equity gap [for average life expectancy] is eight years for males and seven years for females… if this isn’t the clearest example of how we fail to meet our Treaty obligations … I don’t know what is.”

‘What if my great-grandfather married a Māori lady?’

Mid-Canterbury farmer David Clark, who supported the bill, said his local area was his tūrangawaewae.

After his great-grandfather arrived in Auckland with nothing, his family had worked hard over generations - but now he was concerned about how New Zealand was being divided by race.

Clark pointed out that in his submission he’d posed a question about his family’s past.

“Had my great-grandfather ended up marrying, and having children with a lady with Māori bloodlines … would that have qualified my family … for special treatment?”

What if his own wife had Māori bloodlines herself? “Would our children going forward be due special treatment or differentiation under the law?”

New Zealand was multicultural, with Pasifika, “people of Asian extraction”, many “wonderful Filipinos” working in the dairy industry, he said.

“I would like to see us all treated equally and equitably under the law, and that the law, the legislation and governance … target need regardless of the racial background.”

Meanwhile, bill supporter Wayne Palleson said he had nine grandchildren, five of whom had Māori ancestry, while four did not.

“I see it as totally wrong that these kids grow up with some of them having different rights and privileges, due to who their great-grandfather was, and the other four don’t.”

In most countries this was called racism or apartheid, he said, but in New Zealand it seemed to be accepted.

This racial classification, “Māori or non-Māori” needed to end, and if there wasn’t a mature discussion with equal rights for everyone, then the issue would come to a head with civil war, Palleson said.

‘I’m a proud Māori man, and a Deaf man’

Cruze Kapa, speaking in NZ Sign Language for CCS Disability Action, said the bill submissions process itself was an example of how difficult things could be for deaf people like himself.

“I’m here and I’m a proud Māori man, and I’m proud to be Deaf. I’m here to give you a sneak peek at my life, and my world, through my hands.”

There was no access to information, the online submissions were inaccessible, there were no interpreters provided and sometimes zero captioning, Kapa said.

“How am I supposed to know what’s going on? How am I supposed to know what’s happening? Does that look like equity?”

The bill did not create equity for people in the hauā, or disabled, community, he said. What he didn’t want was for the richness of their culture, language, opportunities to become invisible.

“So just as we are here, advocating to protect our reo, our world, our people, and our whenua, so too should you.”

The day ended with a submission from the Australiasian College of Emergency Medicine, mirroring that given by Wheeler in the morning - criticising the bill for focusing on equality, not equity.

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.