LONDON, Sep 02 (IPS) – A New Zealand bill to revoke Aboriginal rights is unlikely to pass – but it is a sign of growing hostility towards politicians in power. A recent survey shows that almost half of New Zealanders believe that race tensions have worsened under the government since December 2023.
The Treaty Principles Bill redefines the terms of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. The founding document of New Zealand, this agreement between the British government and the Aboriginal Māori chiefs established British sovereignty over the islands to recognize Māori ownership of land and other land.
The treaty was controversial from the start: its English and Māori versions differed on key sovereignty clauses. The Māori people lost much of their land, suffering the same discrimination as Aboriginal people in other European settlements. As a result, Māori people live with higher levels of poverty, unemployment and crime, and lower levels of education and health, than the rest of the population.
Beginning in the 1950s, the Māori people began to organize and demand their treaty rights. This led to the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act, which defined a set of terms derived from the treaty and established the Waitangi Tribunal to determine breaches of the terms and to recommend remedies.
In recent years, right-wing politicians have criticized the court, saying it overstepped its authority – most recently because it held hearings that concluded the bill violated the terms of the treaty.
Change along the way
The bill emerged from the coalition agreement made after the 2023 election. The centre-right National Party came first and entered government with two parties on the right: the free-market and libertarian Act party and the nationalist and populist NZ First party. Act demanded the bill as a condition for joining the coalition.
The election was unusually toxic by New Zealand standards. Candidates were racially and physically abused. A group of Māori leaders complained of unusually high levels of discrimination. Both the Act and NZ First targeted Māori rights, promising to reverse progressive Labor policies, including an experiment in ‘co-governance’: joint decision-making between the government and Māori representatives. The Act and NZ First showed programs such as granting racial rights to the Māori people, in conflict with the rights of all people.
NZ First leader Winston Peters – who has long opposed what he described as special treatment of Māori despite being Māori himself – has promised to remove Māori names from government buildings and withdraw New Zealand’s support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He compared co-optation to apartheid and Nazi racial theory. He is now the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand.
New Zealand, although far from Europe and North America, has shown that it is not immune to the same right-wing politics that want to blame a visible minority for all the country’s problems. In the northern hemisphere the main targets are migrants and religious minorities; In New Zealand, it is the Aboriginal people.
The fire of policies
If the bill passes, it will prevent any interpretation of the treaty as a relationship between the state and the Māori people. It will establish a strong understanding that all New Zealanders have the same rights and responsibilities, preventing moves to expand Māori rights. And without special attention, the economic, social and political exclusion of Māori people will worsen.
Problems go beyond the bill. In February, the government abolished the Māori Health Authority, which was established in 2022 to tackle health inequalities. In July, a government order ordered Pharmac, the drug funding agency, to stop considering the terms of the agreement when making funding decisions. This is part of a wider attack on the principles of the agreement, which the government has promised to remove from many laws.
Government departments have been instructed to prioritize their English language names and speak mainly in English, unless they have a strong focus on the Māori people. The government has pledged to review the school curriculum – which was revised last year to place more emphasis on Māori people – and university accreditation systems. It stopped working on He Puapua, its strategy to implement the UN Declaration.
The government has cut funding for many of its programs for Māori people. In total, more than a dozen reforms are planned, including environmental management, health and housing.
The weather is bad for the Māori people. The close role nature plays in Māori culture often puts them at the forefront of the fight against climate change. This year a Māori activist won a ruling allowing him to take seven companies to court over greenhouse gas emissions, based in part on their impact on important cultural, cultural and spiritual sites for the Māori people.
But the new government has cut funding for many projects aimed at meeting New Zealand’s Paris Agreement commitments. It plans to double mineral exports and introduce legislation to speed up major development projects, without going the environmental route. The draft law does not contain provisions regarding the terms of the agreement. Māori people will be disproportionately affected by any deterioration in environmental standards.
It came out in numbers
All of this is shaping up to be a major rollback of Māori rights that could fuel and stop mainstream discrimination – but campaigners are not taking it lightly. The threat to rights inspired and united Māori campaigners.
Civil society organizations are taking it to court to try to stop the changes. And people protested in large numbers. In December, when parliament met for the first time since the election, thousands gathered outside to denounce anti-Māori policies. At the swearing-in ceremony, Te Pāti Māori politicians broke convention by committing their oaths to the Treaty of Waitangi and future generations.
That same month, 12 people were arrested following a protest where they vandalized an exhibition of the agreement at the national museum. Protesters accused the show of lying about the English version of the agreement.
On February 6, Waitangi Day, more than a thousand people marched to the place where the treaty was agreed, demanding that the bill be rejected. At the official event, people laughed at Peter and Act leader Peter Seymour when they spoke.
Recently, the Māori people had the opportunity to show their displeasure at a ceremony in August to commemorate the coronation of the Māori King. Although usually all major party leaders attended, Seymour was not invited, and the Māori leader told Prime Minister Christopher Luxon that the government had ‘turned its back on Māori’. The Māori king also called a rare national meeting in January, and the turnout – 10,000 people – again showed the level of concern.
Wasted energy
At the same time, the Māori population is growing rapidly – it just passed the one million mark – and it’s young. Compared to previous generations, people are more likely to embrace Māori, their culture and language. Māori people are showing their resilience, and activism has never been stronger. But this growing momentum has hit a political roadblock that threatens to sap its momentum — all for short-term political gain.
New Zealand’s good international reputation is at risk – but it doesn’t have to be this way. The government must start acting as a reliable partner under the Treaty of Waitangi. It must comply with the terms of the treaty, as it has been developed and defined over time, and stop disrespecting the Māori people.
Andrew Firmin is the Editor-in-Chief of CIVICUS, director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the Civic District Report.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
