Treaty Principles Bill: Shane Reti urges people to 'bring respect to this debate'

As the debate over the Treaty Principles Bill continues, the health minister is worried about the tone and nature it might take in coming months.

Cabinet agreed on Monday to the outline of the Treaty Principles Bill that will be introduced to Parliament, including a change by the bill's architect David Seymour to add specific acknowledgement of the rights of hapū and iwi.

Shane Reti, health minister and MP for Whangārei, says he hears from those both in favour and opposed to the bill and expects a variety of views to be heard during the select committee process.

National and New Zealand First will support the bill to first reading and through to select committee, but will vote against it at second reading.

Reti says National caucus members made a collective decision to support the deal struck with ACT in coalition negotiations, and would not venture into his own personal views on the legislation.

He did however tell RNZ he was worried about the debate and called on everyone involved to be considerate of other perspectives.

"I would invite everyone to bring as much respect to this debate as they possibly can - express a wide range of views, but please bring respect to this debate."

Hutt South MP and Housing Minister Chris Bishop said the Treaty Principles bill came up in public talks and meetings, but so did many other issues like the economy, health and education.

"People have got a variety of different views around it - some people support it, some people oppose it," he told RNZ. "It's like any issue of controversy in the public domain, there's lots of different views out there. We live in a democracy, people are entitled to express those views and they do that."

National has been criticised for partially supporting the bill when it has no intention of it becoming law. Asked if the public had ever implied Seymour had National over a barrel by making it support a bill it doesn't believe in, Bishop told RNZ "nah, not really".

"People realise we're in a three-way coalition government… we have made that work."

The opposition called on National to use its power and bring the bill to an end. Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel said she could not believe National had not quashed the bill.

"They're the majority in the coalition. [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon should show leadership and just squash this bill where it stands now. He's wasting everyone's time and actually, quite frankly, damaging what hope they had, I think, in terms of positive relationships with Māori."

She said from an iwi and hapū perspective the bill was "devastating".

"People are thinking, 'My goodness, here we are thinking we've made progress as partners of the Treaty, but we feel oppressed again, we feel like we're being silenced and we feel like they want to make us second-grade citizens on our own whenua.'"

Parliamentary opposition

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the select committee process could be as short as the government wanted it to be - as short as 24 hours - and there was no need for a divisive debate to drag on for the usual six-month process.

The Greens and Labour still thought the Treaty Principles Bill should be scrapped, despite a concession in the wording of the legislation giving iwi and hapū specific recognition within the bill. Earlier versions only acknowledged "all New Zealanders".

The Green Party's Teanau Tuiono said everyone in te ao Māori was against it.

"Māori don't want this bill - the best thing he can do is chuck it in the bin."

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Seymour was "whitewashing" and trying to justify how he had upset the general public.

"It is not for David Seymour to be saying where hapū and iwi should be, and the fact that he's changing and trying to amend to placate the general public isn't going to cut it.

"It's a pig, it's dressed up as a pig and it's still a pig."

Ngarewa-Packer said the change did not alleviate any concerns around the bill for iwi, and called again for the prime minister to stop it before it started.

The legislation was now being drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office before its introduction in November.

'I'm not changing'

Luxon said it was not an issue he was getting feedback on, saying people were focused on the economy, law and order and public services.

"I appreciate there's an ACT Party position that's very different from National's position."

Asked whether National would change its position during the course of the legislative process, he said: "No, I'm not changing, the National Party's not changing its position - we won't be supporting it beyond first reading."

ACT campaigned on the bill, promising a public vote on scrapping the principles established through the courts - such as partnership - and codifying in law a new interpretation focused on equality and property rights.

ACT leader David Seymour has argued the interpretation of these principles was developed through the Waitangi Tribunal, courts and public service, and "New Zealanders as a whole have never been democratically consulted on these Treaty principles".

He said ACT held as a basic value that every child in New Zealand deserved the same respect and dignity including equality before the law, and it was this belief which underpinned the bill.