Submission:Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill
About the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties
The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (‘the Council’) is a voluntary, not-for-profit organisation founded in 1952, which advocates to promote human rights and maintain civil liberties.
The Bill Should be Rejected
Aotearoa New Zealand does not have a constitution codified in a single document, but Te Tiriti o Waitangi is certainly a founding element of our constitution. This bill proposes rewriting this key element of the constitution of Aotearoa New Zealand by unilaterally amending how the treaty between the Crown and tangata whenua must be interpreted. A treaty cannot be changed by just one of the signatories.
The bill is inappropriate not only because it proposes to entrench interpretation of Tiriti clauses adopted by only one party to Te Tiriti, but also because a referendum is an inappropriate way to address the rights of any minority and this is especially so in the case of colonisation.
This bill proposes to alter our constitutional arrangement but does so with disregard to the extensive work already done on this topic, including the 2013 Constitutional Advisory Panel and the 2020 Matike Mai report. This bill stands alone and unsupported against a consensus which has been built over 50 years.
The Council believes that a strong and independent judiciary is key to defending our civil liberties and rights. The Council believes the motivation behind this bill is unhappiness by a small minority with how the courts have interpreted Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how this has developed over the last fifty years. The bill seeks to sideline the role of the judiciary in providing independent interpretation of Te Tiriti and aims to constrain judges in ways that are quite improper in our system of government. The bill seeks to use domestic law to constrain interpretation of an international treaty, and this is not only improper but will lead to expensive and uncertain litigation of the conflicts between the domestic law of this bill and the international law of Te Tiriti.
The Council calls on the select committee to reject the Treaty Principles Bill.
