Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: How disappointing is ACT's Constitution Act proposal?

Okay, if you voted in the last election to see a tidy-up of the creep of Treaty principles throughout our statute books, you should be very disappointed by what ACT did when it basically walked away from Treaty principles altogether.

ACT announced it's going to change the Constitution Act instead of trying to pass the Treaty Principles Bill again.

1. It's going to add three principles to the Constitution Act:Parliament is sovereign.
2. The rule of law is fundamental.
3. All New Zealanders are equal before the law.

ACT seems to think this will largely achieve the same outcome, but without the drama of starting another Treaty debate and having a hīkoi to Parliament.

Now, maybe they're right. But my suspicion is that this will be of no consequence whatsoever - because just because you say in a piece of legislation that all New Zealanders are equal before the law doesn't mean that's what Health New Zealand is going to do when it decides, once again, to roll out free GP visits in Hawke's Bay to people from only two ethnic groups.

But it gets even worse, because it has now become abundantly clear that the Government, and by that I mean all three coalition parties, are deliberately moving at a snail's pace, in my opinion, on the other Treaty principles issue: the promise to delete or amend all the Treaty-principles clauses in 19 pieces of legislation.

Paul Goldsmith has been working on that for an extraordinarily long time and still hasn't managed to get it before Parliament.

It may not even receive a first reading before the election, which means that after the next election, whatever Government takes office can simply dump it, say they've moved on and claim they have other priorities.

Which means that if you didn't like the idea of school boards being forced to give effect to the Treaty, tough luck.

They still have to and they probably still will have to indefinitely because National, New Zealand First and ACT have basically decided this is all just a little too hard.

So, as I say, if you voted in 2023 ...

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.