The party wants to strip the Waitangi Tribunal of its power to investigate contemporary Crown breaches, confine it to historical claims lodged before 2008, and shut it down entirely once those are resolved, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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Yesterday, the Act Party announced it would amend the tribunal’s governing legislation so it is automatically disestablished once historical claims are completed, the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan reported. The party would also limit the tribunal to claims lodged before the existing September 1, 2008 statutory cut-off, ending its role in urgent and kaupapa inquiries into contemporary Crown conduct.
“Nearly two centuries since the signing of the Treaty, it is time to complete the historical settlements and move New Zealand forward,” leader David Seymour said. “Act supports completing full and final historical Treaty settlements as a pragmatic way to resolve past injustices.”
Act said existing historical claims would still be heard in full and it would not impose a deadline for closure, with funding reducing as workload shrank, 1News reported. The tribunal has set itself a goal of finishing its remaining historical claims inquiries by 2030.
‘Increasingly ideological’
Seymour argued the tribunal’s contemporary inquiries “now routinely pass judgment on ordinary questions of government policy, propose alternative policy settings, and seek to influence decisions properly belonging to elected governments and parliament.”
Act’s policy document said kaupapa inquiries “increasingly resemble alternative policy processes,” ranging across citizenship, public-sector pay, electoral law, health, child welfare and resource management.
The tribunal’s findings are not binding on the Government in almost all cases. Since 2023, it has held urgent inquiries into the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, Māori council wards, and ACT’s failed Treaty Principles Bill, 1News reported. It found the Crown breached Treaty principles in each case, but the government pressed ahead, and two of the three measures became law.
Asked who would monitor future breaches, Seymour said, “The people of New Zealand and the Parliament. We live in a democratic society.”
‘They’ve taken race relations back about 40 years already. Now they want to take race relations back 200 years’
Labour’s Māori-Crown relations spokesperson Willie Jackson called it a “ridiculous policy,” saying the tribunal “does important work as a commission of inquiry” and “should not be disbanded because it acts as an important watchdog for contemporary breaches of the Treaty,” the Herald reported.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins was blunter: “They’ve taken race relations back about 40 years already. Now they want to take race relations back 200 years,” he said, according to 1News.
Tākuta Ferris, independent MP for Te Tai Tonga, called the policy a betrayal of “the very relationship the Crown entered into with tangata whenua through Te Tiriti.” He said in a statement: “That is treason. Act simply wants to pull the plug on accountability when it is needed most.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon vaguely distanced himself from the details, noting the tribunal’s future was already under review. “On either side of that debate, there is a question as we get through treaty settlements as to what the future of the Waitangi Tribunal is,” he said.
What people who aren’t trying to get elected think
On arriving back to the office after attending the announcement with “small crowd of journalists gathered under the rotunda near the Auckland Domain’s Winter Gardens,” Liam Rātana, The Spinoff’s Ātea editor, asked four experts for their assessment.
Christopher Finlayson, a lawyer and former National minister for Treaty negotiations, said the proposal “would be a major change to the constitutional structure.” While he acknowledged some contemporary claims had gone “a bit far,” he asked: “And what do they propose replacing it with?”
Carwyn Jones, head lecturer for Māori laws and philosophy at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, said the policy showed “a profound misunderstanding of both te tiriti and the Waitangi Tribunal.” He said the tribunal “doesn’t determine policy. It provides recommendations to the government” – and warned abolition would “remove access to justice” while pushing complex claims into the ordinary courts at greater cost.
Ngāti Kahungunu chair Bayden Barber said: “I think they’re in a dream world.” He noted the National Iwi Chairs Forum had compiled a 30-page table of instances where the Treaty had been undermined in the past three years.
But Hobson’s Pledge founder Don Brash said he was “delighted” and that the policy “long overdue”. He argued there was no need for the tribunal when “we have a democratic, elected government in order to settle current disputes”.
Wellington mayor and former Treaty negotiations minister Andrew Little said the tribunal “has an important ongoing role in monitoring the implementation of the treaty,” and that its comments — while not binding – “can offer valuable insights and guidance.”
