The Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 1040 inquiry is presented as a long-overdue correction to New Zealand’s constitutional history. Its central claim is stark: that Māori never ceded sovereignty in 1840, and that the Crown has governed without legitimate authority ever since.
That claim may be influential in contemporary politics, but it does not withstand historical scrutiny.
Wai 1040 does not uncover new evidence or forgotten documents. Instead, it applies modern ideas about partnership, power-sharing, and identity-based governance to the nineteenth century, judging historical actors by standards that did not exist at the time. This matters because the report is no longer treated as academic commentary. Its conclusions are now being used to justify far-reaching constitutional change.
At the heart of the Tribunal’s narrative is the assertion that rangatira did not cede sovereignty, but agreed instead to a form of shared authority with the Crown. Yet neither the Treaty texts nor nineteenth-century international law support that interpretation.
The English text of Article One is unambiguous: chiefs ceded to the Crown “all the rights and powers of sovereignty”. There is no reservation and no suggestion of divided authority. The Māori text uses the term kāwanatanga, which by 1840 was already in use to describe the governing authority exercised by colonial governors across the British Empire. It referred to practical governing power, not a limited administrative role subordinate to an ongoing Indigenous sovereignty.
Article Two, by contrast, guarantees all New Zealander’s (Maori included) property rights over lands, resources, and taonga. It protects ownership and use; it does not create a parallel state. No colonial-era treaty anywhere in the world established “complementary spheres of sovereignty”. That idea emerged much later, shaped by post-1970s legal and political developments rather than nineteenth-century understandings.
The Tribunal also portrays the development of unified Crown governance as a process that marginalised Māori authority. That framing overlooks a basic reality: a modern state cannot function with fragmented, ancestry-based jurisdictions operating side by side.
National and local institutions were not designed to privilege “Pākehā interests”. They existed to levy rates, build roads and ports, regulate sanitation and public health, and enable trade and settlement. These systems were universal in design. Māori were not excluded from them. They voted, stood for office, served on councils, and increasingly participated as citizens within a single legal framework. To recast the emergence of equal, universal governance as a denial of tino rangatiratanga is, in effect, an objection to equal citizenship itself.
The Māori Councils Act 1900 is often cited as evidence that Māori self-government was deliberately suppressed. In reality, the councils were conceived as limited local administrative bodies operating within a unified state, not as sovereign authorities. They struggled for practical reasons: small population bases, limited revenue, overlapping authority with national law, and internal disagreements among hapū. No comparable ethnic councils anywhere operated independently of national authority. To claim they were “stripped of power” is to misunderstand both their purpose and their constraints.
The Tribunal’s treatment of land rating policy follows a similar pattern of retrospective moralisation. Rates were applied to Māori land for the same reason they were applied to European land: to fund infrastructure that increased land value. Roads, bridges, drainage, and ports benefited Māori landowners directly.
Crucially, Māori land was not immediately or harshly rated. As Sir Apirana Ngata recorded in 1922, Māori land was first subjected to rates only in the 1890s, and then at concessionary levels. In 1894 it was rated at half the European rate, and for a period only leasehold Māori land was taxable at all. Full rates were not applied until 1910, and even then differential treatment persisted. As late as 1917, tax on leased Māori land remained below that imposed on European land.
These facts undermine the claim that rating policy was designed as a punitive or alienating weapon. Where arrears occurred, the causes were usually economic — fragmented ownership, uneconomic blocks, or land difficult to develop — not racial targeting. Exempting Māori land from rates altogether would not have preserved autonomy; it would have entrenched underdevelopment and isolation.
Much of Wai 1040 ultimately rests on alleged breaches of Treaty “principles” such as partnership, equity, and active protection. None of these terms appear in the Treaty itself. They were developed decades later by courts and the Tribunal, are elastic in meaning, and expand or contract to suit contemporary objectives. Applied retrospectively, they allow modern moral standards to be imposed on historical actors who could not possibly have met them.
Using those principles to justify land return, compensation, or constitutional restructuring is not historical analysis. It is policy advocacy presented as settled history.
The Tribunal’s recommendations — including the return of all Crown land and mandatory power-sharing based on ancestry — go well beyond remedying past wrongs. They propose replacing democratic equality with permanent ethnic authority. That is not reconciliation. It is constitutional transformation without broad public consent.
Wai 1040 report reflects a reinterpretation of the Treaty designed to legitimise parallel governance and racialised power in the present.
The Crown did not “deny sovereignty it never received.” It exercised the sovereignty it lawfully acquired in 1840 — imperfectly, sometimes clumsily, but in a manner consistent with how modern states came into being.
History should inform today’s debates, not be reshaped to legitimise them. If constitutional change is proposed, it should be argued openly, on its merits, and decided democratically — not presented as an historical fact that cannot be questioned.
Brian Priestley MBE said about the Waitangi Tribunal > “It would be hard to imagine any public body less well-organised to get at the truth"
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
6 comments:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but The 1975 Waitangi Treaty Settlement ACT should never have been enacted. All it has done is divide NZ’ers.
There are so many people who argue erroneously that conditions and norms that prevailed in 1840 are the same as in 2025. The Crown would never have considered a partnership or co-governance in 1840, therefore we can safely assume the Treaty means exactly what it says. Equality for all New Zealanders. As in all countries in the world, land was sold, deals were done and many people contributed towards a countries progress. People need to understand the next election will be crucial as to whether we have a united or divided country. Let's be blunt, although not perfect, ACT and NZF are the only parties to vote for. National believes the Treaty is a partnership.
Any discussion about NZ's ethnic divisions with anyone of another democratic nation is usually met with stark disbelief. They find the fact of any legal ethnic division whatsoever in what purports to be a democracy as profoundly oxymoronic.
Ring alarm bells loud as time is growing short. The disingenuous " trace -Maori" Prof Charters ( and her pal SC Justice Williams) are ready for action - especially if the Left wins in 2026. Charters promotes the superior wisdom of the unelected judiciary over parliament and the urgency of " constitutional reform in NZ" - namely a partnership -based constitution honouring the Te Tiriti principles devised by judicial and legal figures since the 1980s. Co-governance would be forever embedded and the document - via a few quick amendments- could morph into Maori supremacy and tribal rule with final veto over legislation . A draft of this constitution is no doubt ready to activate . Hey presto - He Puapua agenda installed by 2040!
When He Puapua was revealed in 2019, lead author Charters dismissed this as "a few ideas for the future". But in the Labour 2020-23 term, ministers accelerated action: Jackson (UNDRIP plan for NZ) and Ms Mahuta ( co-governance arrangements everywhere ).Charters herself was part of the HR Commission and recently led the legal defense at the CERD meeting which examined the Coalition's alleged anti- Maori policies. As well, she indoctinates her AU law students by alleging that NZ's racial policies are far behind Canada and Australia.
So, when ACT promotes equal citizenship, all thinking NZers had better support this for their own survival.
Like the RMA, the Treaty of Waitangi Act is past its use-by-date and should be repealed. The Waitangi Tribunal has done good work in resolving historic grievances, but its advice and recommendations are now routinely ignored by the Government. It has clearly lost any credibility it may have once had, so should be laid to rest without further ado.
The recent settlement of Te Tauihu Māori land claim in the Nelson region demonstrates that any remaining disputes are quite capable of being settled by the normal instruments of the State with no need for Tribunal interference. Repeal of the ToW Act would recognise that reality. Besides, repeal is the logical consequence of Parliament's rejection of the Treaty Principles Bill which confirms that Parliament now considers there are actually NO Principles capable of definition.
If there were no principles extant in the first place, it seems to me the whole basis for the ToW Act collapses, meaning, in the full glare of hindsight, it should never have been passed in the first place.
The ToW Act established the Waitangi Tribunal, so repealing the Act would disestablish that Tribunal. All references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in legislation would automatically be null and void. I'm sure the Act of Repeal can be drafted to confirm that point while protecting existing settlements.
In the meantime, we may safely ignore any pronouncements made by the Tribunal on matters of sovereignty, since the position was settled in 1840 by the Treaty itself. That succinctly gave effect to Lord Normanby’s instruction to Hobson that he should obtain the “free, intelligent consent of the natives” in recognising “Her Majesty’s sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those Islands which they may be willing to place under Her Majesty’s dominion”. After the treaty was signed, Hobson pronounced "We are now one people". He should know. He wrote the treaty, and was present at its signing. He is therefore rather more qualified to form a judgement on the comprehension of the Chiefs than any latter-day activist. Normanby and Hobson were playing for keeps. 21st century activists are simply displaying buyer’s regret.
The previous comment is quite correct, it is high time the ToW Act was put out of its (sorry OUR) misery. The mess that has ensued in this Country since the Act was first passed is probably one of the worst cases of fraud dressed up as virtue imaginable. The associated gas lighting, indoctrination, misrepresentation of the truth and outright grift enabling would have Al Capone applauding loudly and wondering why he had not thought of it! The fact that successive governments have allowed the fraud and grift to continue unabated for so long is another indictment. I've long maintained that our leaders need to go back and deal with the root cause. The discovery of the Littlewood draft should have enabled the immediate withdrawal of the Freeman, et al, imposter translations, when you have the original then there is no need for back translation QED! The means to fix all this exists, it just needs the will to do so and put this Country back to a footing whereby all are equal, all have the same property rights, the same responsibilities and there is a single sovereign government responsible equally to all its citizens.
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