Atlas and the Treaty Principles Bill

It is time to reflect on what happened with the Atlas Network and the Treaty Principles Bill.

In January last year in this post I noted how George Monbiot described how the Atlas Network was behind leaders who sought to achieve the following:

A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?

And I noted how this National Government is engaged in exactly the same policy mix.

Like the United Kingdom we have our own group of Atlas aligned organisations who are well resourced but whose funding sources are oblique. Think NZ Initiative, Taxpayers Union, Hobson’s Choice, and Free Speech Union to name a few. Wellington law firm Franks Ogilvie has links to at least most of these organisations. Which is why the continued use of Brigitte Morten by media including RNZ as a commentator is so strange.

After watching what happened in Australia where a really timid first step towards improving the plight of Indigenous Australians was voted down I must admit I was really afraid. A privately funded group Advance Australia which has links to the Atlas Network appeared out of nowhere and effectively torpedoed the proposal, modest as it was.

Australian academic Jeremy Walker talked about how a counter campaign came out of nowhere like a freight train and totally derailed the voice referendum.

He warned that the campaign behind the Treaty Principles Bill would be relentless, it would be very well funded and it would be dark.

Thankfully this did not happen. The usual suspects tried to foment unrest but were unable to do so. Their advertising was underwhelming and underresourced.

The overwhelming response of Kiwis was to reject outright the proposal.

300,000 submissions were received against the bill. 90% of them opposed the bill, 8 percent supportive and 2 percent unstated

Why did it fail?

I think there were a few reasons.

This helped a lot.

Institutions such as the Waitangi Tribunal and no doubt large parts of the Public Service were clear in their response and scathing about how bad the Treaty Principles Bill was. The Bill’s misrepresentation of the actual meeting of the Treaty was palpably wrong.

Grass roots organising was really important and the publicity given to the issue and what could be said in submissions helped to feed the surge of submissions.

And dare I say it but National’s response was important. Christopher Luxon was initially equivocal. The subtlety of what was being proposed clearly went over his head when he first agreed to it.

National has a reasonably good history when it comes to Treaty settlements. Just think of the work that Doug Graham and Chris Findlayson performed. The National Party led by Don Brash (think Iwi Kiwi) was an aberration rather than evidence of a change.

It is perhaps not surprising. A party dedicated to respect for property rights has realised that the property rights of Maori have been breached rather egregiously. That it should acknowledge that this should include work towards justice for Maori is not surprising.

Finlayson went public on the issue and said that the legislation would cause great damage to National’s relationship with Māori.

From Anneke Smith at Radio New Zealand:

Finlayson said it was inevitable the legislation would cause “great damage” to National’s relationship with Māori, saying many MPs clearly did not know the party’s history.

“There’s a school of thought that says a lot of people in the National Party today aren’t perhaps aware of the liberal conservative traditions of the party and the work that was done over many generations by people like Ralph Hanan, Duncan MacIntyre, Jim Bolger, Doug Graham, me.

“Maybe they need to go back and look at their history and look at the commitment that the National Party has made … not expecting any votes out of it but because it was the right thing to do.

“A lot of, maybe, people in the National Party today are more concerned about their careers than about the history and traditions of the National Party.”

So the Atlas Group had a problem. It could run a full throated campaign and attack National or it could hold back. Maybe the fulsome response from the Community effectively stymied any attempt to cause dissent.

Maybe Atlas and Co are happy with everything else that the Government is achieving. A great deal of damage is being caused to the environment, to workers rights and to beneficiaries and the poor. Health is being starved of funding no doubt in preparation of large parts of it being privatised. Oil drilling is back as a proposal and coal mines can be fast tracked.

And smoking restrictions are being dismantled. Overall Atlas must be very pleased which is happening here. Maybe this was one campaign that it did not need to worry about.

There are other attacks on the treaty and on collective rights that continue.

The Government continues with attempts to rewrite treaty principles out of different pieces of legislation.

It is also preparing the Regulatory Standards Bill which is intended to embed rigid legal frameworks that prioritise individual and property rights, constrain regulatory powers, and reduce the government’s ability to implement environmental protections, social safeguards, and Treaty-based initiatives.

So the fight is not over. This Government has engaged in a continuous blitzkrieg on progressive and environmental values and this will no doubt continue.

But at least this particular battle has been won.