There were urgent moves yesterday at Parliament to try and defuse the tension building up over ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill.
The Bill’s author, ACT leader David Seymour, told reporters that he understood the Justice Select Committee met yesterday to discuss how long it should take to consider submissions on the Bill.
The Committee has scheduled submissions to be heard over the next six months.
But Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins said yesterday that it was time for a very quick select committee process.
“This bill will get back to the House and be voted down,” he said.
“The longer this debate goes on, the more dividing will take place, the more polarised the country is likely to become, the more hate we will see expressed and the more racism we will see expressed.”
Maori Party Leader, Deborah Ngarewa-Packer confirmed that the Committee yesterday discussed her party’s preference to have the select Committee as short as possible.
“We want to stop the harm and because then we can all see the harm going on,” she said.
“And by harm, I mean the division, the hurt, the seeds of betrayal.”
POLITIK understands that New Zealand First also wants the Committee to shorten the hearings.
And POLITIK understands that senior National Party figures also want to see the hearings cut back.
ACT Leader David Seymour told reporters that he understood the Committee had made a decision.
With New Zealand First’s one vote and assuming that all three Opposition parties supported the call to shorten the submission time, National and ACT would not have had enough votes to stop them. (Even if National wanted to)
However, there was no comment last night from Committee chair James Meager on what the outcome of yesterday’s meeting might have been.
But the immediate challenge for Parliament will be the Hikoi today. By late yesterday, barricades were in place across the Parliamentary forecourt, a squad of plain-clothes police officers was shown over Parliament, and Parliamentary Security staff were patrolling the grounds.
One lone protester was holding a flag while groups of Hikoi supporters were visiting the Maori Party offices and posing for photos.
Traffic signs around Wellington advise motorists that they will likely face blocked roads as the Hikoi travels from the Harbour to Parliament via Lambton Quay.
There was every indication of a festive mood among the Hikoi supporters, and it was clear that the Hikoi organisers were in close touch with Parliament about how things might pan out.
Veteran protester and former MP Hone Harawira, who addressed the Hikoi before it began its trip to Wellington, met yesterday with the Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, an indication of what is understood to be the way Hikoi organisers have been working closely with his office.
A particular issue will be how the Maori Queen, Nga wai hono i te po, who is on the Hikoi, is to be received at Parliament.
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister said a small delegation of National MPs would be available to meet the Hikoi tomorrow.
He said The Prime Minister was still considering options to engage.
What is also becoming clear is that Seymour’s Bill has opened up the whole question of where the Treaty stands in terms of New Zealand’s Constitutional structure.
Ngarewa-Packer said the end goal would have to be the restoration of what Maori sovereignty was “the hour, the minute, the second before our natural development was interfered with.”
She referred to the Matike Mai report which was commissioned by the Iwi Leaders’ Forum and the product of a long series of hui between 2012 and 2015 led by the late constitutional lawyer, Moana Jackson.
Matike Mai proposed various constitutional models that involved different “spheres” that would bring together Maori in one, the Crown in another, and a “relational” sphere linking the two.
There were other models, but all included a guaranteed and separate “sphere” each for Maori and The Crown.
“I think Matike Mai encourages us to go and have a conversation, but not here (Parliament), not with the politicians, and not where the rights and interests of other people are actually traded off,” she said.
“That is a conversation where we go off. We talk about what that could look like and what transformational change would look like in Aotearoa.
“And that’s a really healthy conversation to be had, but not led by somebody who got eight per cent of the vote and whose whole agenda is to remove the rights and interests that Maori have.”
Whereas Ngarewa-Packer is talking about Maori sovereignty, Seymour is talking about assimilation.
“If you look at what we’re achieving here, it’s a public discussion that everyone can participate in to define the treaty principles in law and not as a partnership, but as something that gives equal rights to all,” he said yesterday, albeit that he might find the Justice Committee intends to limit the length of the public discussion he wants to have.
But the debate about where to draw the line between “equal rights” and the Treaty promise of Tina Rangatiratanga is a complex one, and the last Labour Government had to grapple with it once the He Puapua document emerged in response to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
He Puapua drew heavily on Matike Mai, and there was a substantial Pakeha backlash.
Hipkins conceded that yesterday.
“We would acknowledge that He Puapua went a lot further than many New Zealanders were comfortable with, so we needed to slow right down,” he said.
“I think that was the right decision.”
Nevertheless, Hipkins believes there is room for a constitutional debate.
“If people want to have a debate about where the treaty fits within the constitutional arrangements of New Zealand going forward, then we certainly are open to having discussions about that,” he said.
“However, this is not the way to do it.
“The Treaty Principles Bill basically says that you should just ride over the top of everything that’s happened in the last forty or fifty years and impose an entirely different interpretation of the Treaty, which most people would conclude completely rewrites our contemporary understanding of the Treaty.
“That’s not the way to have a constructive debate.
“Let’s be clear: David Seymour’s not aiming for a constructive debate.
“David Seymour is aiming to create a vision to create fear and divide the country.”
Most non-ACT MPs spoken to by POLITIK fear that Seymour’s Bill and the ugly sentiments it is already inciting can do nothing but divide New Zealand.
That is why there is so much pressure to truncate the Justice Committee hearings.
