Ignoring ACT, targeting National: The lead-up to the Treaty bill

The House - It was hard to miss the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill on Thursday afternoon.

It also heavily flavoured the days leading up to it, overwhelming discussion of the apology for abuse in state care. So how was it talked about in the House before it was the topic of debate, and how did different parties focus on it (or not)?

On the government side of the House there was a dichotomy; National ignored it as much as possible, and ACT, whose bill it was, were ignored.

ACT leader David Seymour seemed shocked that, having thrown the proverbial political grenade, a detonation had followed.

"It hasn't created any divisiveness. What it has done has revealed the divisiveness of people."

Seymour apparently enjoyed the attention that his Bill brought this week (though that enjoyment seemed to diminish markedly through the first reading). In the House though, attention was hard to garner; he was ignored by opposition parties during Question Time - and relied on patsy questions from his own caucus to get his message across.

Amid Seymour's answers, this moment stood out: "The Treaty Principles Bill also ensures that those basic rights of tino rangatiratanga and self-determination extend to all New Zealanders."

The way this bill is written, it could constrain Māori treaty rights, while also furthering a small-government libertarian idea of property rights.

Seymour had few opportunities to expand on his thinking because the opposition parties ignored him entirely. It was National Party ministers who bore the brunt of many questions about the Bill. They did not entirely seem comfortable - they certainly weren't bringing up the topic themselves.

For example, the four National Party MPs that spoke during Wednesday's General Debate touched on crime, veterans, motorway speed limits, half-marathons, and cycleways. These were topics one might expect if it was a week with not much happening.

This was noticed; Chris Hipkins stood up after Paul Goldsmith had spoken, and said: "There were two words that were not mentioned in that speech by the minister for treaty negotiations, and I just mentioned one of them: 'Treaty'. The second was 'principles'. No one in the National Party wants to talk about the Treaty principles.

"And why is that? It could be because they told New Zealanders before the election that they thought it was divisive. They told New Zealanders before the election that they would not support it. They told New Zealanders before the election that it was a distraction. They told New Zealanders before the election that it would take the country backwards. And yet here we are: now the National Party tomorrow voting in favour of the Treaty Principles Bill."

All three opposition parties spoke about the Treaty Principles Bill at every possible moment. Every question on Thursday from Labour, the Greens or Te Pāti Māori was on the topic. Many questions on Wednesday were as well, along with a few that found connection with the apology for abuse in state care. It was the opposition focus of general debate speeches as well.

Green MP Kahurangi Carter even tried to sneak it into an obituary speech for Sir Robert Gillies, before the Speaker told her to sit down.

Those Question Time questions ignored ACT, whose bill it is, and worked instead to drop the bill in the lap of the prime minister and National. It was a consistent approach from all the opposition parties. The tactic was overt. On Thursday Chlöe Swarbrick asked: "Does the prime minister take personal responsibility for the division that the Treaty Principles Bill is causing across this country?"

Labour MPs asked similar questions. National MPs' answers to these were mostly very consistent, along the lines of 'we won't support the bill into law, we're only voting for it to abide by our coalition agreement.'

Chris Hipkins did manage to garner one revealing answer from the prime minister on Wednesday when he asked "Is the reason why his ministers have consistently sought to undermine the Waitangi Tribunal without any censure from him, even calling for its disestablishment, because the tribunal has brought attention to the profoundly negative impacts the Treaty Principles Bill is having on the Crown's relationship with Māori?"

Christopher Luxon replied: "What I'd say to that member is that many commentators have said in a post-Treaty settlement world it's quite a legitimate question to ask what the role of the Waitangi Tribunal is going forward. That is something that we as a coalition Government will explore in due course."

The possibility of future changes to the Waitangi Tribunal were not followed up on. Did Luxon mean the intention would be to disestablish it, reorient it, or something else? It was an extraordinary topic to broach in a week when the emotional temperature was already making the pot lid jump.

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