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| Record Numbers: The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, which began at the tip of the North, and the tail of the South, on 11 November, culminated outside Parliament on Tuesday, 19 November 2024, in one of the largest demonstrations in New Zealand’s political history. |
ACCORDING TO TE ARA, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, there were 15,000 in 2004. Protesters, that is. Gathered in front of Parliament to demonstrate their opposition to the then Labour Government’s foreshore and seabed legislation.
Twenty years later, on Tuesday, 19 November 2024, the number was 42,000 – a truly vast crowd spilling out of Parliament Grounds and into the surrounding streets. This makes the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, which began at the tip of the North, and the tail of the South, nine days earlier, on 11 November, one of the largest demonstrations in New Zealand’s political history.
On the surface, David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, seems too puny a thing to have provoked such an extraordinary outpouring of opposition. After all, no party represented in the House of Representatives – apart from Act – is committed to supporting the Bill beyond its Second Reading debate.
Seymour’s proposed legislation is a dead man walking. It will not be enacted during the current parliamentary term. Those determined to prevent the Treaty Principles Bill from becoming law – thereby precipitating a binding referendum on its content – have already won.
How, then, is it possible that a Bill with just six months left to live, has inspired 42,000 mostly Māori New Zealanders to gather outside the parliamentary complex to demand its instant demise? If they’ve already won – why are they still fighting?
They are still fighting because they know that David Seymour is right. His bill might be killed at its Second Reading, but the issues he has raised will not die. He has placed a question on the parliamentary table. A question which a great many more than 35,000 New Zealanders would like to hear answered:
Is this country to be forever constrained by the content of an agreement entered into 184 years ago, by individuals long since deceased, binding entities that have long since disappeared, in order to resolve issues that have long since been decided?
Another way of framing that question is to ask:
Should the New Zealand that was built after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and very largely in spite of it – i.e. the New Zealand of today – be radically refashioned, constitutionally, administratively, politically, economically, and culturally, in accordance with the alleged understandings and intentions of te Tiriti’s Nineteenth Century Māori signatories?
But that question immediately raises another – and this one is much more dangerous.
With the benefit of hindsight, do the Māori of today regret the decision of their ancestors to sign the Treaty, or, at least, do they lament that their tīpuna did not make clearer what they expected to get by entering into a formal relationship with one of the Nineteenth Century’s most powerful states?
Which, in turn, raises another.
Is that what has really been going on these past 50 years: have Māori, alongside their Pakeha allies in the judiciary, the universities, and the public service, been quietly revising the Treaty’s meaning so that it better reflects, and serves, the needs of Māori living in the Twenty-First Century?
It is precisely to prevent these sorts of questions being asked – let alone answered – that Māori are so determined to “Kill the Bill”. It also explains why sending Seymour’s Bill to the Justice Select Committee has been so energetically resisted by so many Treaty “defenders”: everyone from a curious clutch of Christian clergy, to a concerned collection of King’s Counsel. The very last thing they, and the organisers of Tuesday’s extremely impressive hikoi, want, is for the meaning and purpose of the Treaty of Waitangi to be openly debated for months at a time.
David Seymour’s great sin has been to offer an alternative to this covert effort to change the constitution of New Zealand by changing the Treaty’s historical meaning. Those who argue that the Treaty Principles Bill is a blatant attempt to re-write the Treaty are quite right. What they omit to say, however, is that Seymour is only doing openly what Māori nationalists and their Pakeha allies have been doing, quietly, in legal chambers, common-rooms, and public service offices for the past 50 years.
The critical difference, of course, is that Seymour was proposing to give the rest of us a vote on his version.
Leaving us with one, final, question:
Is 42,000 enough to stop him?
This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 November 2024.
5 comments:
Pertinent questions. I suspect that if the mass of Maori were not in their current state of economic dispossession, the Treaty would be of less relevance. As things stand, altering the Treaty is seen as adding insult to injury, removing the status of being 'partner with the crown'. I can't see the socioeconomic dispossession of Maori being turned around by Te Pati Maori; working class concerns are not their focus. Add in the virtual demise of the union movement and we have growing Maori /Pakeha worker discontent with little apparent prospect of unity. Dark clouds are gathering.
There is a lot going on when trying to analyse peoples feelings toward the Bill and the treaty in general. To answer Chris's question on whether the large protest will be enough to change anything, well in itself no although numbers switching to the Maori electorate are growing. The majority of Pakeha most likely can't see much wrong with the proposed Bill even if they won't say so publicly. There will be several different groups of Maori thinking. Those who have accepted New Zealand the way it is and are making the most of it. There will be those who don't really understand but believe Maori are being diddled out of something. Those who do understand and know that the Bill could mean the end to some of their rights and privilege's, and those who see this as threatening any chance of self determination. None of those who oppose the Bill want to live under current laws as they are, where all NZrs have the same rights and privilege's. Strange isn't it. What the protesters and those opposing the Bill are not focused on is that without any change to the supposed Treaty Principals, the Coalition is already changing the way Maori have had separate input into our laws and institutions. From the
National Indigenous Times.
NZ Right-Wing coalition rolls back Māori rights, sparking Treaty debate
Joseph Guenzler - September 20, 2024
news:
New Zealand's right-wing coalition government has repealed or reversed around a dozen policies supporting Māori rights.
Since taking office in November, it scrapped laws giving Māori input on environmental issues and is repealing another aimed at maintaining cultural connections for Māori children in state care.
The Māori Health Authority has been abolished, and Māori language use in public services reduced.
The government's next target is the reinterpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, raising concerns it could undo decades of hard-won Māori rights.
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Luxon is happy to let Seymour take the hits on the Bill but the collective Coalition is changing the separate input Maori have on certain issues anyway. Because some of what any government initiates won't be acceptable to one group or another, it makes Seymours Bill or something like it even more necessary. There will need to be commonsense discussion on certain issues, and common courtesy given to the Maori perspective, but ultimately we should all be governed under the same laws. How vehemently Maori oppose the way NZ is governed will ultimately hinge on statistical evidence showing how well or otherwise Maori are doing as compared to the rest of us. Regardless of who is in command, it is in their best interests to make sure Maori and other minorities get a fair slice of the cake. Then having the same rules for all may be more palatable.
There are two fundamental problems' with Seymour's Bill.
The first is its content. Seymour's three principles are essentially his interpretation of each of the Articles of the Treaty. And as the KC's point out, they are not actually accurate interpretations, especially Principle Two.
The second problem is the one alluded to in this post by our host. Seymour's Bill is a terrible way to start a discussion on the meaning and application of the Treaty. Surely such a discussion would need to be a more thoughtful and more collaborative effort, if it was to have consensus, not just on a majoritarian approach, but a consensus of both parties to the Treaty.
In my view Seymours's approach has set such an approach back for quite a considerable time. However, in fifteen years time we have the bicentennial of the Treaty. Maybe in the years running up to the bicentennial such a discussion can take place. It would require 5 years or so. So starting in 2035, a decade from now, New Zealanders might be ready for such a discussion.
You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. Numbers can be calculated reasonably accurately from the aerial photos. People can make up there own minds as to how many attended the protest.
The people will ultimately make up there own minds with regard the legitimacy of David Seymour and his backers attempt to rewrite history.
But then to paraphrase what John Key once said: history is yesterday, a brighter future begins when National is elected.......Yeah Right!
No it is not sufficient. It a tiny fraction of the population. The 99%, that's near enough for the purposes of this response, are fed up with victim, grievance industry gravy train that needs to be parked up.
Opportunities are available to all in our counrty but if you do value or take advantage of them dont plead victim. The families that do take the opportunities available are enjoying productive rewarding lives largely unseen or heard from.
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