Rejected but not dejected - has the Treaty Principles Bill been successful?

Saturday, 5 April 2025

The ACT party leader says report raises alarming concerns that show why the Treaty Principles Bill should be passed into law.

ANALYSIS: Fronting to media on Friday after the justice committee recommended his Treaty Principles Bill be dumped, ACT leader David Seymour said the bill’s process was nevertheless “very successful”.

To be clear, the bill was given a firm thumbs-down from PM Christopher Luxon (despite supporting it to its second appearance in the debating chamber) as well as every other major political party, likely a vast number of the vast number of select committee submitters, and, by majority, the select committee itself.

While the bill will almost certainly be DOA at its next reading, there’s no doubt that, for Seymour and ACT, it has always been more about the journey than the destination.

Jenny Shipley gives submission on the Treaty Principles Bill

Take his post-report release appearance: he had about 20-odd minutes of time to freestyle on the subjects of equality, democracy, equality, the Treaty, and finally, equality. He even got in a few swipes at the “bureaucracy” - presumably the public service and its apparent trigger-happy use of non-parliamentary-defined Treaty principles.

Even before this term, in its embryonic stages the idea was hoovering up political attention. Will he or won’t he get it through coalition negotiations? Oh, he did??! Then will he or won’t he get support past the second reading?

Now, probably not. Oh well, we got a record-breaking, and website-breaking, number of submissions to the select committee considering the proposal (300,000-plus). We got a record-breaking turnout to the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti around the country. And we got a likely never-to-be-repeated gathering of academic, legal, political and iwi minds speaking to the justice committee.

These might have all been a vast numerical opposition to the bill, but it takes a lot of political energy to argue against the word “equality”.

And even then, as Seymour argued on Friday, the numbers might not actually be that important. He said select committee submissions don’t reflect true public sentiment.

PM Christopher Luxon gave a firm thumbs-down to the Treaty Principles Bill. (File photo)

Maybe the vast majority of the submissions opposed his bill - they certainly did in the oral presentations - but this did not necessarily align with the opinions on the streets.

He pointed to his own party’s End of Life Choice law, which drew 90% opposition in select committee. This flipped dramatically when the bill passed by referendum, with two-thirds support in the real world.

Seymour was very keen to test out his theory by pushing his bill to a public referendum. If the many opponents thought they had the numbers then why wouldn’t they want a referendum?

The Treaty Principles Bill drew mammoth crowds to Parliament for the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti.

There are several things to consider from all of this.

New Zealand Bar Association - Chris Finlayson - Treaty Bill Submission.

Firstly, while there are some similarities with the End of Life Choice law, it should be remembered it drew a then-record 35,000 submissions in 2018-2019. This however pales in comparison to the Treaty Principles Bill’s now-new-record 300,000-plus.

It is an issue many orders of magnitude greater in significance to New Zealand’s communities than the previous legislation.

Even so, it is still not a surefire sign that ACT would fail if it ever got its referendum (something Seymour said ACT would never give up on).

These public polls have a long history of railing against perceived special treatment and rights for Māori. A case in point are the decades of community-initiated binding referendums that overturned dozens of council Māori wards.

Back in 2021, the then-Labour government described them as an insurmountable barrier to Māori wards. Those referendums are now back, and even the Māori councillors are worried they face “decimation”.

Now consider the sentiment of ACT’s three principles of the Treaty, replacing dozens of court and Waitangi Tribunal ideals formed over decades, proposed in the bill.

A referendum would ask New Zealanders whether they support the bill, and by extension the likes of its new principle 3, which mentions the word “equal” four times in one sentence covering rights and entitlements.

It would be the ultimate test of mainstream New Zealand and its evolving views on Treaty relationships with Māori, the meaning of equality, and the Kiwi version of democracy.

ACT has certainly tapped into strong support as its polling numbers remain buoyant as National stays moribund.

So even as it gets the stink-eye from its coalition partners, and creates tensions in wider society, and its bill gets rejected by select committee, ACT can probably feel that even if it has not yet achieved its current goal in politics, it has succeeded politically.