Māori indigenous rights advocate Tina Ngata says David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill is about increasing the power of the crown rather than clarifying the Treaty of Waitangi.
The ACT leader released cabinet decisions on the bill yesterday, including the new principle that the Government of New Zealand has what he called full power to govern, and the parliament has full power to make laws.
Ms Ngata says the cabinet is reinterpreting the Treaty of Waitangi in a way it would not interpret any other treaty.
“Only Indigenous treaties that they feel are able to be unilaterally reinterpreted but they are a multilateral agreement and for that reason they need all of the parties involved in it to be involved in any reinterpretation but also for all parties to consent to any kind of reinterpretation,” she says.
The bill will be introduced to the House on November 18 and go to a select committee, giving ACT six months to build up pressure on its coalition partners to pass it.
