This Waitangi Day has been fascinating.
Can I acknowledge the response of Ngāpuhi and other Iwi to the Government during the past couple of weeks. Their anger is palpable and their reo very direct but they made their protest noisily but peacefully and given the Government the chance to complain about lawlessness. And the sense of unity has been profound.
The Government continues to look very messy.
It has given David Seymour a trumpet that he is blowing with all of his might. He has this internally consistent blather that he keeps using that borrows from the language of universal rights and superficially sounds ok but it completely ignores and distorts reality.
Seymour’s basic problem is that he starts with a clean slate and ignores history. His analysis puts to one side treaty rights that have been clearly established and it ignores the history of grotesque breaches of the treaty that have occurred.
His analysis is pretty clumsy. He claims that the treaty is between two races. it is not. It is between the Crown and Maori and was to do no more than preserve to Maori what they already had.
It also claims that Maori are privileged. They are not. The most cursory analysis of economic or health or educational statistics or incaraceration rates would show this to be a lie.
His proposal if it passes would cement in treaty breaches. Families who gained large landholdings through egregious breaches of the treaty will have their wealth preserved. Maori who lost out will have any residual interests extinguished.
If he succeeds then the rights of Tangata Whenua will be reduced. And the rights of the wealthy will be further enhanced and protected.
Christopher Luxon has not come out of this well.
His speech at Waitangi, read from prepared notes, was panned for being boring and tone deaf. It then transpired that he had copied and pasted large parts of the speech from his speech last year. He had the chance to actually talk about the future of Te Tiriti and he essentially ignored it.
Madeleine Chapman at Spinoff describes his speech as so boring it became insulting.
She says this:
What Luxon’s hosts and attendants really wanted to hear from his speech was his own party’s view on te Tiriti and Treaty principles. Having just heard from, and sung over, David Seymour, the crowd and those watching were waiting to hear whether Luxon would distance himself from Act’s stance or seek to defend it. Instead he said nothing. Instead he spoke about the Treaty only briefly (and benignly) and those remarks were repeated verbatim from his Waitangi speech as leader of the opposition in 2023. In the 12 months since the first time he spoke those words, Luxon has become prime minister and formed a coalition where te Tiriti and Treaty principles are a core issue, if not the core issue (not to mention other NZ First and Act policies around te reo Māori and history in schools). So to simply repeat his preamble about the signing of the Treaty this year, as if the context was anything close to the same, is lazy at best.
Perhaps the intent was to bore everyone into submission. Again from Chapman’s article:
By the halfway point, half the crowd was talking amongst themselves and by the time it ended, there was palpable relief in the air. Which in Luxon’s mind is probably better than what his colleagues got. The animosity towards Seymour moments earlier was palpable, and will continue for as long as he pushes his bill forward. But when Seymour spoke, he responded to the direct claims made against him – though they hardly eased tensions – as well as getting out his prepared speaking points. Winston Peters just yelled at everyone but even he managed to reference lines from other speakers to show he was paying attention.
This morning in another word salad interview he said that National would not support the bill beyond the first reading. The interview was frustrating. He said the Treaty was not for changing. He also confirmed that the coalition agreement provided for the Bill to first reading “but no support beyond that”. He should have been asked which way National would vote at the second reading of the Treaty Principles Bill. Nothing less than a resounding no will raise concern. And a resounding no would raise the question why are we going through this divisive charade.
He also claimed that the recycling of his previous speech was “intentional”. As if.
At a minimum this clown show will continue for six months. A cynic would think that this is providing a smoke screen for other actions, such as the significant cuts the Government is planning to make to core services to pay for its tax cuts.But it clear what we will have for the foreseeable future. A minor party leader willing to cause chaos for political advantage. And a Prime Minister who is not in control.
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