Thousands protest across NZ amid potential treaty changes

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Today is New Zealand's national day, Waitangi Day, which marks the signing of the treaty between Māori Chiefs and The Crown in 1840.

Transcript

00:00 This is Waitangi Day and over the last five days or so, there have been tens of thousands

00:06 of people arrive here at Waitangi.

00:09 Obviously, the host people who are Ngapuhi have invited the motu or the whole country

00:15 to come.

00:16 So all the political parties come, the Maori King comes, a lot of the significant hahi

00:22 or religious movements like Ratana come, and they come to reaffirm their connection with

00:28 this place and to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi, and to celebrate what

00:33 it means to us as Maori, and then to debate and talk about what it means to the country,

00:39 particularly in this time with a new government and some new ideas about how we take that

00:43 forward.

00:44 So for the audience here in Australia, Tākuta, can you explain what the Waitangi Treaty is

00:49 and its importance to you?

00:52 Yeah, well the Treaty of Waitangi is very important to New Zealand's history.

01:00 It's one of the founding documents of the country.

01:02 There is a forerunner to the Treaty, which is called the Declaration of Independence,

01:08 He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o New Tirini, and that was signed in 1835, where

01:13 Māori declared themselves an independent country.

01:16 And then in 1840, the Treaty was signed, and one of its base tenets was a request from

01:22 the Queen to establish legal immigration for her subjects.

01:27 And on that basis, the Treaty was created.

01:30 It subsequently created a nationhood between Māori, who are the tangata whenua, or the

01:35 indigenous people of New Zealand, and the incoming people, who are commonly known as

01:40 Pākehā, and more later as Tauiwi, in a reference to the many different peoples that would come

01:46 to Aotearoa.

01:47 But they all enter under the banner of the Queen, of the government, and are able to

01:52 stay here in Aotearoa via the citizenship that they receive from that pathway.

01:57 So that's sort of what the Treaty is.

02:01 And for a long time now, successive governments of New Zealand have not done a very good job

02:06 at upholding their Treaty.

02:08 And unfortunately, you know, over the past 20, 30 years, there's been a lot of good progress

02:13 made, and the current coalition government are sort of seeking a return to the 1980s

02:19 or 70s.

02:21 And it's obviously not going down very well.

02:23 And so Māoritim has arrived here at Waitangi to demonstrate that message, and then to make

02:29 sure that the pathway forward from here on out is a more collegial one, and one that's

02:34 respectful of both signatories, both parties to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

02:39 So the new government, as you say, is proposing changes.

02:42 They justify those proposed changes by saying it will deliver better public services based

02:49 on people's needs, not their ethnicity.

02:52 I think they're proposing a referendum as well.

02:55 What's your plan to stop those changes being put in place?

02:59 What's your plan for opposition?

03:02 Well, the Māori Party plan is to represent the aspirations of the Māori people.

03:09 We don't consider ourselves an opposition party.

03:11 We consider ourselves a mana motu hake party, which is an independence party.

03:16 And we're premised on the independence of the Māori people.

03:19 And over the last month, probably, or two months maybe, the Māori people have shown

03:23 out in droves in their tens of thousands at different hui, different national gatherings

03:28 around the country, and have really put forward a strong message that they are not interested

03:33 in what the new government is suggesting.

03:35 Now the new government is trying to rewrite some key tenets of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and

03:40 the main one really is they want to change the makeup of the two constitutional partners.

03:46 Obviously, they were Tangata Whenua and the Crown, and now a small party called the ACT

03:52 Party wants to change those two groups to define themselves as New Zealanders, all New

03:58 Zealanders, i.e. chucking Māori in with all of the rest of the people in Aotearoa, and

04:03 the Crown.

04:04 So that's pretty much a ground zero for what the proposal is, and tiwi Māori are obviously

04:10 not interested in doing that.

04:12 If you come down to a level where we're dealing with the constitutional law and the makeup

04:15 of constitutions in the country, they're not generally things that the public have a great

04:20 say on, and in this case the Treaty was signed.

04:23 The fact that it's a Treaty demonstrates that it was an agreement between two sovereign

04:28 peoples, i.e. Māori and the Crown, and now diluting that down to encompass all people

04:34 in New Zealand and the Crown is not a step that Māoridom will tolerate.

04:38 Bye.

04:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended