Barrie Davis: How to Save Democracy

Writ large on the back cover of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s 2025 book How to Save Democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand, is the claim “New Zealand is a democracy: the people should be in charge”.

I doubt that New Zealand is a democracy in anything but name – which is not ‘Aotearoa’, by the way – and I question whether Sir Geoffrey is participating to make it one.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer: Protecting our democracy by reforming Parliament

This article is published here to keep readers informed and to stimulate the debate…

Aotearoa New Zealand currently exists in an unstable world. Democracies are under challenge across the globe, and we are not immune.

As the inhabitants of one of the world’s oldest democracies, New Zealanders are accustomed to electing their Members of Parliament every three years and we value the importance of free and fair elections. Increasingly, however, it is becoming plain that elections are not enough to ensure a peaceful and secure democracy…

Mike Butler: Treaty settlements – let’s be honest

Let’s be honest about treaty settlements for a few minutes.

The table attached shows that around $4.6-billion has been largely paid in financial redress for alleged breaches of the treaty by the Crown all the way back to 1840 and the Maori Party, rebranded as Te Pati Maori, looks angrier than ever.

That raises the question whether anything has actually been settled.

Mike Butler: Treaty principles and threats

Those who have done well out of the invention of treaty principles “will object to their removal” and “use the loud voices and threatening tactics”, Auckland University Professor of Education Elizabeth Rata wrote last October.

So true. Once the ACT Party’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill became a reality, as soon as the government changed, those loud complaints rang out.

Mike Butler: The Voice and our choice

A current affairs report on “the vote that shocked Australia” by activist Mihingarangi Forbes shows what to expect as the New Zealand Left struggles to cope with the ACT Party’s Treaty Principles Bill.

This call-to-action piece titled “Trick or Treaty? Indigenous rights, referendums and the Treaty of Waitangi”, posted on the 1 News site, conveys dire warnings to no-vote campaigners in any New Zealand treaty referendum from Australian Yes Vote activists dismayed at the failure of the Voice referendum on October 14.

Stephen Franks: Social and economic rights in a NZ constitution

My last post mentioned the risks and problems arising when social and economic “rights” are created in law.  The Palmer/Butler draft constitution tries to allay those concerns by saying that such rights are “non-justiciable” (presumably meaning not enforceable in court). It then lays out in draft section 106 a glittering array of new rights – without solving the fundamental political problem – whose duty is it to provide the goodies, at whose cost.

106 Social and economic rights

Stephen Franks: Sir Geoffrey’s draft constitution

I have yet to read Andrew Butler’s and Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s book.

From what I have seen of their draft constitution there are admirable elements, some badly needed, such as the proposed protection of property rights. Section 104 is well drafted, as one might expect from the intelligence and experience of those authors.

I expect the book to make a strong case for the benefits of a good constitution. I could even prefer for New Zealand to have such safeguards, despite the risks that it would increase the power and arrogance of our lawyer class.

Mike Butler: Palmer's Aotearoa constitution

For years former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer has been deploring the “unbridled power” that New Zealand’s constitutional setup affords, but he was perhaps among the worst offenders during his time as Justice Minister in the way he pushed his personal Treaty of Waitangi solutions while circumventing public opinion.

Along with fellow lawyer Andrew Butler (no relation to this writer), Palmer is about to release A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand, a book that argues why New Zealand needs a written constitution and what a first draft of that constitution entails.

Mike Butler: How treatyist avoids scrutiny

A government program is the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth, according to the late United States President Ronald Reagan. One such eternal-life programme in New Zealand concerns treaty settlements. The architect of that programme is Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who tells how he set up the process in his new book titled Reform – A Memoir. Regarding critics as racists, he set the policy in motion when his boss was out of the country, he incorporated a redefined version of the treaty into law, and did all that without any regard to the financial and social impact these policies would have.

Sir Geoffrey is an aging white liberal who has spent his entire working life cocooned in a privileged environment, and whose conscience appears to drive him to improve the lot of those he deems less fortunate. But his cocoon means he does not really know much about those he purports to help.

Mike Butler: Implications of treaty in constitution

What are the implications of the view that most people think the Treaty of Waitangi must have constitutional status, and why would the Maori Party have a goal of goal of ensuring that the current constitutional review gives effect to the treaty? Aside from the legal arguments whether the treaty is or should be in or out of the New Zealand constitution a significant body of race-based affirmative action has grown around the Waitangi Tribunal’s interpretation of the treaty, and the government’s response.

So how does the Waitangi Tribunal interpret the treaty? The tribunal says the use of the word “kawanatanga” in Article 1 of the treaty was an inadequate translation of the word “sovereignty”, and this led Maori to believe they “ceded to the Queen a right of governance in return for the promise of protection, while retaining the authority they always had to manage their own affairs”.