New Zealand is unwinding ‘race-based policies’. Māori say it’s taking away their rights

With stunning speed, New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government has repealed, removed or reversed around a dozen of what it calls “race-based policies” that enshrine the special status of Māori people in national life.

Since coming to power last November, it’s scrapped a law giving Māori a say on environmental questions and is set to repeal another designed to help Māori children in state care stay connected to their culture and family.

Māori language in the public service has been wound back and the Māori Health Authority has been abolished.

Now it’s turning its attention to the next fight – reinterpreting the nation’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, in what could potentially erase decades of hard-won Māori rights.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by representatives of the Crown and more than 500 Māori chiefs when New Zealand became a British colony in 1840.

Over the past five decades it’s been central to enshrining Māori rights in law, but the Treaty’s role in New Zealand’s future is now up for debate.

Reinterpreting the Treaty

This fractious moment in New Zealand’s politics can be traced back to the role two minor parties played in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s path to power.

In last year’s election, Luxon, a first-term MP, campaigned on an economic message of growth and jobs.

But when the election failed to deliver a clear mandate, he was forced to negotiate to form a coalition government with two men from minor parties with very different agendas.

David Seymour and his libertarian ACT Party had swung back from political oblivion to win nearly 9 per cent of the vote, while Winston Peters had had similar success, clawing his way back into parliament with more than 6 per cent of the vote for his populist NZ First Party.

Both Seymour and Peters are of Māori descent themselves, but they campaigned against so-called “race-based policies”, and they took that philosophy into the coalition negotiation room.

It was during these negotiations that David Seymour won Luxon’s backing to draft the Treaty Principles Bill, which would reinterpret who the Treaty of Waitangi applies to. 

While the Treaty of Waitangi is not legally binding, after decades of advocacy many pieces of legislation enshrining Māori rights now make reference to it.

Seymour wants the Treaty to apply to all New Zealanders, not just Maori, so all Kiwis have the same rights and privileges. 

Former attorney general Christopher Finlayson believes Seymour’s proposal makes little legal sense. 

It’s “a little bit nutty,” he said. “Because the Treaty is between the Crown and Māori. Where David Seymour, I think, has gone wrong is he thinks it is an agreement between races, and that’s fundamentally wrong.”

Last week, Kiwis saw the initial details of the proposed bill.

An analysis by the Ministry of Justice said the proposal “reduces Indigenous rights to a set of ordinary rights that could be exercised by any group of citizens”.

In an even more controversial proposal, Seymour is calling for a referendum on the Treaty’s role in modern-day New Zealand, which Maori activists warn could unleash a wave of division.

The National Party has agreed to support the bill until it reaches the select committee stage, which is likely to begin sometime after November, but not a referendum.

Beyond that, the bill will be open for public submissions for a further six months, dragging out any chance of a resolution well into 2025.

The prime minister has vowed that his party will vote it down at its second reading, but Māori leaders and activists remain deeply concerned about losing rights that took generations to secure.

‘If you don’t stop, we’ll make you stop’

Already, the country has seen a series of demonstrations over the roll back of legislation and policies designed to improve outcomes for Māori.

One Wednesday in August, during a meeting with the prime minister, the chair of New Zealand’s largest tribe the Ngāpuhi, Mane Tahere, stood up and walked out.

By Monday, he had organised for a group of Ngāpuhi leaders to travel from their lands north of Auckland to protest in the capital Wellington.

They were protesting against the repeal of something called 7AA – it’s an amendment to the child protection act that was designed to help reduce the number of Māori kids in state care and to keep their connection to their culture.

After gathering at the cenotaph, they marched onto the parliament grounds, where they were received by the local tribe as well as the Māori Party, a political party with six MPs in the House.

It was a deeply personal issue for many Ngāpuhi.

There are more than 800 Ngāpuhi children in state care, more than any other Māori tribe in the country.

“We are in crisis as a tribe,” Tahere said. “It’s hugely important. What we’re talking about are the next three to five generations. We have to stand up.”

The repeal of 7AA was another commitment David Seymour pushed for during coalition negotiations.

The government says it is basing its policy decisions on need, not ethnicity.

Tama Potaka, the minister for Māori development, said there were concerns 7AA led the department to “focus more on a child’s cultural needs than on their immediate safety and wellbeing.”

“The repeal is simply about ensuring the safety and wellbeing comes first,” Potaka said.

In Wellington, as the Ngāpuhi protesters reached the steps of parliament, Mane spoke to the crowd, aiming his message at those inside the building.

“Our people are backed into a corner,” he said. “Our people are sick of attack after attack, on Ngāpuhi, iwi Māori. If you don’t stop, we’ll make you stop.”

The ‘scale and speed’ of change

Māori Party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi Clarke is perhaps one of the most viral faces of the resistance to the roll back of Māori rights.

At 22 years-old, she became the youngest member of parliament in 170 years when she won one of six seats now held by the Māori Party.

Her maiden speech to the House, in which she performed a haka, has been viewed millions of times on TikTok.

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Clarke is concerned the Treaty Principles bill is “going to cause riots”.

“With this dog whistling that they’ve consistently done to their far right, it’s also whistled to a lot of our own people and we’ve seen people mobilise,” she said.

She’s been surprised with how quickly things have changed under the current government. 

Clark said her grandparents worked for decades on the original health claims that led to the establishment of the Maori Health Authority. 

“I mean, it was gone in a couple of hours,” she said.

While changes like the proposed repeal of 7AA and the Treaty Principles Bill are dominating the national discussion because they are both symbolic and specific in the way they seek to unpick the special status of Māori, they’re not the only examples.

Dedicated Māori wards in local governments can now be removed and a bill is moving through parliament that would allow ministers to approve projects of national significance no matter the cultural or environmental concerns.

Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer said it was “extremely harmful”.

“The scale and speed is beyond anything we’ve ever known in Aotearoa, the only thing we can compare it to is the initial colonisation in the 1800s,” she said.

The path to a referendum

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is adamant New Zealand will not have a referendum on its Treaty, as David Seymour has proposed, but the debate will now extend well into next year and beyond another Waitangi Day on February 6.

On February 6 this year, tens of thousands of people gathered at Waitangi in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands to protest the direction of the new government.

A year later, there will no doubt be more momentum.

But there are many who do support David Seymour and his referendum plan.

Don Brash, a former National Party opposition leader and founder of Hobson’s Pledge, is pushing for what he calls a “colour-blind democracy”.

“Hobson’s Pledge is a group which says we all have the same constitutional rights, and we will be working very hard to convince the prime minister to support the ACT Party’s proposal to have a Treaty Principles Bill,” he said.

“We want all New Zealanders treated equally regardless of race. That’s all our policy. We have no other policies.”

Asked if he believed New Zealand would eventually have a referendum on the Treaty, he said: “Yes I do.”

“If it’s not one done in line with this bill that ACT is proposing, it will be a citizen-initiated referendum, I’m quite sure of that.”

This type of public vote can be held on any subject as long as the petition for it is signed by at least 10 per cent of the enrolled voting population, which at the last election totalled just more than 3.6 million.

It’s not legally binding, but it would be politically potent.

David Seymour did not respond to the ABC’s questions about a potential citizens-initiated referendum.

‘The worst of all possible worlds’

Another special interest group that likes what Seymour is saying about democratic freedoms is Groundswell, which represents farmers.

Ardern-era policies on Māori governance and water management were of particular concern to Groundswell.

The group’s founder Bryce McKenzie supports Seymour and believes he is asking the right questions about the future of the Treaty of Waitangi and about Māori rights to land like his.

“It appeared like, if there was co-governance, it actually gave Māori veto over certain things,” he said.

“We couldn’t see why somebody because of race would have veto over somebody else. I just think David Seymour is actually asking the question of, right, where does this stop?”

McKenzie said he also supported Seymour’s push for a referendum on the Treaty.

ACT is the only party in parliament pushing for a referendum and in the community there have been public objections from church and business leaders as well as legal experts.

Former attorney general Christopher Finlayson fears a referendum would “bring all the crazies out of the woodwork and it would be very, very divisive.”

“I think that would be the worst of all possible worlds,” he said.

The full draft bill is expected to be released very soon and there’s every likelihood it will be defeated. 

But after more than a year of debate, the question is whether the idea can be defeated too, or if  the nation of New Zealand is headed down a path that puts the rights and recognition of Indigenous people in the hands of the majority.

Watch The Ardern Aftermath tonight on Foreign Correspondent at 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.