New Zealand Parliamentary Debate

Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill [4462]

course, what has happened now is that it has grown into a huge industry. We should make a distinction between the Treaty and the principles, because it is huge.

Shane Jones

: It's part of the constitution.

RODNEY HIDE

: Well, Shane Jones talked about it being part of the Maori constitution. That may be true, but the problem is that if one accepts that Parliament is Sovereign, then it is for Parliament to decide what the rules are and what the law is, and it has never done it for these principles. We hear Ministers and other people getting up in this Chamber to say that the principle means this or the principle means that. What sort of jurisprudential adventure is that? They say: Oh, the principles of the Treaty! and wave their hands and get all solemn about it but do not actually determine what it means. They leave it up to unelected bureaucrats and judges-poor things-to interpret what it all means.

So the ACT party rises-and I am sorry; I know we are disagreeing with my friends in the Maori Party on this-to support this bill going to select committee and to at least have a debate. Mr Finlayson, who is the finest lawyer in the House, says the bill can be fixed up, so I think we should support it through the House. But I will make a wee comment about the politics of this.

Mr Maharey said this was the sophistication of MMP in operation. Well, let us just think about that for a moment. It means the Labour Party is going to support something that it hates to its core. It hates it. Not one Maori MP from the Labour Party has got up and explained why they are voting for this bill. Of course, New Zealand First felt oh so good. It has the baubles of office-a little poodle sitting there-and it has got the Labour Party to agree to this bill. But the stupid things in New Zealand First got agreement to only a first reading. So the Labour Party will vote for the bill going to a select committee and then will kill it. New Zealand First has signed up to the Labour Party to achieve nothing. How stupid could they be?

I ask Mr Woolerton why New Zealand First did not ask the Labour Party to support the bill all the way if it believed in and had the courage of its convictions. The Labour Party has done the New Zealand First MPs like a dinner. Helen Clark said to them: Don't worry, we'll support you to the first reading, and we'll kill it there. That is what she has told the Maori caucus. I have to say to Doug that Shane Jones and the other Maori MPs are all laughing at him. They are all saying that Helen Clark, Michael Cullen, and-as John Tamihere observed-the smarmy one, are tricky.

They are so tricky that even the wily old fox Winston was outfoxed by the Labour Party and the Maori caucus. They got New Zealand First's support for the Government and its Budget in return for what? Labour is going to vote for the first reading of the bill and then kill it. I always knew that New Zealand First were useless; I just did not realise quite how useless they truly were in signing up to this agreement with the Labour Party. But I have to say that we support this bill.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY( NZ First):

I have to say that is wonderful, coming as it does from a member who, in the 10 years since he has been here, has actually produced nothing, and who belongs to a party that has produced absolutely nothing. But I do not want to go on to slag them off and do those sorts of things. I ask members to consider a scenario. Let us imagine we had a Crimes Act that simply stated that all people should be good at all times, and then we left it up to the courts to determine what was meant by being good. I believe that very, very few people would think that was anything but a nonsense. Yet that is exactly what we have with the insertion into legislation of clauses that refer to undefined principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

I want to quote from the law professor Matthew Palmer, who said: From a traditional legal perception the Treaty of Waitangi exists in a shadow land-half in and half out of law. It has no legal status in and of itself. In order for the Treaty to be part of