Turei Metiria: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17064. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chair. I just want to make a brief comment on what I understand is Pita Paraone and New Zealand First’s signal that they want to move an amendment to new section 4 to delete the phrase “principles of the” in relation to the Treaty clause clause 5 in the bill. We have given some serious thought to that having only just heard about it. New Zealand First has certainly raised that issue considerably often in the past in a number of its members’ bills to delete references to the principles of the Treaty. Just as we oppose those bills we will oppose this amendment. I want to set out why we oppose it so it is clear that the issue is not about politics but is actually about the law. 
My grave concern about deleting the phrase “principles of the” is that it leaves a lacuna in the law about what implementing the Treaty in a court under the provisions of the legislation would then mean. The Green Party is of the view that the principles are not the best way to interpret how the Treaty should be applied. We would prefer that the Treaty itself and its provisions were taken more seriously and that they were dealt with rather than principles developed by others over time. None the less we have nearly 30 years of jurisprudence around the definition of the principles of the Treaty and a significant body of law both legislation that describes or refers to the principles and also judge-made law—case law—that interprets what the principles are and how they should be applied. 
New Zealand First has never offered an alternative concept for how the Treaty itself might be interpreted differently from the principles of the Treaty. If we were to take that phrasing out of the legislation it would leave it to legal argument to make that determination. We would be opening a great legal debate about the Treaty again with no guidance whatsoever from Parliament from New Zealand First or from anyone about what to do with it. As a default position a court may look at that and use the principles or return to an interpretation based on the principles because that is the law we have at hand to understand how to deal with the Treaty in legislation. But if Parliament expressly takes the reference to the principles out of the legislation there is an argument that that leaves open the question of whether the courts should apply the principles as they understand them when Parliament has clearly said that the principles should not apply. Again it leaves a huge hole in the interpretation of Treaty law. 
I have no problem with the concept of looking more closely at the Treaty and particularly with the concept that Maori should be the ones who determine how the Treaty should be interpreted in relation to legislation. But that is not what New Zealand First is offering. It does not provide any structure or system for doing that; it provides no wording that allows for that. New Zealand First simply wants to take out the reference to the principles. I know that its leader Winston Peters has a long history of objecting to Treaty lawyers in the various phrasing he has used about them. I have always wondered whether that is just because he became an MP rather early in his legal career and never got to jump on that particular gravy train himself which he might well have done had he not been a member of Parliament when the Treaty law hit the law books in the 1980s and 1990s. 
The Green Party is also opposed to this provision because it sets a precedent for the New Zealand First campaign to delete references to the principles. We have seen in their past members’ bills very poor drafting—drafting that actually takes out the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation rather than just the principles. That is careless and unnecessary particularly when it comes to members’ bills because getting them pulled out of the ballot is a very precious opportunity and one would want them to be in the best possible form. I have always been disappointed that New Zealand First did not provide a proper analysis of what it wanted to do by taking out references to the principles in terms of what it expected them to be replaced with and particularly the processes it envisaged around Maori making the decisions about what could replace those references. 
So we will not support New Zealand First’s provision. We do not trust its motives on this issue and we certainly are derisory of its inability to provide any kind of structural alternative that recognises that Maori are the ones who should determine this issue in the first place.