Whanganui councillor Josh Chandulal-Mackay has demanded the Prime Minister apologise to Māori for pursuing the Treaty Principles Bill. Photo: Supplied / LDR / Whanganui Chronicle
A descendant of the missionary who translated the Treaty of Waitangi into te reo Māori has condemned the Treaty Principles Bill as destructive, dangerous and irresponsible.
Josh Chandulal-Mackay is demanding the Prime Minister apologise to Māori.
“The Prime Minister should issue an apology to tangata whenua, iwi and hapū across the motu for his government’s decision to pursue such an irresponsible piece of legislation.”
Chandulal-Mackay is a Whanganui District councillor and the great-great-great-great-grandson of the Reverend Henry Williams, who helped translate the Treaty of Waitangi into Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Chandulal-Mackay censured the Government for the Bill’s fiscal and social cost, describing its pursuit as poor governance.
“The financial cost of this process is in direct contradiction to the government’s aspirations for fiscal responsibility, and the long-term social cost of this bill – in terms of how it harms and divides – should be noted and strongly condemned as poor governance.”
Act leader and architect of the Bill, David Seymour, told Local Democracy Reporting on Friday that the financial cost of the Bill “is actually $0”.
“If there was no Treaty Principles Bill, people would still be working for the government and getting paid the same amount of money,” Seymour said.
“What does have a negative effect on social cohesion and has caused division is successive governments treating New Zealanders based on their ethnicity, which is the problem the Treaty Principles Bill seeks to solve.”
In early 1840, Henry Williams and his son Edward Williams were given 24 hours to write the te reo Māori version of the Treaty.
Five generations down the line, Chandulal-Mackay has written to the Justice Select Committee to oppose both the substance of the Bill and its intent.
The Bill aims to replace the existing Treaty principles – developed over time by courts and the Waitangi Tribunal to interpret the Treaty in law – with three new ones determined by the Government.
Josh Chandulal-Mackay speaking at Rātana Pā. He says the Treaty Principles Bill has damaged the relationship and the unfinished reconciliation process between Māori and the Crown. Photo: Supplied / LDR / Aka Creative
In an oral submission to the committee on Monday, Seymour said the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal had in recent decades sought to define the principles of the treaty.
The result was “incompatible with freedom under the law, a free society, where each of us have equal rights”, Seymour said.
The committee received a record more than 300,000 written submissions on the controversial Bill and this week began hearing an estimated 80 hours of oral submissions.
‘Mistrust and hurt’
Chandulal-Mackay told Local Democracy Reporting the Bill would damage the relationship and the unfinished reconciliation process – which includes Treaty settlement – between Māori and the Crown.
“It’s already impacting that relationship and that sense of reconciliation, because one party was not part of the drafting of this Bill,” he said.
“The mistrust and the hurt caused by that is going to make it very difficult for there to be any sort of partnership, particularly between iwi, hapū and this government, because this government through this Bill has said we’re not interested in a partnership, we’re not interested even in participation.
“It’s really going to take things backwards because how can you partner with someone who has malicious intent?”
Chandulal-Mackay said the constitutional foundation of the country was being used for political purposes.
“The underlying rationale for this bill from David Seymour, that we need to make a choice between whether Te Tiriti is a ‘partnership between races’ or whether we’re a modern liberal democracy is a false dichotomy and is dishonest public discourse, designed to achieve a regressive political outcome.”
The Treaty “is not and never has been” a partnership between races.
“It is an agreement between two sovereign structures/entities to enter into an arrangement for the shared governance of Aotearoa New Zealand.
“The question of how this is actualised in modern New Zealand after 185 years of Crown breaches is a pertinent question and should continue to be contested and debated, as it has been for the last 50 years since the passage of the Treaty of Waitangi Act and the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal.
“To suggest that this bill provides a pathway to debating our constitutional arrangements, as if generations of New Zealanders have not given a second thought to these issues until the ACT Party enlightened us, is both dishonest and insulting.”
The party and its coalition partners in government had neither the mandate nor a right as a partner to the Treaty to undermine decades of jurisprudence by the courts on its modern application and principles, Chandulal-Mackay said.
‘Further breach of Te Tiriti’
“The coalition government does not have the right to undermine decades of political decision-making, discussion and dialogue, to unilaterally re-write the constitutional foundations of this country.
“The manner in which this bill was introduced constitutes a further breach of Te Tiriti as it was drafted and proposed with no input from tangata whenua, iwi or hapū.
“[It] sets the Crown-Māori partnership back by decades, undermining the work of previous National and Labour-led governments and that of iwi and hapū who worked in good faith with those governments despite the intergenerational hurt caused by ongoing breaches by the Crown.”
Addressing the content of the Bill, Chandulal-Mackay said the wording of the proposed second principle, if passed, would reset the relationship between the Crown and Māori as an unequal partnership, making the rights granted to the chiefs under Article II subservient to the rights of the Crown to govern under Article I.
“This would constitute a significant additional breach of Te Tiriti by the Crown in 2025.”
The proposal also suggested that the rights guaranteed to rangatira under Article II would only be recognised by the Crown if they were included in settlement legislation.
“Treaty settlements are a mechanism through which the Crown provides apology and cultural and financial redress for historical atrocities.
“The Crown’s obligations to give life to Te Tiriti exist beyond settlement legislation,” Chandulal-Mackay said.
“The rights afforded to Māori under Article II should be protected by the Crown in 2025, not undermined as this bill seeks to do.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been approached for comment.