Simon Wilson: Will Christopher Luxon rescue his Government at Waitangi?

OPINION

Somewhere in a parallel universe, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon led a government delegation to Tūrangawaewae on January 20. He said they were there to listen, but he was also invited to speak, and so he did.

With 10,000 people waiting expectantly on the paepae and in the nearby marquees, he took out his speech notes. Then, with a slight shake of his head, directed at his press secretary, he put them back in his pocket.

“What I have to tell you today is this,” he said to the crowd. “As a country, we have not made the progress on health, housing, education and economic opportunity that we all hope for. The people who have been disadvantaged by that the most are the poor. And the people most overrepresented in almost every statistic of deprivation are Māori.”

He called these things “simple facts” and said they should be front and centre of any Government’s programme. “We need to overcome persistent race-based inequities in our society. And we need to get over the idea that doing this will somehow undermine our democracy.”

It would not have been what the crowd expected. But it would have immediately put him at the heart of the debate about the Treaty of Waitangi and race relations in New Zealand. Which is where he should be, not coalition mischief makers David Seymour of Act and Shane Jones from NZ First.

“The question before us,” Luxon went on in this parallel universe, “is how we are going to do better. My Government is determined that we will.”

He quoted his new MP, James Meager, who is Māori and represents the Canterbury electorate of Rangitata. Meager told Parliament in his maiden speech in December that Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori “do not own Māori” and “do not own the poor”.

The meaning of this, Luxon said, is that the new Government will not turn its back on progress for Māori, or progress for anyone. The nation-building exercise is bipartisan.

He talked about what he had witnessed at the hui-ā-motu, called by Tainui’s Kīngi Tūheitia. Anger and frustration, disappointment, but also the profound sense of manaaki manuhiri: The care and respect shown by the mana whenua to all their guests.

He noted the unity on display. Ngāpuhi and Ngāi Tahu were there in force, despite these large iwi not always seeing eye to eye with Tainui. Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei was there, less than a year since its explosive confrontation with Tainui at Te Matatini.

Luxon quoted the Māori word for unity: Kotahitanga, a word that carries the sense not just of togetherness but of collective action.

The crowd, he acknowledged, was not some “elite” attempting to preserve its privileges. It was hard to think of a more representative, widely supported and purposeful gathering.

And that purpose was clear: Progress must be preserved. For all that inequities remain, much has been done, with Treaty settlements and economic opportunities, with the culture and the language.

This progress has been cautious and hard-won, often fraught, often bumpy, but progress nonetheless. It has emerged from a complex ecosystem of economic, cultural and political relations between the Crown and Māori, in which Māori have participated with good faith and endless patience.

And wrapped around all that, as Kīngi Tūheitia said, the Treaty is the Treaty and it is not to be messed with.

Luxon said he understood the hui’s message: No responsible Government would let that progress be abandoned, merely because of some simplistic and opportunist sloganeering.

An estimated 10,000 people turned up for the hui-ā-motu at Turangawaewae on January 20. Photo / RNZ

He said, “I agree with you.”

He quoted his own party’s Sir Bill English, then Prime Minister, speaking on Waitangi Day 2017 on the marae at Takaparawha (Bastion Pt). We are engaged in a “great enterprise”, English said then, of building a country based on “fairness, tolerance and respect”.

The late Joe Hawke was there – the man who led a 506-day protest “occupation” on that land in 1976-78. English told him, “We’ve all got better at it because of our struggles over the Treaty.”

Luxon, in this parallel universe, then turned to the vexed question of “partnership”.

“There is confusion and concern about the word,” he said. But in his view, the fundamental question was not what the courts or the Treaty say. Nor was it about whatever form a “partnership” might take in any particular time and place.

“When we talk about a partnership,” he said, “we are talking about a commitment, inspired by the Treaty, to build this nation equitably and together. We are talking about goodwill.

“Nothing will ever be full and final. None of us has all the answers and there is no happily ever after. Like a marriage, like a friendship, partnerships evolve. What we value, what we need, what we expect, it all changes. What we get wrong, we can fix. What we get right, we can build on.”

Sadly, in this universe, not the parallel one, Luxon passed on Tūrangawaewae. In doing so he lost a grand opportunity to take control of the Government’s position on the biggest political issue of the moment – perhaps of the year.

It’s not too late, though. He could still say all this at Waitangi in a week’s time.

After that, as Labour’s Jacinda Ardern discovered, the harder task will arrive: How to turn the rhetoric into action, how to stop the promises becoming platitudes.

Ardern made a similar speech at her first Waitangi as Prime Minister, in 2018.

As I reported then, she pointed across the lawn to the Treaty House, once the home of the British Resident, James Busby. “That is the distance between us,” she said, adding that the distance could be measured in many ways, including unemployment, mental health, housing and rates of incarceration.

She was pregnant and she said, “You must hold us to account. One day, I want to stand here with my child and only you can say when we have done enough.”

In 2018, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arrived at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds hand-in-hand with Titewhai Harawira. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Five years later in 2023, with Ardern departed and her successor Chris Hipkins standing there, it had become clear the Labour Government had not done nearly enough.

James Meager is right. Labour does not own Māori or the poor.

What will Luxon do at Waitangi? Perhaps he will evoke the memory of Charlie Shortland, a former Anglican minister in the Far North, who died in 2003. Shortland used to talk about the bridge between the worlds of Pākehā and Māori. It was a bridge everyone should walk on, he would say, but sadly, while Māori are required to cross the bridge, not enough Pākehā come over to see what we have to offer.

Shortland was a mentor to Ardern’s former party deputy Kelvin Davis, who popularised the idea of the bridge in many speeches. She took it up too.

But when Luxon declined to attend that Tūrangawaewae hui because “it isn’t political”, he was not walking on the bridge. And when Seymour declined to attend the historic start to the political year at Ratana, because it’s “a religious event”, he was not walking on the bridge either.

Is Luxon horrified at what he has unleashed?

He cannot relish the battle brewing over race. What responsible politician would? The coalition agreements he signed with both Act and NZ First could become so disruptive they will threaten the progress he hopes to make on any front.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon during his speech at Rātana Pā on January 24. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The PM can’t easily betray his coalition partners, but he does need to take charge. Perhaps he could do it with some commitments on the paepae in front of the historic Whare Runanga at Waitangi. He could say:

1. We will work with you to build mutually beneficial partnerships.

2. We will not undo the progress already made.

3. We will not waste time or money on things that do not work, or are token efforts, or do not make sense.

4. We will seek always to explain and explain and explain. Because in the manure of ignorance, fear and resentment grow.

5. We will meet you on the bridge. We will bring our coalition partners with us. We will cross the bridge and meet you on the paepae.

And then the hard work will begin.

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.