ACT wants to push ahead with its Treaty referendum – but reporter Joel Maxwell discovers there could be extraordinary pushback from everyday Māori.
Māori are warning of sweeping protests, division and the potential for violence if ACT’s proposed Treaty referendum gets across the line in coalition negotiations for the new government.
However, ACT leader David Seymour says he doesn’t accept there will be disruption – and he has his finger on the pulse of the Māori world.
Ōtaki man Nathan Kirker said there would be an “uproar” if the government tried to launch the referendum. He said Australia’s vote on The Voice, the same day as New Zealand’s election, was a “prime example” of how referendums were a numbers game.
This month, Australians voted on changing their constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Islanders as first nation people, through the creation of an advisory group to the government. It was rejected 60% to 40%.
Kirker would join any protests, he said, as would many people he knew – especially from Ōtaki, which has a strong reo-speaking Māori population. “[and] not just the Māori, the Pākehā are great here too.”
If the referendum went ahead there would be “a huge protest down at Parliament”. There was a possibility of it “turning into violence”, Kirker said.
The referendum at a glance
ACT Party leader David Seymour says:
- The referendum “most certainly” remains in coalition negotiations.
- The country needs a discussion about Treaty principles; and people should have a say on them alongside courts, the Waitangi Tribunal and public servants.
- Rather than a “partnership between races”, his principles aim to give all people “equal rights and duties”.
- New Zealand should have a Treaty discussion without violence; stories presenting such viewpoints have an “inciteful” [sic] premise.
Kirker said he would feel real anger if the referendum went ahead.
“If someone tells me, walking down the street, that they would tick for the referendum and say ‘yes’, that would p… me off … it’s like, ‘Nah, f… off.’”
Gina Chaffey-Aupouri, from the East Coast, said the referendum would cause “heaps” of division.
“I think they’re gonna cause a war ... they’ll find Tāme Iti on their back step.”
The Treaty was hugely important to her, she said, in every aspect of her life.
“I live and breathe and walk by the Treaty; because it is my life, it is my breath, it is my blood that flows through my body.”
When it came to the likes of ACT’s referendum on end-of-life choice, she didn’t support euthanasia but had accepted the right to have a poll on the issue, she said.
“But when it comes to what our tūpuna – that have passed on – have put in place: nah.”
Chaffey-Aupouri “disagreed fully” with ACT – and the whole of Ngāti Porou, her iwi, would support her, she said. Māori gained political rights through the Treaty, because they were tangata whenua, of the land.
Meanwhile, Wellington woman Paula-Maree McKenzie says there have been two nation-defining marches spanning the country in her lifetime. She was at both.
She was there with her whānau in 1975, as a 7-year-old, watching on as Dame Whina Cooper and land marchers arrived in Wellington. As an adult in 2004, she was in the Foreshore and Seabed march.
Now, as ACT and National negotiate a coalition deal, she says she’s ready to march again.
“I’ve got my boots ready to walk wherever and whenever, if necessary.”
McKenzie said Seymour probably thought that he was being reasonable.
“I think he doesn’t think it’s crazy; I actually think he’s oblivious that division may happen.”
The vast majority of people hadn’t bothered to read the Treaty, she said. “And these people are going to be able to tick a box to determine my relationship with the Crown?”
It was like getting married “and your neighbours saying ‘we don’t like your marriage vows, so we’re just going to redesign them for you’”.
Any move to force a referendum would trigger a united, but hopefully non-violent, Māori response, she said. “[but] I think we’re going to have a level of anger, beyond the Springbok [tour].”
Her hope was that Tangata Tiriti (non-Māori supporters of the kaupapa) would stand alongside Māori.
“That will be the referendum that will count.”
What are the principles?
New Zealand is a nation founded on a treaty between English and Māori, where, in true Kiwi fashion, the two versions – in separate languages – don’t line up.
Thus, the direct treaty text itself isn’t included in laws. Instead, principles capturing the spirit of the texts are applied in courts, legislation, the Waitangi Tribunal (although these are not legally binding).
These principles were first mentioned in legislation in 1975; the first definitions came from the Court of Appeal in 1987. There is no definitive and complete list of the now-numerous principles.
ACT says it would potentially replace them with three principles, entrenched in law, applied to courts and all legislation.
The public would vote in a referendum on whether to accept the principles, possibly along the lines of the following:
- The New Zealand government has the right to govern New Zealand.
- The New Zealand government will protect all New Zealanders’ authority over their land and other property.
- All New Zealanders are equal under the law, with the same rights and duties.
Hemopereki Simon, Research Fellow at the University of Waikato, said ACT’s referendum was trying to merge both Treaty versions into one, in a way that would “absolutely” deny Māori self-determination.
“If you take an underlying look at what they’re saying in the ACT Party, [it] is a call to full assimilation.”
Instead, the proposals took a “tunnel-vision” approach to protecting private property.
Using a referendum to define principles “did away” with decades of scholarship and court decisions by people who spent their lives studying the issue, he said.
New Zealand is currently seen as a global example for aspects of its indigenous relationship, but would become an indigenous “pariah”, like Australia.
ACT’s response
Seymour said he did not accept the referendum would create disruption. “I think it’s irresponsible to suggest to people that it should.”
It was important, he said, that New Zealand had a constitutional framework honouring the Treaty, which asserts that all people have the same rights and duties “as The Treaty says”. Seymour said with this resolved, the government could work on problems such as those around housing, education and the cost of living.
He said it was unreasonable to suggest that New Zealand couldn’t have a Treaty discussion without violence.
“People have to ask themselves: why would you be angry about embedding the principles of the Treaty properly understood in our constitutional framework?”
When asked if he had his “finger on the pulse of the Māori world” and understood it, Seymour was adamant:
“Yeah, I actually do, and I suspect that you are trying to say that an unscientific survey, which seems to have a fairly hopeful outcome of inevitable violence is [trails off] I might just be a bit careful about that ...”
Politicians respond
“Heck, yeah,” said Greens co-leader Marama Davidson about whether there could be protests.
“Te Tiriti isn’t up for a bloody popularity contest.”
The 1975 Land March, Takaparawhau (Bastion Point), Ihumātao were all examples of powerful non-violent protest and resistance, Davidson said. The Greens would join similar non-violent protest and civil disobedience against the referendum, she said.
“Māori will be very angry that for so long we’ve had discrimination against us in every single way, and then all of a sudden you’ve got this fulla coming in and saying, ‘Too many rights for Māori, it’s not fair.’”
Māori Party president John Tamihere said “all hell would break loose” if any government tried to unwind 30-plus years of Treaty jurisprudence with a referendum.
One of the greatest things that could happen to the Māori movement would be Seymour “thrusting this nonsense on top of us in 2024 Aotearoa”, said Tamihere.
It would be a clarion call for action around the country, he said. “Even conservative Māori who voted for National would come out with us.”
He said the Māori Party would have a “well-organised” response: “Violence won’t come from us, but protest will, because it’s a democratic right.”
A spokesperson for National leader Christopher Luxon said he was not commenting on coalition negotiations.
“Christopher Luxon has previously stated that he does not support a referendum on the Treaty.”
Prior to the election, National had ruled out supporting the proposed referendum as part of any coalition arrangement.
