It was the bill that launched 300,000 public submissions, sparked New Zealand’s largest ever protest on Māori rights and prompted a haka in parliament that quickly went viral.
And now the treaty principles bill, which sought to radically reinterpret New Zealand’s founding treaty between Māori tribes and the British Crown, is dead.
Lawmakers voted down the controversial bill on Thursday, drawing a line under a particularly strained chapter in the country’s fight for Indigenous rights.
The Treaty of Waitangi is considered New Zealand’s founding document and is instrumental in upholding Māori rights. The treaty principles bill – tabled by the minor libertarian Act Party – proposed abandoning a set of principles that courts and parliament have developed over decades to guide the relationship between the crown and Māori, in favour of its own.
Act has argued that Māori have been afforded different political and legal rights and privileges compared with non-Māori, because of the way the treaty has been interpreted.
National, the biggest party in the ruling coalition with Act and New Zealand First, promised it would support the bill through its first reading and the select committee process, but did not commit to supporting it further.
Proceedings in parliament were briefly halted on Thursday afternoon, after a protester in the public gallery interrupted the speech of Act’s leader, David Seymour. After the man’s removal, Seymour said he would continue to “fight for the truth that all Kiwis are equal”.
“I am 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,” Seymour said.
But Act cut a lonely figure as National and New Zealand First MPs made good on their promises to vote against the bill, alongside the opposition who stood and applauded after the vote. In the end, the vote was 11 in favour, with 112 against. Afterwards, members of the public gallery and politicians from across the political divide sang a Māori song.
Prime minister Christopher Luxon was absent for the reading, leaving his justice minister Paul Goldsmith to speak on behalf of National, who said the bill was “a crude way to deal with a very sensitive topic”.
But New Zealand was “not so fragile that we can’t withstand a debate about the role of the treaty”, Goldsmith said. “The critical thing is that we try our best to conduct that conversation with good grace … and I have every confidence that we can continue to find a way through.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins called it a “grubby little bill born from a grubby little deal”. “It has had a colossal impact on the fabric of our nation, and this bill will for ever be a stain on our country.”
Hipkins said the bill was “based on a mythology” that Māori have special privilege. By nearly every metric, Māori fare worse that non-Māori, be it life expectancy, house ownership, health and education outcomes, or income.
Hipkins criticised National and New Zealand First for failing to bin the bill earlier.
“Not one National MP should walk out of this debating chamber today with their heads held high, because when it comes to this debate, they led nothing, they stopped nothing, and they stood for nothing.”
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who led the viral haka in parliament against the bill, said the bill had been “annihilated” by the hundreds of thousands of voices who opposed it.
“This ignited an emotion that echoed with all walks of life, all races, all ages and all genders.”
Battle for rights far from over
Over the past year, the bill generated widespread criticism from lawyers, academics, politicians and the public who believed the new principles would weaken Māori rights, remove checks on the Crown and drive anti-Māori rhetoric. A Waitangi Tribunal report said if enacted, the bill would be “the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty … in modern times”.
The first reading of the bill in November, prompted Maipi-Clarke’s haka, during which she ripped up a copy of the bill. Three days later, the largest ever protest over Māori rights descended on parliament in opposition to the bill.
Last week, a parliamentary committee recommended the bill should not proceed, revealing 90% of a record-breaking 300,000 public submissions opposed it.
The bill’s demise may end this particular debate over the treaty, but for many who opposed it such as Eru Kapa-Kingi – the leader of the historic protest – the battle for Indigenous rights is far from over.
Since taking office in November 2023, the coalition government’s broader policy direction for Māori – including sweeping rollbacks to policies designed to improve Māori health and wellbeing, scaling back the use of Māori language in public services and defunding Māori initiatives – has ignited condemnation, protests, mass meetings of Māori leaders, and multiple claims to the Waitangi Tribunal – an institution the investigates the crown’s breaches of the treaty.
Prime minister Christopher Luxon has said services should be provided on the basis of need, not race and the government intends to “deliver outcomes for everybody”.
“There’s a whole catalogue of terrible policy and terrible law being pushed through by this government,” Kapa-Kingi said.
Policies such as Act’s proposed regulatory standards bill have “fundamentally the same intentions” but were “more alarming because they are flying under the radar”, Kapa-Kingi said. The proposed bill is presented as method to improve the productivity and quality of regulation, but scholars and Māori leaders believe it will prioritise private property interests over the crown’s treaty obligations to Māori.
In a statement to the Guardian, Seymour said he would be “happy to address” Kapa-Kingi’s concerns.
“If he can provide a reason why he thinks that based on what the regulatory standards bill says I’d be happy to address it. Given the bill is still being drafted, and hasn’t been publicly released yet, it’s hard to know what he’s talking about.”
Still, for Kapa-Kingi, the galvanising of Māori and non-Māori against the treaty bill represented hope for the future of Indigenous rights.
“For the last year … the loudest voices have been those that have frankly been disparaging and racist towards [Māori] and diminishing towards our rights,” Kapa-Kingi said.
“Now, we can confidently say that they’re simply a loud minority.”
