Jones Shane: Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill — Second Reading 
Jones Shane: Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:12889] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Associate Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations) 
: 
 Kia ora ano tatou. Mo te wahanga tuatahi maku tenei take e korero ki to tatou reo Maori. E kore tenei pire e neke whakamua. E kore tenei pire e whakatuturungia e te Whare i a tatou e whakamene nei. Te ingoa o te pire nei ko nga matapono o te Tiriti o Waitangi. Apopo ahea ranei ka rite tenei pire ki tetahi tupapaku ka ngaro ki te ngakau o te whenua. Taku i korero peneki ai te take he raupatu he whakahawea he takahi i te Tiriti o Waitangi. Ko wai o tatou e maia ana te pera. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
Greetings to us once again. In respect of the first part I will speak to this matter in our Maori language. This bill will not progress. It will not be passed by the House as we assemble here. The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill is the name of this bill. Tomorrow or whenever this bill will be like a corpse and be lost to the heart of the land. The reason I speak in this manner is that it confiscates belittles and violates the Treaty of Waitangi. Who amongst us is brave enough to do that? 
] 
Aroha ki taku whanaunga mai i Ngati Hine ta te mea tenei tangata he mokopuna na nga kawai ariki o roto o Ngati Hine mei i kore a Te Kauiti tona tupuna i hakamana i te Tiriti o Waitangi kua kore te Tiriti e whai putake i roto i te nuinga o te takiwa o Ngapuhi nui tonu. Aroha ana au ki a ia na te mea ko ratou nga kaumatua o Ngati Hine i tino pupuru i te mauri o te Tiriti o Waitangi. 
[ 
I sympathise with my relative from Ngati Hine because this man is a grandchild of the chiefs from within Ngati Hine and had it not been for his ancestor Te Kauiti who empowered the Treaty of Waitangi it would not have meant anything to the vast majority of Ngapuhi. I feel for him because it was really the elders of Ngati Hine who held true to the essence of the Treaty of Waitangi. 
] 
I see and understand the anxiety if not the apprehension of my fellow Maori parliamentarian who hails from Ngati Hine the largest of the subtribes of the Ngapuhi confederation of tribes whose elders supported this Treaty. Indeed the ancestor of his tribe Kawiti gave the power of his moko to the Treaty and there were very few chiefs in the north who could rival that man’s status and power. So I acknowledge the role that the member plays today as a parliamentarian. It is a role however that is definitely at odds with the powerful role his tupuna played. 
I come back to talking about the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill in this sense: I want to advance the notion that it is wrong to say we do not know what the principles of the Treaty are. In 1987 arguably our greatest jurist Lord Cooke of Thorndon with a bunch of completely westernised highly educated jurists who probably came from a classic New Zealand Pakeha upbringing were seized of the issue. David Baragwanath Sian Elias and various others—including Martin Dawson who is not with us today but whose name must always be remembered in the list of people who played a key role in enabling the Treaty to journey forward to the respectability and legitimacy our tupuna saw in it—those men and that woman placed before the Court of Appeal a set of pleadings. And Lord Cooke with his colleagues repudiated what the Crown said at that stage and through their findings they distilled a set of principles—matapono o te Tiriti o Waitangi. 
It is disappointing that in our political lexicon those principles have not been imported and are not heard on a regular basis but it is wrong it is mischievous and it shows a shallow understanding of our recent history to say that there has not been a distillation of the principles. Any jurist worth his or her salt will turn to that particular rendering of the Treaty to gain guidance. Yes it might be said that the presence of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi provides an opportunity for courts to steer themselves into areas that perhaps are best left to bureaucrats or parliamentarians. But the judiciary plays a key role and it enjoys a great deal of respect and esteem in the eyes of our iwi. They realise that the courts can be called upon to check the power the authority and the decision making of statutory decision makers whether they are of executive government regional government or local government. Those courts have proven on various occasions that they are able to make decisions that are both favourable to Maori and very unfavourable to Maori. 
This bill cannot and will not proceed because it interferes with—indeed I say it molests—the settlement legislation that ought to be seen as the signature of our race relations journey since 1975. To overturn to undo the work of Ngai Tahu Ngati Tama Ngati Awa Tainui Pouakani and a variety of other iwi that colleagues of mine no doubt will refer to later on is actually to undermine and to reduce the mana of those tribes as they have sought to lay history to rest—to allow the debts of history to be paid and for tribes the Crown and the public at large to move forward. Through this bill for those references to the Treaty to be overturned or undermined is actually to unilaterally rewrite those settlements. That would be a very bleak day which is why this bill will not proceed. 
The Treaty—naturally a number of us talk about it as the foundation document—was taken around Aotearoa and I want to share a little story about when it came to my small settlement in Muriwhenua. The ancestor was Ngakuku Panakareao later called Nopera by the Anglican missionaries and when he embraced the Treaty after hearing about it from his Ngapuhi kin he described it in this fashion: “Ko te atakau o te whenua ka riro otira ko te mauri me tona mana ka mau tonu ka mau tonu: the shadow of the land to the Queen; the essence however will remain with us forever.” 
Unfortunately a small period of time passed before our tupuna Nopera Panakareao was forced to revisit that very wise saying of his as he challenged colonial administrators to live up to the Treaty. But his people never stopped either believing or conceiving of an ongoing role for the Treaty in the time of their mokopuna. Of course this is embraced today through Aotearoa—indeed overseas. All sorts of people choose to celebrate the day on which the Treaty was signed and it is unfortunate that far too much discord is visited upon the Treaty-signing commemorations at Waitangi. But being a character of the north and having added a little bit of discord myself I say that such is life. 
However it is good to see—which is why this bill will not proceed—that generations of our mokopuna of our tamariki of New Zealanders are coming forward of mixed blood and of all sorts of backgrounds who realise that in the rich heritage of our short and youthful nation the Treaty will sit as a foundation. Who knows when—perhaps in the time of current members of this House—we will see a constitution evolve presumably in an organic way and it will place on the record the key role that our founding document has played. People should not fear the Treaty. It will not eclipse the manners the powers or the authority of this House. It does not undermine the role of Pakeha Asian and Middle Eastern people here in Aotearoa; rather it roots the history of our country as being something that belongs to the races that came from Europe and to the people of the Pacific known as the tangata whenua te iwi Maori of Aotearoa. That is something we should be inordinately proud of. 
If one goes across the Tasman and talks to the people over there who are constantly searching for a remedy to their own indigenous issue challenges one learns that they look longingly at the fact that we have a Treaty. They look longingly at the fact that we have been able to embrace the principles of the Treaty which after all are simply a normative reflection of what the people of the time sought to create when they constructed the Treaty. 
The Treaty is not fossilised. The Treaty is not frozen in time. Each generation surrounded by its own vicissitudes its own freshness and its own promises will visit upon the Treaty what it thinks ought to be seen as a prevailing and sustainable meaning. But the meaning reflected in this bill coming forward from our colleagues from New Zealand First is not meaning but very mean. It is very short-sighted and designed to cause people to be frightened about something they should be proud about. The future belongs to all people of Aotearoa in accepting that this country was founded upon a document that reflected obligations rights and shared promises between the indigenous chiefs and the British Crown. Kia ora tatou.