Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Will ACT's big plan actually scrap the Waitangi Tribunal?

You know what ACT's Waitangi Tribunal policy is? In my opinion, it's the kind of policy you release when you don't actually want to do the thing the policy gives the impression you're going to do.

ACT's headline policy is that it will scrap the Waitangi Tribunal, which many people, including me, may see as a good idea because the tribunal has gone completely off piste. It has started to resemble a branch of the Māori Party, finding in real time that one Government policy after another breaches the Treaty of Waitangi.

In some cases, it has made these findings about policies that have not even become law yet, which means there cannot be an actual breach because nothing has happened.

When the point of the Waitangi Tribunal was to investigate contemporary breaches, not the possibility of contemporary breaches, the distinction is important. That distinction turns the tribunal into a political player.

Because it has become exactly that, a political player, which was not the original intention, it's not unreasonable to applaud a plan to scrap it.

However, that is not what ACT's plan actually does. ACT is proposing to scrap the tribunal only once all historical Treaty claims have been settled. And when do you think that's going to be? When do you think that's going to happen?

It will only happen when Ngāpuhi finally settles and Ngāpuhi is not going to settle anytime soon because its various groups are still fighting among themselves about it. I reckon they'll be arguing over it for decades.

So, in my view, this is so far in the future that David Seymour will likely be retired and spending time with his grandkids before it actually happens.

Beware of these kinds of policies this election. You'll come across plenty of them. They're designed to make it look as though a party is going to do the thing you really want it to do, without having to go through the political drama of actually doing it.

In my opinion, this policy is a case in point.

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