OPINION
Outrageous? Clever? Was it both? Whatever you think about the Prime Minister’s speech at Waitangi yesterday, his message could not have been clearer. We do not want to talk about the Treaty of Waitangi, and we do not want to talk about te reo. So we’re not going to.
Christopher Luxon didn’t use those words. But he made himself plain by barely mentioning either of the flashpoint topics of the Waitangi commemorations.
He would rather talk about growing the economy, because he believes that will benefit Māori. And he would rather talk about education and housing, because he believes making them better will benefit Māori too. So that’s what he did.
Asked later how he could not have realised the thousands of people on the Treaty Grounds expected some response to the big issues of the moment, he changed the subject.
This was certainly outrageous. On an enormously significant occasion of state, the Prime Minister chose not to rise to it. His speech was ditchwater dull.
It was also, in large part, a repeat of the speech he gave last year. What more telling sign could there be that the PM simply doesn’t want to engage on either the treaty or the language? We’re surely not meant to assume he’s lazy, or that no one would notice. *
But were there also some smarts to the decision?
It’s hard to overstate the significance of Waitangi this year. Over the preceding days, iwi from all over the motu have been enthusiastically welcomed.
In speech after speech, Māori leaders have expressed their fears that both the Treaty and the language are under threat. And they have made plain their determination not to allow those threats to prevail.
All those iwi were then invited to join the mana whenua. Kīngi Tūheitia joined with leaders from Ratana and all the iwi and other Māori groups to welcome the manuhiri: the Government guests.
At the start of the pōwhiri, warriors from different iwi joined together to form a haukāinga - the group that presents the wero, or challenge.
These ritualised signs of unity are not unprecedented but they are rare. This was historic and Māori at Waitangi could not have made their combined strength of purpose more plain.
For Luxon not to acknowledge this was insulting.
But the speech carried a kind of implied promise, which gives it the potential to be clever.
If Luxon is to credibly avoid Treaty and te reo debates, he has to bring them to an end. The hopeful way to look at the speech is that Luxon was signalling he will now shut down attempts by Act, NZ First and some of his own ministers to inflame the issues.
What are the chances? I’m optimistic. But I asked David Seymour about it and he told me my motto was “hope springs eternal,” so there is that.
Luxon, for his part, pretty much said Seymour’s bill will not proceed. “It is a long-standing policy of the National Party not to pursue a referendum on the Treaty.”
Why did he even let the friction it has caused get to the stage it has? He changed the subject on that, too.
It seems fair to assume that if Luxon had his time in coalition negotiations over again, he would rule that Treaty bill out straight away.
But he doesn’t have his time again and he now enjoys the distinction of being one of the only people in the history of this nation, certainly outside of war, to unite Māori the length and breadth of the land.
He could do something with that. Ben Dalton, speaking for the Waitangi organisers yesterday, said Ngāpuhi has done some hard talking with ministers these past few days. Luxon spoke of this too.
Ministers have been taken all over Te Tai Tōkerau to see impoverished housing and places where poor water infrastructure means no economic progress.
“The difference between Kerikeri and Kaikohe,” Luxon said to journalists yesterday, “is water.”
His new Northland MP, Grant McCallum, will have told him that. McCallum is closely associated with the irrigation projects that have allowed Kerikeri kiwifruit and avocados to enrich that community.
It raises the larger question. Luxon and Seymour are right that economic development and better education are valuable. They are right that unnecessary barriers to progress - red tape - should be removed.
They are also right that Māori care about these things. Of course they do.
But it’s not an either/or with Treaty and te reo issues. No one argues that, except the people who want to undermine the Treaty and te reo.
And economic progress doesn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes for communities.
If growth delivers profits to overseas corporates, it can be at the expense of locals. So you need good regulations to avoid that, not “less red tape”.
And what happens with relaxed rules for house construction? More prefabs, easier builds and other innovations, hopefully. But what if it’s slum houses, building on flood-prone land, new subdivisions in the middle of nowhere with no public transport and few other services?
We don’t need fewer rules, we need better rules. National and Act politicians rarely make that distinction.
Winston Peters, meanwhile, made a preposterous speech yesterday. His main purpose was to complain that the people in the crowd did not have his own long history of fighting for land rights for Māori.
In reality, the crowd was full of people who have been doing exactly that for most of their lives. Members of the protest group Ngā Tamatoa were there, 53 years after they were first formed. All those kuia and kaumātua sitting around under the trees: Peters knows full well who they are and the immensity of their contributions.
In the beginning and the end, though, the day belonged to two of those long-time land-rights activists: Annette Sykes and Tāme Iti.
Sykes spoke during the whaikōrero directly after the pōwhiri. Where other women have spoken on the mahau, the porch of the Whare Rūnanga, Sykes became the first woman to speak on the atea, the ground out front.
She lambasted all three parts of the Government. “Why have you decided, at this time, to belittle us?” she asked. She listed some of the causes of harms to Māori, including “the existential climate crisis”, the Covid pandemic and the social devastation that has followed.
Why is this the time, she asked, to pick on Māori?
She said the Treaty committed Queen Victoria to “mindful kindness” and to holding “lawless Pākehā” to account. “But now you are ruled by avarice.
“That mindful kindness, I expect it now of you.”
And at 8am in the bright, glorious morning with the sea shining silver and the dew still on the grass, Tāme Iti brought his hīkoi on to the marae. With an enormous pageant of flags, trumpets, electronic music that even included the instrumental intro to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and a single tolling bell.
It was tremendous. Waitangi, as it often does, has so far brought out the best in a lot of people. Next time, perhaps, Christopher Luxon will try to be among them.
* This column has been updated in the light of information that large parts of Christopher Luxon’s speech were repeated from 2023.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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