Treaty issues will dominate the first six months, but that’s not all, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in the first Bulletin of 2025.

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Happy new year

Welcome back and happy new year to all of you. I hope you managed to have a peaceful summer break. I spent as much time as I could in the sun and with my puppy, often at the same time, and am ready to dive back into the headlines with you every morning. Today, we’re going to take a little look at some of the issues we can expect to see a lot more of over the year ahead. If you’d like some more outlandish predictions for 2025, you can find our January 1 piece here – it includes my (quite) tongue-in-cheek suggestion Winston Peters may choose not to give up the deputy prime minister’s role to David Seymour and Toby Manhire’s slightly more realistic call that incoming US president Donald Trump could make his way to New Zealand in the next 12 months. You can listen to Toby expand on that claim in a special Gone by Lunchtime here.

Speaking of Trump and New Zealand, Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva has an interesting piece looking at how our government may choose to navigate increasingly complex international issues this year.

Treaty issues to dominate first half of 2025

Unsurprisingly, race relations are going to dominate the first few months of the political year. As Toby Manhire reported last week, submissions on the controversial treaty principles bill briefly closed due to technical issues and were extended through until tomorrow afternoon. That will have pleased both sides of the debate, each seeking to prove they have the support of the general public. Ahead of the extension, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told Newstalk ZB that the technical disruption to the process had broken peoples’ “trust and confidence” in the system.

There’s still a lot of water to flow under the bridge. While the deadline for submissions is now tomorrow, those submissions still need to be heard – many of them in person. This will overlap with the traditional start of the political year: commemorations at both Rātana and Waitangi. The PM, Christopher Luxon, has already he confirmed he will not be in attendance at the latter. The Guardian’s Eva Corlett reports that record crowds are expected to gather at the treaty grounds next month.

But it’s not just the treaty bill. As Daniel Perese reported for Te Ao Māori News, consultation will also close tonight on another proposed bill that has flown somewhat under the radar: the Regulation Standards Bill. Critics claim it “threatens to entrench a framework that marginalises Māori voices and undermines Aotearoa’s founding partnership”.

Coalition tensions

It felt at times as though the treaty bill threatened to break apart the coalition in 2024. Expect those tensions to be even heightened over the next 12 months. For starters, as aforementioned, there will be a change in deputy prime minister in May. In reality, it shouldn’t mean much, but given it also signals the half way point of the government’s term in office it also means we’ll just be 18 months away from the next election. It opens up a clearer pathway to campaigning for Winston Peters, who told The Post he intended to “hit the ground running” from May. David Seymour and Act will also be jockeying for political capital. Late last year, reported RNZ’s Anneke Smith, Seymour was already arguing that his party had wielded “disproportionate” influence in government.

In an illuminating report for the Herald last year (paywalled), Claire Trevett reported on the state of the relationships between the three major party leaders. The PM, it was said, had developed a positive working relationship with Winston Peters since taking office, while his relationship with Seymour was described by one insider as “transactional”.

Local politics back in the spotlight

If you felt like you were missing something in 2024, it was probably an election. Aside from a mayoral race in Tauranga and the largely ignored Entrust election in Auckland, we weren’t given any opportunities to head to a polling booth last year. Bring on the local elections, then. In the main centres, one would think that Auckland’s Wayne Brown is likely to have a pretty clear run at this point, though we’re yet to learn whether any high profile challengers will step forward. TVNZ’s Q+A noted that the five local elections over the past 14 years of the super city have not featured an incumbent losing, only retiring.

The race with the most interest is likely to be Wellington. Mayor Tory Whanau has had a troubled time in office, with council facing the wrath of the government over the failure to approve an annual budget. In better news for the council, Whanau has welcomed the sale of the city’s Reading Cinema complex, which comes ahead of plans to revitalise Courtney Place.