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One of the chairs of the Constitutional Advisory Panel committee says the process has led him to question whether the country needs a written constitution.
Sir Tipene O’Regan has long championed incorporating the Treaty of Waitangi into a written constitution.
But the Ngāi Tahu elder now has doubts after looking at how other countries try to set out their constitutional arrangements, and in particular how they try to protect indigenous rights.
“The biggest or the strongest of those regarding the Constitution is the republic of China and North Korea who is not far behind. These are not great models of constitutional merit in my view and perhaps the way we’ve been evolving things here is not too bad. I don’t know and I certainly have good reasons to question some of my founding assumptions,” Sir Tipene O’Regan says.
The Constitutional Advisory Panel is holding regional hui this week in Whanganui and Taranaki.
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