Heather du Plessis-Allan: There’s enough in coalition agreements to make every party happy

OPINION

It’s a no to the referendum but apparently a yes to everything else race-related.

The National Party may have said no to going down the path of a citizens’ vote on Treaty principles, but it was surprisingly willing to go down a lot of adjacent paths with its minor coalition partners.

The Māori Health Authority is gone. As is all co-governance in the delivery of public services.

Environment Canterbury’s two unelected iwi councillors are gone.

Ratepayers will be given back the ability to force a referendum on setting up local Māori wards. Labour removed that democratic trigger. All Māori wards established since Labour did that will now automatically go to referendum.

Government departments will be ordered to prioritise services based on need not race. That means no more bumping Māori and Pasifika patients up waitlists. It means no more free DIY smear tests for Māori and Pasifika women while every other woman is forced to pay.

Government departments - like the Defence Ministry - will be ordered to stop awarding a proportion of their contracts to Māori-owned businesses simply because they are Māori-owned businesses. The contracts must be awarded on value, not race.

Three Waters and the new RMA laws will be repealed. Both are heavily loaded with co-governance.

Many of these changes appear in both documents but it’s clear the hard yakka was put in by the policy nerds at Act.

NZ First managed to secure a few of its own wins. They’re largely pointless promises designed to tickle the tummies of a few angry voters, but are worded in such a way that it’s obvious they will come to nothing or aren’t really necessary.

There’s a promise not to change NZ’s name to Aotearoa without a referendum (no real threat), to instruct government departments to put their English names before their Māori names (they’ll still have both names though) and to tell them to communicate primarily in English (they already do).

The most fascinating win is the compromise Act has secured instead of the referendum: The Treaty Principles Bill. National and NZ First have only pledged to support it to select committee stage, but no further. There is no promise to make it law.

NZ First leader Winston Peters, National leader Christopher Luxon and Act leader David Seymour after signing their coalition agreement. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The bill will presumably simplify the Treaty principles down to three - respect for property rights, the government and equal rights for all - and will trigger a referendum if passed.

It’s a weird compromise from the Nats because it seems to do the very thing they want to avoid, which is create division. Taking it to select committee stage might not be as divisive as a referendum, but it will be divisive enough. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori will milk it.

And then, having possibly created all that feared division, nothing may come of it. If it stalls at select committee stage, without a clear yes or no, it will just leave an angry country with the question unanswered.

Act’s hope is clearly that it turns out to be such a wildly popular idea that the Nats have to back it. That’s possible. A Freshwater Strategy poll in September found 48 per cent of Kiwis want to vote in a referendum. A Taxpayer’s Union-Curia poll in October found the support at 45 per cent.

The Nats’ hope may be that they can leave the bill on the order paper so long it never sees the light of day.

Even if it doesn’t, there’s enough in these agreements to make everyone happy.

The new Opposition has enough here to attack the new Government for beating up on Māori.

NZ First voters get to call the roading officials ‘NZTA’ not Waka Kotahi.

Act voters get the repeal of much of what really irritates them even without the need for a referendum but with the hope of one still alive.

And National gets to blame the minor parties if it all goes badly, or take the credit for allowing it all if it goes well.