Revealed: The four people charged with reviewing every significant Treaty clause

Paul Goldsmith, Minister of Justice. Photo / NZME

A former member of the Waitangi Tribunal will lead a panel of four people to review every Treaty clause in the statute book.

Former member of the Waitangi Tribunal David Cochrane, a lawyer, is chairing the group. He is also part of a review of the Waitangi Tribunal.

He is joined by Marama Royal, a former public servant and chair or member of several Māori and community trusts and boards, including the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust, and John Walters, a lawyer, former director of several government and private companies, and a Treaty of Waitangi settlements negotiator.

The fourth member of the group is James Christmas, also a lawyer and a former senior adviser to Attorney-General Chris Finlayson and adviser to Prime Ministers John Key and Bill English. He co-authored the book He Kupu Taurangi: Treaty Settlements and the Future of Aotearoa New Zealand with Finlayson.

Christmas stood as a candidate for National at the last election, but missed out on a place in Parliament.

The review came out of the coalition agreement between National and NZ First, and a sense from the latter that Treaty clauses are too imprecise and woolly, opening the door for an expansionist interpretation of the Treaty. The review is ultimately the responsibility of Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith.

NZ First’s Shane Jones has previously told the Herald about his frustration with “generic open-ended Treaty clauses”.

“We realise that the individual settlement entities have a distinctive standing by dint of the full and final settlements, but recognising that standing is quite different than embedding into legislation an ill-defined, limitless Treaty clause,” Jones said.

The previous Labour Government established a Treaty Provisions Oversight Group (TPOG) of senior officials to act as a clearing house for new mentions of the Treaty after getting advice that “an incoherent approach creates a number of risks”.

This group found there were at least 50 known Treaty clauses in legislation, with about 14 variations in their description of the Crown’s obligations as a Treaty partner.

Newsroom earlier reported that 28 of these laws would have their clauses put under the microscope.

Cochrane said the final number of clauses was “close to 28″, but possibly a bit less.

“Our job is to provide advice to ministers and that’s what we’ll do,” he said.

He said the review would be unlikely to go beyond August.