Act leader David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill was introduced to Parliament and will have its first reading next Thursday.
National and NZ First have said they will not support the bill after the select committee process.
A new Waitangi Tribunal report said if it passed it would be “the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty/Te Tiriti in modern times”.
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007.
This time Seymour’s effort consisted of saying that even if National secretly liked the bill (it does not), National just doesn’t have the cojones to support it.
Seymour delivered that to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB on Friday morning, insisting he still had not given up hope of getting more support for the bill aimed at defining the principles of the Treaty but “the National Party are afraid of hard issues”.
He went on to say he has offered Luxon chances to change his mind: “I say to Luxon, ‘you’re always welcome to get back aboard the wagon, if you’d like’.”
Act leader David Seymour (left) and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have different views on the former's Treaty Principles Bill. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Luxon, of course, was never aboard the wagon in the first place and has made it abundantly clear he has no desire to go near the wagon.
As far as Luxon is concerned, the sooner the wagon disappears off into the sunset with its solitary passenger the better.
That won’t happen for another six months, after the select committee is done and there is a chance to vote it out of existence at a second reading.
Even though every political party barring Act are opposed to the bill, National are the only ones who want that wagon to disappear quickly because there is zero political benefit for them in this tortuous debate.
It is presumably not by coincidence that the Government has set down the bill’s first reading for next Thursday. That coincides with Luxon’s trip to Peru for Apec.
That will suit Luxon no end. He has not liked the bill from the start. He still doesn’t like it. He has put significant time and energy into making it clear that he does not like it.
So what better place to be than in Lima, meeting world leaders – including potentially his first meeting with China’s Premier Xi Jinping – and sussing out what’s going to happen under a Trump administration in the US.
Illustration / Guy Body
Those are all things much more befitting of a Prime Minister’s attention than the various issues and sideshows his coalition partners have been loading his plate up with at home. And the Treaty Principles Bill is top of the sideshow list.
A lingering debate on the Treaty bill does, however, carry political benefit for Act and the Opposition parties, especially Te Pāti Māori.
This week delivered the spectacle of the Government bringing forward the introduction of the bill by two weeks. Seymour accused the Waitangi Tribunal of acting in bad faith because the media were promptly told of the date change.
Te Pāti Māori (and a fair few others) accused Seymour of breaching good faith for the sudden change in the date, questioning whether it was to try to get ahead of the Tribunal’s findings on the bill.
Act is aiming to speak to a particular constituency and the more vehement the objections to it get, the more Seymour is enjoying it.
At the other end of the spectrum, it has become a lightning rod for Te Pāti Māori to galvanise support for protests against the Government.
The next show of that protest – the Toitū Te Tiriti hīkoi – will start making its way to Parliament next week and arrive a week later, when Luxon will be back in the country.
The Treaty Principles Bill has also united the three Opposition parties – Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori – for a rare joint statement, calling for the bill to be halted or at least a shorter select committee period.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi (left) and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer at Parliament. Photo / Marty Melville
The Government might think that is a bit rich, given the same parties have cried foul about shortened select committees for other Government moves that they don’t like. However, those related to legislation that was expected to pass into law, unlike the Treaty bill.
Despite calls to make it all stop, Labour wants the issue to hang around stinking up Luxon’s house for a while longer, rather than let him get away with distancing himself from it.
Last week, Labour leader Chris Hipkins asked questions to Luxon about it, not Seymour, including why he had allowed it into the coalition agreement in the first place and whether he was putting power over principle.
Luxon is the only one put in an uncomfortable position by it – and Seymour seems to be relishing making it as uncomfortable as possible.
Luxon could be forgiven for thinking Seymour was being an ungrateful little sod for doing so after Luxon’s efforts defending Act’s ministers and other coalition agreement measures.
Earlier in the week, Luxon was caught on the hop by a Heraldstory about the use of force or restraint in boot camps. The minister in charge, Karen Chhour, had not wanted to front on it. That left it to Luxon to front when he turned up for his morning media slots ill-prepared to do so, given Chhour’s office had clearly not alerted Luxon’s office to the issue.
He ended up having to clarify his answers later.
The causes and scrutiny on the Act and NZ First coalition partners have ended up turning into a series of headaches for the Prime Minister.
Of late he has spent more time defending his coalition partners than his own party, including defending ministers from Opposition attacks, such as Act’s Chhour over Oranga Tamariki reforms and boot camps, Nicole McKee for gun reforms, and NZ First’s Casey Costello who has come under extended pressure for her actions on smokefree reforms.
In the latter case, Luxon has steadfastly backed Costello – from the actions she was taking to NZ First leader Winston Peters’ justification in outing a conflict of interest of a relative of Labour’s health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall who was working on the smokefree changes.
Luxon even went so far as to snap on RNZ that every week they spoke to him, they hammered away at that particular issue.
However, Luxon will not mind defending the coalition partners on those moves, given all parties agree with them. The Treaty Principles Bill is a different matter altogether.
