The Treaty Principles Bill

The Treaty Principles Bill

"We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can't coexist and we can't have them both." -- former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, 2001. The ACT New Zealand Party, a classical-liberal party which is a junior partner in the governing right-of-center coalition, included in their manifesto a bill to set out in a democratic way the principles by which the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between the early M?ori settlers from Polynesia and the later settlers from Britain is applied to modern governmental issues.

"In recent decades the courts, academics, and the bureaucracy have used a 'partnership' interpretation of the Treaty to argue there are two types of people in New Zealand - tangata whenua (land people) and tangata tiriti (Treaty people) - who each have different political and legal rights. This has led to co-governance arrangements and even racial quotas within public institutions. New Zealanders were never consulted on this change. ACT believes the Treaty promises what it says: nga tikanga katoa rite tahi - the same rights and duties for all New Zealanders." As in Australia and Oklahoma, activists have been reinterpreting history and treaties and claims of ongoing territorial sovereignty to create a way to bypass the will of the people as expressed democratically in elections and legislation. ACT's six-page position paper explains the problems caused by the divisive policies of the previous leftist government and how to address them to guarantee equal rights for all New Zealanders.