Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill

The Green Party will vote against this bill, not because we support the redefinition of Treaty rights by reference to its principles. We do not, and we have taken a principled position to uphold Te Tiriti O Waitangi - the Maori language version. If this bill sought to address that problem, and if it simply removed the term "principles", we may have voted for it. But the Rt Hon Winston Peters is being tricky. He says that this is not an attack on the Treaty itself, and then he proceeds to attack anything that would implement the Treaty. He speaks of going back to the Treaty itself but, to the best of my knowledge, he has shown neither comprehension of what it says nor support for its recognition. When I have mentioned Te Tiriti O Waitangi in this House, the Rt Hon Winston Peters has asked: "What's that?", and I recommend that the member undertake some of the Treaty education that he is so quick to denounce.

The Green Party agrees that we should go back to the Treaty itself. That is why we did not support raupatu last year, as New Zealand First did, over the foreshore and seabed. Let me say for Mr Peters sake, and for Mr Perry's sake, that being Pakeha does not exclude me from participating in this debate. Tangata whenua do not depend on the Treaty either to be in this country or to assert their rights as indigenous people. The Treaty affirms the rights of tangata whenua; it does not create them. It is Pakeha who have the most to gain from upholding the Treaty, because the Treaty gives us an honourable place in this land.

Let me also say that people are sadly mistaken if, like Gerry Brownlee, they think they can dispose of the Treaty by simply making some small restitution for stolen Maori land. The settlement of past injustices is certainly necessary in order to move forward, but when we get to the future, the Treaty will still be there, because it is a out the ongoing relationship between tangata whenua and tangata tiriti. Mr Peters makes great play about how different people interpret the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi differently. Well, of course, they do. People have vastly different interpretations of what the Treaty itself means. This is a constitutional document, and constitutional documents and principles are always the subject of debate. By way of illustration, I invite members to tell me what we mean by free speech. But perhaps that is an unfair question, judging by the uniformity of the New Zealand First caucus.

The principles of the Treaty of Waitangi have been clearly elaborated by the Waitangi Tribunal, by the Court of Appeal, and by the Government itself - such as in 2000, when it outlined the Treaty settlement process. It is not that hard for most people, if they put their minds to it just a little bit, to get the essence of what is meant by the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and pointing out that there are varying interpretations is, in my view, a very weak argument for deleting reference to them. I will not expound the various components of what the principles might mean. Mita Ririnui already did that before the dinner break and temporarily silenced the baying jackals to my right, but I note that the silence was only temporary. The Green Party is not in the business of defending a redefinition and, in our view, a weakening of what the Treaty actually means, but neither are the Greens about to support a bill that removes almost every legislative mention of the Treaty of Waitangi. Mr Peters is being disingenuous. In the guise of going back to the words of the Treaty of Waitangi, he would take us back to Chief Justice Prendergast and describing the Treaty as a nullity.