In a speech which seems to have escaped the media and the wider commentariat, the Prime Minister stood on the Waitangi Marae last Thursday and essentially redefined the Government’s understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi.
The speech ignored the usual vaguely-defined concepts of “partnership” and “principles” and instead focused on what each article said.
In its own way, it addressed the concerns of both ACT and New Zealand First that the courts had taken over the Treaty.
And in doing that with his restrictive interpretation of two of the articles, Luxon has opened the door to criticism that he is diminishing the role of the Treaty in New Zealand life.
But he did make one important fundamental concession. He accepted that the Treaty is New Zealand’s foundational document.
He talked about Waitangi as the place “where modern New Zealand finds its origins.”
Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka was more explicit in his speech when he said (speaking in Te Reo) that the obligations of the Treaty would not be broken “as a foundation for this land.”
Luxon began by asserting the sovereignty of the Government.
“Article One provides the right to govern. Not to dominate, but to deliver, for all New Zealanders,” he said.
“It is the agreement that there is a Sovereign, and one government elected by and responsible for all New Zealanders.”
That would seem to dispose of the arguments of the late Moana Jackson, the 2015 Iwi Leaders Forum Matike Mae document, and later He PuaPua, commissioned by the Ardern Government, which all proposed forms of joint sovereignty.
Māori Party co-leader Rāwiri Waititi, in his speech on the Marae, committed his party to implementing the Matike Mae proposals.
But Luxon underlined that claim to sole sovereignty with his comments on Article Two, which declares that.
Chiefs have Tino Rangatiratanga (chieftainship) over their lands, villages and all their (taonga) treasures.
“Article Two is the source of our greatest debates about the Treaty. It is a recognition not only of property rights, but of responsibility,” said Luxon.
“The promise of chieftainship over taonga must mean something. It is why iwi and hapū have a significant contribution to make to the protection of our natural environment.
“It is why the Crown has reached landmark agreements over the Whanganui River, Taranaki Maunga and other natural features throughout New Zealand.
“It is why our reforms to resource management law contain strict provisions to uphold Treaty settlements and always will.”
But the Waitangi Tribunal has taken a wider view of “taonga” than simply the environment.
In 2011, the Ko Aotearoa Tēnei report attempted to define taonga.
It recommended “reform of laws, policies or practices relating to health, education, science, intellectual property, indigenous flora and fauna, resource management, conservation, the Māori language, arts and culture, heritage, and the involvement of Māori in the development of New Zealand’s positions on international instruments affecting indigenous rights.”
And then on Article Three, which would make everyone a British subject, Luxon said it “must guarantee equality of opportunity. “
“And while it cannot and should not guarantee equality of outcomes – because that is socialism – it’s the endless work to make the starting line in life more equal by improving education and health, expanding the opportunity to work, and increasing access to entrepreneurship.”
Potaka, in his speech, called Article Three “the source of unity” between Māori and Pakeha.
A Māori former top public servant and academic in a private newsletter over the weekend applauded Luxon’s speech.
“These are not abstractions,” the newsletter said.
“They are public administration statements: operational commitments that a policy analyst can actually test a proposal against.”
The newsletter said that reading was open to criticism, that it made the Treaty administratively convenient rather than because it advanced justice.
“But I would put it the other way around,” the writer said.
“A framework that officials cannot operationalise does not protect anyone’s rights: it simply allows the Crown to gesture at obligations it has no intention of meeting.
“For thirty years, the principles have provided exactly that cover: a language of partnership, good faith and active protection that sounds constitutionally serious but asks almost nothing concrete of the policy system that invokes it.
“If caring about whether a framework actually works in practice makes me a technocrat, I can live with that.
“The harder question is whether those who prefer the abstractions can live with what that preference protects: the privilege of pontificating about why things don’t work, without ever having to make them work.”
Luxon faces an ongoing challenge over the Treaty from both his coalition partners, ACT and New Zealand First.
Both are unashamedly pitching for the “anti-Maorification” vote as we head up into the election.
ACT leader David Seymour continues to insist that he will persevere with his own Treaty Principles’ Bill, which effectively neuters the Treaty Articles in the way they were set out by Luxon.
Seymour, who referred to Waitangi as the “Māori Davos” in his marae speech, simply repeated standard ACT rhetoric that every person had an equal right over political decision-making.
“Someone has to come and deliver that message, because the comfort that we enjoy in our lives is thanks to that liberal, democratic order,” he said.
“And I’m always amazed by the myopic drone that colonisation and everything that’s happened in our country is all bad.”
But Seymour, who was the focus of protest last year, was pretty much a side show this time around.
Waitangi is always part theatre, and the real drama this year was not a protest against the Government but a conflict among the centre-left parties.
Labour’s Māori representation has been devastated.
The resignation of Peeni Henare means that it now holds only one of the six Māori seats it won in 2020.
Speculation on speculation swirled around Waitangi as to why Henare had resigned.
Labour Leader Chris Hipkins didn’t help things with a train wreck of a press conference where he repeatedly ducked questions asking him if he had confidence in Henare. Again, the next day, he refused to say whether he would have endorsed him had he decided to stand in Tamaki Makaurau again.
Henare himself was out and about often (it seemed) in the company of National MPs. But he has always been a popular figure across the aisle in the House, so it would not pay to read too much into that.
He had been expected to sit, as he had done in the past, with Ngapuhi during the Powhiri, but instead he sat on the other side of the atea alongside Hipkins in an ostentatious display of support.
In his speech, Henare sounded disillusioned not so much with Labour but with Parliament as a whole.
“Don’t think you’ll find everything in Parliament,” he said.
“No, you won’t. It’s still on our Marae. It’s in our homes, everywhere.
After the waiata at the end of his speech, some Ngapuhi young women went across to him and gestured to him to come over to the Ngapuhi side and sit with them, but Ngapuhi elder and usual custodian of Tikanga on the Waitangi Marae, Wahoroi Shortland, ended that.
However, what the women were doing pointed to a bigger issue hanging over not just Ngapuhi but Māori politics as a whole, and that is the meltdown within Te Paāti Māori.
The problem centres on allegations of financial impropriety involving Te Paāti Māori Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and her son, Erua.
She has been expelled from Te Paāti Māori as a consequence, and the whole matter is now before the Courts.
Erua was one of the Ngapuhi speakers on Thursday, while Mariameno, along with the two Greens co-leaders and ACT Deputy Leader Brooke van Velden, sat on the mahau porch of the wharenui because Ngapuhi tikanga does not allow women on the marae atea.
That gave them high visibility.
Erua Kapa-Kingi offered a fiery speech.
“My question to us is, why do we continue to welcome the Crown to our spaces?” he said.
“ Why do we allow them to speak at the marae, where they offer peanuts for Māori, like we are monkeys?”
Erua’s criticisms were directed at all parties, but he referred to his mother’s situation, calling on Te Paāti Māori to sort itself out.
Te Paāti Māori Rāwiri Waititi made a conciliatory speech in return, saying everybody should “put your anger under your feet.”
But then, when he finished, his wife, Kiri Tamihere-Waititi, led other women across the arena and did a haka right in the face of Erua.
He responded by taking off his hat and sunglasses, but as far as the former Ewaitangi National Trust chair, current Whangarei District Council chair and Ngati Hine chair, Pita Tipene, this was the final straw.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate at all, so it’s conflicting messages that are coming out of Te Paāti Māori and the people of Tai Tokerau have really had enough,” he said.
“I thought that bridges were being built yesterday when I heard Rāwiri speak.
“But there are obviously differences of opinion in Te Paāti Māori which are not going to do it any good because the runway that’s leading up to November 7th (election day)is now very short.”
It is unclear whether Mariameno will end up standing as a Te Paāti Māori candidate in Te Tai Tokerau.
It is hard to see that happening without the resignation of John Tamihere as party president.
That could mean she stands as an independent.
Labour would hope to cut through this and reclaim the seat.
Their candidate had been thought to be Willow-Jean Prime, but there are suggestions that Moko Tepania, the charismatic Far North District Council Mayor, is keen to stand.
Prime is a co-chair of Labour’s Māori caucus but has a much lower profile in the north than Tepania.
All of this opens the way for the Greens, who, with two speeches at Waitangi, from co-leader Marama Davidson and MP Teanau Tuiono, more or less launched the Greens campaign for the Māori seats by announcing their first three candidates.
To add to that, social media has been showing images of the other co-leader, Chloe Swarbrick, having coffee with Te Paāti Māori Tamaki Makaurau MP, Oriini Kaipara, who has been conspicuous by her absence during much of the tooing and froing over the Mariameno Kapa-Kingi business.
But ultimately, Waitangi comes back to the Treaty and the relationship between the Crown and Māori.
And it was left to Shortland to sum that up.
“You speak to me about understanding. I ask, have you understood?” he said.
“You speak to me of being a good New Zealander, and yet you proffer to me that in order to do that, I must deny that most important part of me of being Māori if I’m to run with everybody.
“That’s what it feels like when you’re sitting on this side and trying to make sense of what’s coming from that side.
“I know it isn’t the intent.
“What I’m trying to speak to is what it makes us feel when something is put in that manner.
“Being Māori must be taking away from somebody else.”
It remains to be seen whether Luxon’s redefinition of the Treaty goes some way to easing Shortland’s fears.
We will find out next Waitangi Day.
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