The ACT party have wheeled out another inflammatory policy.
Party leader David Seymour announced on Thursday the 10th that, if elected, ACT would pursue ending the Waitangi Tribunal’s contemporary jurisdiction. It would mean that, once all cases lodged before the 1st of September 2008 had been settled, the tribunal would lose all power. ACT’s announcement of this policy alleges that the tribunal is a legislative body which privileges one ethnic group above another.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins stated that this government has “Set race relations back 40 years already, now they wanna take [them] back 200 years.”
T.E.U President-Māori Garrick Cooper says that “The role of the Waitangi Tribunal is to provide a check against the government’s excesses and transgressions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. These transgressions are not only historical but ongoing.”
The Tribunal’s most recent report, available in pre-publication form on their website, found that the disability support system breaches Te Tirti and is inadequate for tāngata whaikaha, and that “[The Tribunal] found that the Crown’s lack of action in the face of systemic barriers entrenches tāngata whaikaha Māori health inequities.”
Dr. Emmy Rākete has stated, reflecting on the hīkoi against the Treaty Principles Bill, “100,000 people marched on parliament because of the threat that Te Tiriti might receive less legislative recognition […] What do you think they’ll do next time? Intensified social conflict and no pressure relief valve to prevent it from breaking out into open struggle? Okay, lol.”
