Turner Judy: Treaty of Waitangi (Principles) Bill — First Reading 
Turner Judy: Treaty of Waitangi (Principles) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1429] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the first reading of the Treaty of Waitangi (Principles) Bill and I will be upfront and say that United Future will not be supporting this bill. I will begin though by commending the member because we believe that his approach in this bill is preferential in our thinking to that of removing and deleting all references to the principles of the Treaty from the law as has been suggested by other members. However that is about as far as we can go in terms of our support for this bill because we believe that the member’s attempt is shallow. 
United Future has always been very clear in its policy even leading up to the last election. Our preference in regard to this matter is to support the establishment of a royal commission on New Zealand’s constitution and to include within its scope a very thorough look by ourselves as a nation at the Treaty. One of our concerns is that within New Zealand right now there seems to be an overshadowing of the importance of the Treaty by the fact that we are very focused on the historical grievance process. We support the need for the grievances to be addressed but that process has overwhelmed the discussion that should be had about the current relevance of the Treaty and its future application. We think that a very thorough discussion of those issues needs to be undertaken over a sustained period of time. It is not a process we would encourage to be rushed but one that should be deliberately undertaken. We believe that it started in the last term of this Government with the establishment of a select committee to look at and take a stocktake of our current constitutional arrangements. Beyond that we believe that much more work needs to be done and discussions need to be held up and down this country. 
Although Mr Hide has made what I consider to be a shallow and brief attempt to give his definition of what the principles of the Treaty mean—and I guess he is prepared to admit that it is a starting point—when I compare his three points with some of the other attempts that have been made by groups like Te Puni Kokiri and others to bring a sense of definition to that term I find there seem to be some real gaps in what is written. For instance Mr Hide mentions us being one sovereign nation but he does not have any reference to the principles that Te Puni Kokiri has talked about: things like the principle of partnership. When there is no reference to partnership which implies that one or more parties is involved in the process then we are all blandly merged into one nation and we lose a lot of the richness of what the Treaty stands for. That is just one small example of our concern about what is proposed in this bill. 
The speaker from the Maori Party has just alluded to the fact that more discussions do need to be had. United Future is concerned about the confusion that exists around at least 30 pieces of legislation with references to the principles of the Treaty. We note that there are currently general concessions within the judiciary that the differences between the texts of the Treaty are not as important as the spirit of the Treaty yet there remains a lot of misunderstanding and a lack of connection when we have discussions on that matter. There is real room for an improvement in our understanding of the Treaty. However this bill is not the way to do that so we will be opposing its first reading.