A Breach of What Exactly?
So, apparently, the Waitangi Tribunal has decided the Government’s review of Treaty clauses in 23 laws is a breach of the Treaty itself. How dare anyone tamper with the sacred text or rather, the sacred principles of a text that never actually mentioned any principles in the first place.
Here’s the irony. The Treaty of Waitangi, 1840, has three simple articles: sovereignty, property rights, and protection. Clear enough. But somewhere between the ink drying in 1840 and a courtroom in 1986, someone decided that wasn’t nearly complicated enough. So, voilà the “principles of the Treaty” were born. Not found in the Treaty, of course, but around it — like ivy that grows over the house and then claims to own the place.
The Cult of the ‘Principles’
Since then, every government that fancied itself enlightened has sprinkled these “principles” through our laws like confetti. Environmental acts, transport acts, conservation acts, even education all must now “give effect to the principles of the Treaty.”
Which sounds noble until you realise no one can actually agree what those principles are. “Partnership”? “Participation”? “Protection”? Depends who’s asking and who’s being funded to interpret it this week.
A Reasonable Review, or a Heresy?
Now the current coalition wants to tidy up the mess to clarify or remove these vague legal add-ons. Perfectly reasonable, one might think. But according to the Waitangi Tribunal, that’s a breach of the Treaty. Yes, you read that right: changing laws that added something that was never in the Treaty somehow breaches the Treaty. That’s bureaucratic yoga at Olympic level.
The Tribunal assures us it’s “not too late” for the Government to change course meaning, drop the whole idea and do what Wellington officialdom tells it. Because in modern New Zealand, questioning the invented principles of a 19th-century document is apparently more dangerous than ignoring the document itself.
Maybe it’s time to stop treating the “principles” like divine scripture and remember that a principle, by definition, isn’t the thing itself. The Government’s job is to uphold the Treaty, not the mythology built around it.
Equality Isn’t a Breach — It’s the Point
The Government is right to insist that Treaty clauses should uphold the fundamental human rights and equality of all New Zealanders. That’s not racism; that’s democracy. Equality before the law is the cornerstone of any free society, and it’s already enshrined in both the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and international law.
The original Treaty itself promised Māori “the same rights and duties as British subjects,” not a separate system of governance or privilege based on ancestry. Ensuring that every citizen regardless of whakapapa stands equal before the law protects us all from division and resentment while preserving the integrity of a single national standard of justice.
Time to Reclaim the Original Promise
By contrast, the Waitangi Tribunal’s dismissal of equality as “not a Treaty principle” shows just how far modern Treaty interpretation has drifted from the document’s actual text. The Tribunal’s approach elevates group rights and bureaucratic partnership over the basic rights of the individual the exact opposite of what a liberal democracy stands for.
The Government’s stance is the only one that treats all New Zealanders as equals under one law, strengthens national unity, and restores the Treaty to its original purpose: a promise of equal citizenship, not endless reinterpretation.
Steven is an entrepreneur and an ex RNZN diver who likes travelling, renovating houses, Swiss Watches, history, chocolate art and art deco.
4 comments:
There are NO "principles" in the Treaty.
The wording of the original document is quite clear.
Also - regarding Waitangi Tribunal rulings on "Treaty settlements" If any of these grievances are genuine – and some of them might be – the correct remedy would have been for the tribe adversely affected to seek redress through the courts for breach of contract or a tort or whatever. If, for example, the Crown took land off a tribe for a public purpose and was required to return the land when that purpose ceased to exist and yet failed to do so, that is not a breach of the Treaty but a breach of contract for which damages could be sought in a court in the normal way. And yet the so-called “clever” lawyers in Parliament and the bureaucracy claim that such is a “breach of the Treaty” when it is no such thing. Instead, they have showered over $4 billion in lump sums on the tribes on the most spurious of grounds and on the recommendations of that most biased of organisations, the Waitangi Tribunal.
Let's get this clear:-
The only obligation that the Treaty imposed on the Crown was to govern the country, which it has done democratically and by the will of the people through elections.
That’s all.
Nothing more.
Finally, all this is lawyer-driven obfuscation and sleight -of -hand. But it will succeed as long as the population does not react. The danger of apathy is massive.
Hon PM Luxon stated historically against the ACT Party bill "there is nothing in the Treaty Principles Bill he liked. " Similarly competent journalists will ask his opinion on the Treaty Clauses review and to avoid hypocrisy it will be the sinking of National as a dominant political party in NZ
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