Source: ACT Party
Intro
I move, That the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill be now read a second time.
Mr Speaker, members of this House, who’ve so far been so fortified against reason, can still change their minds and send this Bill onwards to a referendum of the people.
I ask that Members listen carefully, to understand the choice they’d be denying the New Zealand people by opposing this Bill.
Five decades ago the House passed the Treaty of Waitangi Act. Parliament said the Treaty had Principles. It did not say what they were, but nor are they going away.
Even the National Party-New Zealand First commitment to review the Principles will not get rid of them. It will not touch the Treaty of Waitangi Act that gave us the Principles, and it will only ‘review’ them in other Bills. Review, that is, with the help of Te Puni Kokiri.
With the elected Parliament silent on the Principles, the unelected judges, Waitangi Tribunal, and public servants have defined them instead. They say the Treaty is ‘a partnership between races.’ They say one race has a special place in New Zealand.
The practical effects of the Partnership Principle
In recent years the effects of these principles have become more and more obvious.
We’ve seen a separate Māori Health Authority.
We’ve seen Resource Management decisions held up for years awaiting Cultural Impact Assessments.
We’ve seen half the seats governing three waters infrastructure reserved for one sixth of the population.
We’ve seen public entities appoint two Chief Executives to represent each side of the so-called Partnership.
We’ve seen a history curriculum that indoctrinates children to believe our history is a simple story of victims and villains.
Some will say a Government can change these things, and indeed our Government is. Here’s the problem, though. Another Government can just as easily bring those policies back, because the bad ideas behind them were never confronted by most of the Government.
That’s why we see professional bodies, Universities, the public service, and schools watering the divisive idea that the Treaty is a Partnership, hoping it will grow again.
The Problem with the Partnership Principle
The Partnership tells us that Kiwis should be ranked by the arrival time of their ancestors.
We’ve seen it in recent weeks with the disgraceful attacks on my colleague Parmjeet Parmar for being a migrant who proudly chose this country. That the comments were made by the Dean of a Law School, who faced no consequences, shows how low our country has sunk.
The idea that your race matters is a version of a bigger idea. It is part of the idea that our lives are determined by things out of our control. They may have occurred before we were even born. It’s a denial that we each can make a difference in our own lives, and have a right to do so.
This kind of primitive determinism should have no place in New Zealand. We are all thinking and valuing beings with nga tikanga katoa rite tahi, the same rights and duties, just as te tiriti itself says.
That’s why the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill would finally define the Principles, in line with the Treaty itself, as giving equal rights for all Kiwis.
The Principles Proposed by the Bill
Let me read the proposed Principles. If anyone wants to vote against this bill, let them explain, specifically, why they oppose these principles.
Principle 1
The Executive Government of New Zealand has full power to govern, and the Parliament of New Zealand has full power to make laws,—
(a) in the best interests of everyone; and
(b) in accordance with the rule of law and the maintenance of a free and democratic society.
Principle 2
(1) The Crown recognises, and will respect and protect, the rights that hapū and iwi Māori had under the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi at the time they signed it.
(2) However, if those rights differ from the rights of everyone, subclause (1) applies only if those rights are agreed in the settlement of a historical treaty claim under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975.
Principle 3
(1) Everyone is equal before the law.
(2) Everyone is entitled, without discrimination, to—
(a) the equal protection and equal benefit of the law; and
(b) the equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights.
People should ask themselves, what is the best argument they have against these principles? Are they prepared to say that argument out loud? If not, perhaps they should support this Bill.
The Select Committee Submissions
I now turn to the submissions to the Select Committee. I’d like to thank the Chair and most members of the Committee. They heard eighty hours of submissions, a near record.
Submissions are not a referendum. If MPs believe the Bill should be passed depending on public opinion, they should front up, vote for the Bill, and send it to an actual referendum.
Many bills have attracted large numbers of opposing submissions, and yet been very popular with the general public. End of Life Choice and Abortion Law Reform both attracted 90 per cent opposition at select Committee, but proved overwhelmingly popular with the public.
So it is with these principles. They are supported by the public by a ratio of two-to-one, but most of the public are too busy working productive jobs to submit on select committees.
Select committees don’t tell us about numbers, but they can tell us about ideas. I believe the submission process has been very useful.
Some argued against the Bill’s first principle, that this Parliament has the full power to make laws. They said that the chiefs never ceded sovereignty.
What they cannot explain is how a society is supposed to work without clear laws that apply equally to all. The answer is that it does not and cannot work. Those people who believe a County or an Indian Band having limited jurisdiction in a limited territory is the same as shared sovereignty cannot be taken seriously.
Still others argued that maybe Parliament can make laws, but it cannot make this law. What they’re really saying is that they’re happy for the unelected to decide the constitutional future of the country, but not this House of Representatives, and not the people in referendum.
Those are fundamentally undemocratic propositions. Anyone opposing the Bill on those grounds is really saying they do not trust the New Zealand people to determine their future. I’m proud that my Party does.
There were two objections that cancelled each other out.
One said, the Bill isn’t needed because Māori don’t have special rights.
The other said, the Bill is an abomination because it denies Māori special rights.
Which one is it? The truth is we are all equal, deep down, but too many of our policies aim to treat people differently based on ancestry. That is why we should remove the idea that New Zealanders have different rights, ranked by the arrival of their ancestors.
A more interesting objection is that Māori have group rights to such things as language and culture. Some Māori have been told that this Bill would take away their mana, their reo, their tikanga. That is deliberate, cynical misinformation by opponents of the bill.
The truth is that all New Zealanders have culture, we all have language, we all have customs. Māori are not alone in those things. The proposed principle two says the Crown should uphold the rights of Māori, to the same extent it upholds the rights for all.
It means if we’re going to have Divali, Lunar New Year, and the Highland games, of course we should also have Kapa Haka. That is a vision of a country where all cultures thrive.
The same can be said for language. We have media in many languages, there’s no reason te reo Māori should not be available. The Bill provides for that, we just don’t need to divide the country into a partnership between races to do it.
Other critics said the Bill must be wrong because the unelected bureaucracy said so. That misses the whole point of the Bill. If we wanted to be ruled by the unelected we could keep the principles they’ve dreamed up. The problem is they contradict equal rights and democracy.
Finally, some critics said the debate is divisive. I say it has revealed division. It has revealed a sizeable minority of New Zealanders simply aren’t committed to equal rights and liberal democracy.
Conclusion
I want to end with a quote from a Jewish man who wrote a book in Christchurch while hiding from the Nazis. The Book is the Open Society and it’s Enemies, and it’s been described as the most important book ever written in New Zealand. His name was Sir Karl Popper and he said:
The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way—we must return to the beasts…
But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.
A free society takes hard work and uneasy conversations. I’m proud my party has the bravery, the clarity, and the patriotism to raise uneasy topics.
I challenge the other parties to find those qualities within themselves and support this Bill so New Zealanders can vote on it at referendum.
If they do not, one party will never give up on the simple idea that all Kiwis are equal, no matter when your ancestors arrived.
We will fight on for the truth, that All Kiwis are Equal, AKE, AKE, AKE.
