Everything you missed from day 12 of the Treaty principles bill hearings, when the Justice Committee heard five hours of submissions.

Read our recaps of the previous hearings here.

It’s the final day of the Justice Committee’s hearings of oral submissions on the Treaty principles bill. The road has been long – 80 hours of hearings, 12 days of hearings, two days when 14 hours of submissions were heard, and two former prime ministers submitting, to throw out a few key numbers.

From here, the Justice Committee will reconvene to consider the submissions heard, with a report on the process due on May 14, which may include recommendations for the bill. Then, the bill will head to its second reading, where – as we have been promised many times – it will be voted down. And so, one of Aotearoa’s most controversial pieces of draft legislation will meet its end (if Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters keep their promises).

Former Act Party MP Donna Awatere Huata was originally due to speak first this morning, but cancelled her submission (you can read it here). Instead, Tauranga Māori Business Association chair Leone Farquhar was the first, and told the committee her opposition to the bill was informed by the ways Treaty breaches of the past were still affecting Māori business owners. Its in the way “almost every” business owner she works with sees their identity as impacted by their inability to speak te reo Māori, she said, and the financial burdens they carry, their struggle in navigating business systems and their reasons for creating a business – typically, to create a legacy for their whānau. Farquhar said the bill’s proposed principles failed to address this systemic inequality, and would only be detrimental to Māori.

Mana Moana’s Nuhisifa Seve-Williams and Tevita Ka’ili, also opposed, told the committee that passing the bill would show the rest of the Pacific that Aotearoa was unable to confront its colonial history. Seve-Williams said ancestors from the moana nui, the Pacific, had been “appended” to Māori in the eyes of many New Zealanders, whether they had migrated here to “join a war effort that our ancestors never really understood”, or to heed the call for labour.

“This is what our experiences of New Zealand has taught us, as descendants of our ancestors that came, never to return to their island homes,” she said.

Former Māori Party co-leader Marama Fox and activist Tāme Iti submitted against the “mischief-making” bill together – Iti was meant to submit yesterday, but missed his slot because he was at Te Matatini. Fox dismissed the bill’s focus on equal and individual rights and protections to New Zealanders, and the belief of the bill’s architect that this had already been afforded to Māori over Pākehā – “equal opportunity? We’d love that”.

When Te Pāti Māori’s Tākuta Ferris asked what kind of action Māori must take now, Iti responded, “I think we’ve gone beyond that … it’s just hōhā, it’s a game of chess – they’re playing chess on us.”

“Kaupapa Māori models of practice are the models that raise us out of the statistics that we have been bound to by constant breaches of te Tiriti,” Fox added. “We need to have a government that has faith in us to be ourselves.” 

Mark Steel, chair of the Legislative Design and Advisory Committee, also submitted against the bill, saying that the committee’s view, as the authority tasked with upholding legislative standards for Cabinet, is that it would be “preferable to continue with the approach we have used thus far, which is to tailor and develop law and convention about the Treaty, to the specific circumstances that we face, rather than trying to apply such a broad brush approach”.

Epilepsy Waikato Charitable Trust’s Esther Liddle and Stephen Harlow submitted against the bill as they believed it would “remove targeted action that Māori desperately need” – targets the government had promised to address by signing the World Health Organisation’s global action plan on epilepsy. Harlow said there were 10,000 Māori in Aotearoa living with epilepsy (of 50,000 New Zealanders) and drew on research from Ngaire Keenan, which found that Māori, especially tamariki, faced many systemic barriers to epilepsy treatment including longer wait times, and a higher likelihood of being sent away from emergency departments. The bill was “systemic inequity disguised as fairness”, Liddle said.

Kindergartens Aotearoa chief executive Tara Solomon submitted against the bill as she believed it would undermine the success of Māori tamariki, as well as their tauiwi peers. Solomon told the committee that local and international research had consistently shown a link between a child’s educational success and their connection to language, culture and identity. “We see how the mana of our tamariki … inspires and grows them, and they become the kaiako of their families,” she said. “It’s the ripple effect that it has that is so important.”

Gisborne District Council chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann submitted against the bill as it would “undo the relationships [with iwi and hapū] we have taken decades to build”. She said the council’s co-government arrangements that ensured “sustainable and fair decision making” between the council and mana whenua would be jeopardised by the bill, and changes to the legal foundations of Treaty settlement agreements would make it “harder for councils to honour their obligations to iwi”.

Individual submitter Troy Allan supported the bill, telling the committee he could only see three reasons why someone wouldn’t: “ignorance, incompetence and tyranny!” He said politicians against the bill had been leading New Zealanders towards a “Satanic podium of truth”, “class warfare” and “the globalist agenda”, he was yet to hear one opposing submission that “stacked up to historical truth, reason and logic”, and accused a previous submitter who opposed the bill of wanting “apartheid and tribalism in New Zealand”.

“What of you politicians, does the Holy Spirit call you to repent in restitution for your anti-Christ spirit?” He asked. “Yes He does.”

Hone Taimona and Cheryl Turner, representing Ngāti Korokoro, Ngāti Wharara andTe Pouka, were the last submitters to be heard on the Treaty principles bill. Sitting alongside six other direct descendants of te Tiriti signatories, they submitted against the bill, and Taimona told the committee that there was a difference between Ngāpuhi whakapapa and Ngāpuhi whenua – one is blood, the other is having a relationship to the land, the birthplace of Aotearoa.

Turner drew on the decades of trade that had happened on the land between her tīpuna and the British, the signing of He Whakaputanga and the eventual signing of te Tiriti. The 93rd signatory for te Tiriti was Turner’s great-great-great grandfather Tio, who believed that “Māoridom’s future prosperity and security would be guaranteed under te Tiriti o Waitangi”.

“Why have the Crown not come to talk to us as direct descendants?” She asked. “The Crown must uphold what we already have before changing it. How can we continue our legacy as kaitiaki over our resources if this bill does not reflect te Tiriti in any way whatsoever?”