Former Prime Minister Sir Bill English says that despite the current anxiety over Treaty of Waitangi issues, New Zealand has a good track record in managing and reducing such tensions.
But he says that the Crown needs to find its footing and give greater clarity about the limits of partnership with Māori.
Māori had become clearer about their direction. The Crown had lost a sense of itself and needed to be clear about the ground it was standing on.
There would always be debate about how democracy and the Treaty fitted together.
“The Crown needs to be a robust participant because the Crown is the ultimate expression of the unity of the nation,” English said.
“In recent years it hasn’t done so well on that.”
English said there was tension at Waitangi most times he attended, ranging from someone spitting in the Governor-General’s face one year to an assault on Sir John Key.
“But we keep finding ways of resolving or reducing those tensions,” he said in an interview with the Herald. “That I think is a distinctive feature for New Zealand. In that sense, I don’t get too worried about another argument because we have got a pretty good track record.”
For the Waitangi Day on which he was Prime Minister, 2017, he was hosted by Ngāti Whātua at Ōrākei, where he delivered a speech in te reo.
As the former Deputy Prime Minister in Key Governments, English was at the forefront of the Crown’s relationship with iwi leaders.
He saw plenty of tension over his 27 years in Parliament, including over the rejection of the fiscal envelope in the 1990s, the foreshore and seabed proposals in the Helen Clark Government, and the Māori Party’s coalition arrangement with National.
The Treaty and Māori policy were a central feature in the election campaign of the three parties of Government.
National, Act and New Zealand First criticised what they saw as over-use of te reo by government agencies.
New Zealand First has secured a review of references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and a review of the role of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Act rejected the principles of the Treaty, including the principle of partnership which has been accepted by successive governments for at least 30 years. Act will introduce a bill rewriting the principles which it wants to put to a referendum but is likely to be voted down eventually by National and that pleases English.
“The Government has been really clear about that, which I think is important,” said English.
“Everyone knows that creating some sort of binary choice through a referendum is exactly the wrong way to deal with generational issues which need nuance, compromise, change.”
There was tension arising out of “the assertion of partnership as a 50:50 deal” and the fact New Zealand was a democracy.
“There is always going to be discussion and shifting position about how, for instance, you have a special role for an iwi in a region, at the same time as an elected council.
“You should expect debate about that.
But he did not think the debate undermined the concept of partnership.
“It is about a bit of clarity about where the limits are. The public needs some reassurance about that.
“An expert on this said to me recently, the Māori side is quite clear about its direction and its structure. If anything, in the last five or six years the Crown has lost a bit of a sense of itself.”
The public had got a sense of that and former Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins had said it himself; Labour had not taken the public with them.
“Well, there has got to be a bit of catching up,” said English.
“It’s important through all of this to remember that it is not just Māori and the Crown who are participants. It’s the public, who are often forgotten but have a capacity, particularly through the ballot box, to express a view.
“We don’t have a fixed constitution so in the end it operates by political consent. A bit of the lesson from the last Government is you don’t want to get too far away from that political consent.
The debate over the Treaty guarantee of tino rangatiranga was not new. Māori would say they had been debating it since the Treaty was signed and people would just have to live with it.
“In that discussion, the Crown has to be pretty clear about the ground it is standing on,” said English. “It has to be pretty clear about the Crown as the unifying concept of the country.
“I think that debate could get a bit unruly if the Crown is not sure what it’s on about.”
English said that as well as being positive about New Zealand’s record for handling tensions, the other thing to be positive about was the progress iwi had made.
“These are organisations that are building assets, building capacity, building quite impressive people and of course they are going to continue to be a bit assertive because they are stronger organisations. But I think that is all positive.”
There were plenty of examples where Māori, according to their own measure, had been able to achieve tino rangatiratanga, that is control and self-direction.
“This is where there is natural alignment between a centre-right government and the rangatiratanga direction and both are sceptical about the state.”
“There’s lots of Māori who not at all happy that their kids’ literacy levels are dropping, immunisation rates are dropping and the housing system is a bit of a mess.
“So while you’re having a constitutional argument which will inevitably continue, there’s a lot of practical issues where a Government and Māori – and particularly a centre-right government and Māori – will have an interest in improving the performance of the state.
“And lot of the time, that is what Māori are actually after. They want a better deal from the system. Well that’s reasonable.”
English said that it was important to remember that the current context was in the post-settlement era and that that was simple in one way. It took leadership from both the Crown and the Māori leaders who had to sign off on the grievances of the past and that was quite a burden.
“So you are now going through a process of sorting out what the next phase of that relationship is and it is going to have a few twists and turns.
“On any given day you can be worried; I just think we have got a good track record of dealing with the worries of the day, one way or another.”