A small part of me wants National to win but need Act and NZ First support just to watch the mess. It would be great entertainment. The country would suffer, our greenhouse gas emission reduction plans would crash, unemployment and child poverty would soar, workers rights would be undermined but at least us on the left could engage in a huge amount of told ya so.
But the sensible part of my brain says that this would be a very, very bad occurrence.
The good news is that Act is in a somewhat precarious position. Its vote is collapsing, and its nemesis NZ First is surging.
And it is getting more desperate.
Last weekend it reached deeply into its rich donor war chest and hired out the Civic Theatre in Auckland to hold a campaign event.
There was the obligatory blowing of the racist Dog whistle and farcical claims about the Treaty of Waitangi. From Act’s accompanying press release:
“There is nothing in any of the three Treaty articles that suggests Māori should have special rights above other New Zealanders. The Treaty itself guarantees that “all the ordinary people of New Zealand…have the same rights and duties of citizenship.” All New Zealanders have a basic human right to be treated equally under the law and with equal political worth. One person, one vote.
ACT would legislate that the principles of the Treaty are based on what the Treaty actually says, in contrast with recent revisionist interpretations of the Treaty’s principles, through a Treaty Principles Act and inviting citizens to ratify it.
This is a point of view, only if you completely ignore article the Te Reo version of article 1 which ceded “Kawanatanga” and not “Tino Rangitiratanga” to the Crown. Or article 2 of the Treaty which preserved to Māori “the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession”. Like it or not this creates special rights for Maori.
And the text relied on by Seymour (“all the ordinary people of New Zealand…have the same rights and duties of citizenship”) does not come from the treaty. It appears to be a translation of the Te Reo version by Hugh Kawharu in 1975. The Maori version refers to “tangata Maori” which is clearly more specific than “ordinary people”. I suspect that his interpretation is overly broad.
The English version of the treaty “extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects”. It does not create rights for anyone else.
Of course none of this matters. Act is engaged in performance art designed to rile up its base. It does not care about the consequences of its actions.
Its proposal, to hold a referendum on whether its misguided view of the meaning of the Treaty would be a farce. And National took a while to rule out supporting such a referendum so I suspect that this could be on the list of things to negotiate about if there is a change of Government.
The absurdity of determining the meaning of a document that has been the subject of extensive scholastic and legal analysis over the decades by popular vote is or should be very clear. And it would invite a response from Iwi and progressives that would make the Springbok Tour protests from 1981 look like a walk in a park.
You really get the feeling that Act does not care about these potential consequences. Seymour is clearly happy to engage in this sort of divisive rhetoric to shore up his dwindling support.
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