removed r/nz post

Okay buckle up.

Firstly, two concepts that need explanation.

• ⁠Parliamentary Sovereignty • ⁠The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi

New Zealand is a country with "Parliamentary Sovereignty" otherwise known as 'parliamentary supremacy'. It means the New Zealand Parliament is the supreme lawmaking body. Parliament is made up of the House of Representatives - all those MPs sitting in that room - and the Governor General, the representative of the King. Parliamentary Sovereignty means any other institution, group, or body that's a part of Government cannot overrule Parliament in any lawmaking sense. This is relevant here with regard to the judiciary or "the courts".

Parliament writes the laws and the courts apply the laws.

In application of the law, the courts can't overwrite what Parliament has written - Parliamentary Sovereignty. This system works well when Parliament writes and passes clear laws or 'Acts' that aren't easily left open to interpretation by the judiciary. It does not work so well when the inverse is true.

So the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1840, Queen Victoria - through her representatives - signed an agreement with more than 500 Maori representatives of various tribal bodies. The written agreement was translated into both English and Maori, and to paraphrase basically said the following in three articles;

    ⁠The Queen is to be the supreme leader
    ⁠The Maori would be in charge of their lands, villages and property. If they wanted to sell, they had to offer it to the Queen first.
    ⁠Maori would gain the protection of the Queen, and all the same rights and privileges of the British people.

After the signing of the treaty in 1840, a government was constituted in the 1850s, and disputes leading to rebellion and warfare occured from 1845-1872. A consequence of the "land wars" was the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 in which the New Zealand Government "confiscated" more than 16,000 square km of land from both loyal and rebel tribes. This and other acts of alienation are what we'd colloquially call today "treaty breaches", and attempts to put that right wouldn't gain serious ground until much later.

Time-skipping a bit to such times, in the later half of the 20th century growing social pressure and changes gave birth to the "treaty movement" - a desire to put right the wrongs of land confiscations and other Crown action at odds with the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Treaty of Waitangi isn't itself functionally part of New Zealand law or it's constitution. So to give effect to it, Parliament legislated the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. This Act purported to do two things;

    ⁠Create a body called the Waitangi Tribunal. This body was empowered to investigate treaty breaches and make recommendations to the Crown to resolve them. Initially this was only for post 1975 breaches, but in 1985 it was increased in scope to investigate breaches dating back to 1840.
    ⁠Give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand law through the creation of a concept called the 'Principles of the Treaty'.

The problem the Parliament of 1975 had was that everyone involved in the agreement of 1840 and all their immediate descendants were long dead, and it wasn't realistic to just say "the Treaty is now in New Zealand law" because it's an old agreement of it's time and place that's also in two different languages and while simple enough it also doesn't really go into detail about how Maori retaining responsibility over their stuff vs the Queen being in charge overall actually works.

So they came up with this idea to give it effect through a new "Principles of the Treaty" concept, which - in my opinion - was actually a pretty good way to go about things at the time....except.. the 1975 Parliament didn't actually get around to SAYING WHAT THOSE PRINCIPLES WERE!!

So circling back to the idea of Parliamentary Sovereignty and it working well when Parliament writes clear laws that the Judiciary can then apply - we ended up with it very much not working well with the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. The 'principles' going undefined in the 1975 Act meant it has fallen to a multitude of various other government bodies, courts, and academics to apply their own spin and meaning to what the 'Principles of the Treaty' are. They've then been given effect in all sorts of different ways through the same - sometimes in ways that seem at odds with the actual text of the Treaty itself!

50 years on and things haven't really gotten better as it goes, the treaty principles thing has turned into an ever-growing quagmire across all of government. It's against good democratic practice how it's gone too; the upshot of the "Parliamentary Sovereignty" concept is that Parliament is directly answerable to the people of New Zealand - we elect the members to the House of Representatives. The other government branches like the judiciary aren't directly answerable to us, they're only answerable through the supremacy of Parliament. So since 1975 the people of New Zealand haven't really had a lot of say at all into how this principles thing has developed.

The 2024 "Treaty Principles Bill" has been introduced by one of the parties of Parliament - The ACT Party - in an attempt to circle back to the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 and correct the mistake of the 1975 Parliament in leaving their "principles" undefined in their 'Principles of the Treaty' concept.

In the 2024 Treaty Principles Bill, the principles will be defined as follows:

Principle 1

The Executive Government of New Zealand has full power to govern, and the Parliament of New Zealand has full power to make laws,—

(a) in the best interests of everyone; and

(b) in accordance with the rule of law and the maintenance of a free and democratic society.

Principle 2

The Crown recognises, and will respect and protect, the rights that hapū and iwi Māori had under the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi at the time they signed it.

However, if those rights differ from the rights of everyone, subclause (1) applies only if those rights are agreed in the settlement of a historical treaty claim under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975.

Principle 3

Everyone is equal before the law. Everyone is entitled, without discrimination, [to] the equal protection and equal benefit of the law; and the equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights.

These principles are based on the three articles of Te Tiriti, the Māori text, or at least Professor Kawharu's 1987 translation of it.

TLDR: Seymour wants to enforce equality amongst all New Zealanders regardless of race, gender, or background by fixing the failures of the 1975 government.