David Seymour got the Treaty Principles debate he wanted but is he winning it?

The doomed Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in Parliament on Thursday thanks to tepid support from the Government and in spite of vehement resistance from the Opposition.

This debate was a blockbuster for those who enjoy the theatre of politics. 

Modern democracies are fairly technocratic but the system itself developed from a form of ancient Greek populism, where citizens could listen to speeches and vote for the best one. 

In an ideal world, these votes would be cast based on the strength of the argument, but in reality it was often decided by how entertainingly or persuasively it was delivered.

Famously, the Greeks voted to execute Socrates — someone who is fairly well-regarded today. 

Act Party leader David Seymour has staked the success of the Bill on his ability to win a public argument, in the ancient Athenian style, and cause National to cave under the pressure.

If he doesn’t succeed in this quest, the consolation prize will be a red-hot wedge issue he can use to differentiate Act from its coalition rivals in the 2026 election.

However, the debate is somewhat unusual in that it asks fundamental questions about what makes New Zealand exist, and what its citizens owe to each other. This is quite different from the usual bickering over which tax settings have the best pros-and-cons lists.

Seymour also complains regularly about media bias shutting down the debate, and so I am keen to take the arguments offered on Thursday out for a fair spin. 

184 years 

But first, let’s do a speed-run through history. In 1840, the British agreed to protect Māori rights and lands in exchange for being allowed to establish a government in New Zealand. 

There is debate over whether Māori ceded sovereignty but, in some ways, it doesn’t matter because the British Government violated the Treaty by seizing vast amounts of land through war, targeted laws, and settler expansion — and it became sovereign, if it wasn’t already.

Te Tiriti was largely ignored until the Māori Renaissance in the 1970s led to the creation of the Waitangi Tribunal, which then began the process of financial reparations and reestablishing the Treaty’s principles in law.

The courts and lawmakers chose to extract ‘principles’ from the Treaty as a way to overcome ambiguity between the two translations and so that it could still be applied in a political system which had evolved in breach of the Treaty.

Other, more extreme, options may have been to throw out the agreement altogether, or give Māori the right to self-govern (tino rangatiratanga) as promised in 1840.

A lot of the debate comes down to whether you believe modern New Zealand should be bound by the Treaty—which recognised certain Māori rights—or whether those rights were washed away in the wars and elections that followed.

Courts abhor a vacuum

Which brings us back to Thursday, where Seymour opened by arguing the principles had never been defined in law and the courts had filled the vacuum in unsuitable ways. 

“They've variously arrived at the Crown having a duty to partner with Māori, to protect Māori self-determination, to consult and redress past wrongs. What all of these principles have in common is that they afford Māori different rights from other New Zealanders,” he said. 

Lawyers had interpreted the Treaty as if it were a contract, instead of trying to come up with a strong constitutional basis for a Government.

“Seeing the Treaty as a "partnership between races", as the Court of Appeal once said, does not work as a constitutional foundation for a country”.

He wants the principles to be interpreted in a way that prevents any specific Māori involvement in the governance of the country — at least beyond the regular right to vote. 

The new principles proposed in the Bill are: the government has the right to govern, Māori only have unique rights when recognised in a Treaty settlement, and that everyone is equal.

While these may sound uncontroversial, critics say this interpretation would strip Te Tiriti of its relevancy and completely deprive Māori of any self-determination whatsoever.

Willie Jackson, speaking on behalf of the Labour Party, made this argument in his rebuttal, claiming the Bill was an attempt to reimagine the Treaty as something more convenient.

“This bill seeks to give Māori rights and indigenous rights to everyone, and there's no doubt that Mr Seymour wants to totally change the Treaty as we know it,” he said. 

It would redefine the relationship between Māori and the Crown, replacing the “true nature” of the agreement with “misinformation” sold as democracy and equality. 

Jackson then called Seymour a “liar” and was thrown out of the debating chamber for unparliamentary behaviour. And that was just the beginning of the controversies. 

Conscious cohabitation 

Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick picked up the debate. She said the “abridged history” of New Zealand was that the British Crown promised “cohabitation” but instead used violence to establish Parliament and its institutions.

“The legacy of that violence, oppression, theft and colonisation and the breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is represented in today's deeply unequal and unfair statistics in people's lives”. 

“The power in this place, in this Parliament, was built on a legacy of deceit, dehumanisation, and domination, and today all 123 members of Parliament will vote to either further entrench that utterly shameful legacy or to be honest and to do something about it”.

She called for Parliament to hold a conscience vote so National Party MPs could vote with the Opposition and prevent the Bill going through a select committee process. 

“Are you here to hold on to power at any cost or are you here to do the right thing? Because if you wear the mask for a little while, it becomes your face,” she warned them. 

Her challenge may have stung a little, as many of those on the National Party benches do oppose the Bill and may well have voted against it — if given the opportunity. 

Tama Potaka, the Government’s Minister for Māori Development, even implied in an earlier debate that he had privately tried to stop the Treaty Principles Bill in caucus and at Cabinet.

Revealing what happens in caucus or Cabinet meetings is generally a sackable offence, and so to even hint at it in a public Parliamentary debate seems significant.

Simplistic, if not stupid

It was Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith who laid out the National Party’s perspective on why it wouldn’t support the Bill beyond its first reading. 

Up until Thursday, this position hadn’t been well articulated. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has fielded hundreds of questions on the Bill, but usually just says it is part of the coalition agreement and that he doesn’t support it — but without really explaining why. 

Goldsmith said there was a tension between honouring the commitments made to Māori in the Treaty and having a modern democratic society which emphasises equal rights.

“This is a tension that can't just be glossed over or ignored. Our proposition is that, as a nation, we should be serious in our commitment to the first but, in doing so, should be careful never to lose sight of or drift too far from the second”. 

While National agreed some court rulings had drifted too far, Goldsmith said it was inappropriate for Parliament to “set down its interpretation” with a simple majority. 

“This is a crude way to handle a very delicate subject. With a wave of the wand, as it were, we would unwind more than 30 years of jurisprudence; winner takes all”.

Rawiri Waititi, co-leader of Te Pati Māori, made a colourful speech which focused more on the Party’s political mission than making an argument against the Bill itself. 

One argument he did make was that Parliament lacked the authority to make these changes, because its power to impose laws comes from the Treaty itself. 

“The only reason this Parliament exists in Aotearoa is because our tīpuna consented to it. The only people who can make changes in an agreement are the parties who signed it: the King of England and [the chiefs of the tribes of Aotearoa]”. 

This set up one of the few funny lines in the heated debate: “Now, tell me, David Seymour, which one of those are you?” 

Everything is constitutional

A version of this argument was also made by a group of senior lawyers, who wrote in a letter that the proposed bill would effectively “rewrite the Treaty”. 

“Even if Parliament can legislate in this way (which is uncertain), it should not do so because it is not for the Government of the day to retrospectively and unilaterally reinterpret constitutional treaties,” they wrote. 

New Zealand has an informal constitution based on various laws, including te Tiriti, but there is no mechanism to enforce it. This means Parliament has the power to pass any law it likes and the system relies on MPs choosing not to break constitutional norms.

In theory, a simple majority of politicians could vote to end elections and govern indefinitely. 

Labour MP Duncan Webb gave examples of laws previously passed in the NZ Parliament that would likely violate the Bill of Rights or an enforceable constitution. 

The Maori Prisoners Act suspended the right to a trial for Māori who were at Parihaka, the NZ Settlements Act confiscated land after the Tainui wars, and the Native Schools Act banned the use of te reo Māori and forced assimilation. 

In the years since those ugly laws were passed and abolished, Parliament had recognised that it did not have an “unfettered mandate to violate the rights of others,” Webb said. 

“But this bill demonstrates that some people still think that because Parliament is sovereign, because the power exists, there's a mandate to expropriate, rewrite, and revisit. They think their power is unfettered, unbridled, and unconstrained, but it's not”.

National MP James Meager, who chairs the Justice Committee and is Māori himself, got (almost) the last word in the debate, echoing the sentiments of Goldsmith’s speech.

“The select committee process will allow everyone who wants to make a submission and have their say. But to suggest that this bill would put an end to nearly two centuries of debate is not practical, nor is it realistic,” he said.

The actual last word went to Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke who, instead of declaring Te Pati Māori’s votes, ripped up a copy of the Bill and began a haka now heard around the world. 

David Seymour wanted a debate and he sure as hell got one.