A “new DOC Treaty Operating Model.”
Type those words into the department’s own website. Nothing. Search the last annual report. Still “Treaty Relationships.” Scoop, Beehive, Cabinet papers in the public domain: blank.
What you get instead is a hiring wave. Role descriptions dated 7 April 2026. Kaihautū. Principal Advisors. Business Partners into Biodiversity, Heritage and Visitors. Relationships and Engagement managers. All of them told to lead, steward, implement, or “give effect to” the Treaty Operating Model.
So the model is real enough to recruit against. It is not real enough for the public to read.
That is not an accident of filing. That is design.
The owner is named. Sheridan Smith, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu, Deputy Director-General Iwi Strategy and Partnerships since August 2025. DOC’s own blurb: she leads Treaty strategy, relationships, and Treaty system performance and oversight. She arrived from Justice as Deputy Secretary Strategy, with Te Arawhiti Partnerships and the Public Service Commission behind her. Crown–Māori system performance, not trapping stoats.
Under her watch the ads arrived. Under her watch the invisible model got a brand.
What do the role papers say the model does, when they bother to talk?
Integrate Treaty settlement commitments. Integrate Section 4 of the Conservation Act. Integrate “iwi aspirations.” Integrate “partnership expectations.” Give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Embed te ao Māori, mātauranga and tikanga. Coach leaders. Assure performance. Align the whole organisation.
Settlements are statute. Section 4 is statute. You can argue about how far either reaches. You cannot pretend they are secret.
“Iwi aspirations” are not statute. “Partnership expectations” are not statute. “Principles” are the fog Parliament spent a year fighting over, and lost.
An operating model that bundles the lawful with the invented, then hides the bundle, is not settlement administration. It is policy by intranet.
If the model were only “keep the Treaty deeds,” DOC would publish a checklist and go home. Instead it builds Tier 3 kaihautū, enterprise business partners, capability oversight, monitoring and assurance, and a vocabulary of mana-enhancing engagement. That is a permanent parallel management system for how the Crown behaves toward Māori inside conservation, written for officials, sold in job ads, withheld from voters.
Ministers still talk as if co-governance and undefined principles are being wound back. DOC still hires as if the opposite is the work programme. The bridge between those two stories is a document the public is not allowed to see.
Ask the simple question.
Where is the DOC Treaty Operating Model?
If it is harmless, put it online. If it is only settlements and Section 4, say so in plain English. If it embeds aspirations and principles the coalition told the country it was ending, then the election campaign just found its next exhibit.
A democracy can live with hard arguments. It cannot live with operating models that rewrite the relationship between Crown and citizen in the dark.
So the model is real enough to recruit against. It is not real enough for the public to read.
That is not an accident of filing. That is design.
The owner is named. Sheridan Smith, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu, Deputy Director-General Iwi Strategy and Partnerships since August 2025. DOC’s own blurb: she leads Treaty strategy, relationships, and Treaty system performance and oversight. She arrived from Justice as Deputy Secretary Strategy, with Te Arawhiti Partnerships and the Public Service Commission behind her. Crown–Māori system performance, not trapping stoats.
Under her watch the ads arrived. Under her watch the invisible model got a brand.
What do the role papers say the model does, when they bother to talk?
Integrate Treaty settlement commitments. Integrate Section 4 of the Conservation Act. Integrate “iwi aspirations.” Integrate “partnership expectations.” Give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Embed te ao Māori, mātauranga and tikanga. Coach leaders. Assure performance. Align the whole organisation.
Settlements are statute. Section 4 is statute. You can argue about how far either reaches. You cannot pretend they are secret.
“Iwi aspirations” are not statute. “Partnership expectations” are not statute. “Principles” are the fog Parliament spent a year fighting over, and lost.
An operating model that bundles the lawful with the invented, then hides the bundle, is not settlement administration. It is policy by intranet.
If the model were only “keep the Treaty deeds,” DOC would publish a checklist and go home. Instead it builds Tier 3 kaihautū, enterprise business partners, capability oversight, monitoring and assurance, and a vocabulary of mana-enhancing engagement. That is a permanent parallel management system for how the Crown behaves toward Māori inside conservation, written for officials, sold in job ads, withheld from voters.
Ministers still talk as if co-governance and undefined principles are being wound back. DOC still hires as if the opposite is the work programme. The bridge between those two stories is a document the public is not allowed to see.
Ask the simple question.
Where is the DOC Treaty Operating Model?
If it is harmless, put it online. If it is only settlements and Section 4, say so in plain English. If it embeds aspirations and principles the coalition told the country it was ending, then the election campaign just found its next exhibit.
A democracy can live with hard arguments. It cannot live with operating models that rewrite the relationship between Crown and citizen in the dark.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
7 comments:
Interesting column from Rodney Hyde. He was involved back when ACT had yellow branding, distinct from the other parties not just in branding but in many ways.
Particularly interesting is Rodney’s comment here that a democracy can live with hard arguments. We must be having the arguments and we cannot hide any part of discourse in the shadows.
The more I read of ACT adjacent output this week the more clear it becomes that what a journalist published this week rings true. The core tenets of the ACT foundation are now taking a back seat to the headline focus of race-baiting. Seeing the blog networks through this light makes it all abundantly obvious.
Thank god we still have people willing to make personal sacrifices to keep the electorate informed.
Do you think that Luxon is not aware of all this ?
Certainly, Potaka is.
Are either of them concerned, or going to stop it ?
Exactly, why National must be held to account by the voting against them.
I’ve been turned off ACT ever since they jumped on the race-baiting bandwagon. And don’t get me started on their new foray into personality politics with the ex-tv presenter hire.
There are other, real, policy-based parties these days. It suits my conservative outlook to follow them instead of whatever ACT has turned into.
I don’t see Act as race baiters at all. They are simply prepared to voice some of the very real race-related issues most other NZ politicians are too spineless to even acknowledge. Good on them. Bring on the debate. We won’t solve any of our problems by ignoring them, or by indulging in appeasement and increasingly blatant corruption either. Looking at you Luxon, Potaka too.
This isn’t race baiting. It’s just that some of us in NZ don’t share the love of Maori culture and some of us think it’s gone too far, infringing on what makes the nation great. Call our disagreement race baiting if you must. But it’s got not a thing at all to do with race.
Looking at the easy catch responses from folks such as Anon 629, I can see why the pivot to race-baiting. It is paying handsomely.
Why is TPU not upfront about their successes in this arena? Don’t be ashamed if the race card is working for you. Just be up front about it. More kiwis would respect you.
ACT is the least racist party in the country. Our best hope for human progress in this ludicrous state of affairs.
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