A week earlier, on the same marae, Christopher Luxon endured attacks on his Government, some fair but many not. Nevertheless, as leader of the country, he knew the Māori King’s death demanded his immediate return.
Luxon and Tūheitia are from very different worlds. Such dissimilar men could never be reasonably expected to completely put themselves in the other’s shoes. Getting closer is forever a work in progress.
Yet Luxon’s remarks and the emotion he expressed revealed he had put in at least as much effort to understand the Māori world as the greatest National Party Prime Ministers before him, and more so given how much the Crown-Māori relationship changed through his 16 years abroad.
Quoting the King’s own words from the previous week, he declared “we’ve come a long way as a country, and we can go even further”.
Luxon was accompanied by National’s founder of the Treaty settlement process, Sir Douglas Graham, who negotiated the landmark agreement with Waikato-Tainui; by Dame Jenny Shipley, who signed the major deal with Ngāi Tahu as Prime Minister; and by Sir Don McKinnon who served as Deputy Prime Minister to Jim Bolger, who provided the essential leadership of his party and country to begin rebuilding the honour of the Government, Parliament and Crown.
Bolger, now 89, was represented by his son, Matthew. Luxon carried personal messages not just from Bolger but from Sir John Key and Sir Bill English, who re-energised the Treaty settlement process with Christopher Finlayson KC and restored the Crown’s honour after Helen Clark nationalised the foreshore and seabed.
Key and English invited the first iteration of Te Pāti Māori (TPM) into their Government despite not needing their votes to take power. They argue TPM being a partner made theirs a better Government than it would otherwise have been.
Like the great economic reformers who put the books in order, defeated inflation and delivered record economic growth in the 1990s, National’s leaders were not always appreciated for their Treaty work. But their confessing the Crown’s wrongdoing over the previous 150 years and making amends renders them National’s greatest leaders and a source of pride for the party’s members and most loyal voters.
Labour could never make the progress on Crown-Māori relations that National delivered through 1990-99 and 2008-17.
At Tūrangawaewae Marae, Luxon made clear he is aligned with the Bolger-Shipley-Key-English wing of his party about how the Crown-Māori relationship should evolve and National’s historic role in making it happen. To join that pantheon, Luxon faces crucial decisions in coming weeks, as leader of both his party and country.
In coalition negotiations, the more politically experienced David Seymour drove a hard bargain. Insiders say being allowed to introduce its radical Treaty Principles Bill was positioned as a bottom line for Act to join the coalition rather than sit on the crossbenches. Sadly, National blinked.
National hoped that, except for wasting taxpayers’ money and Parliament’s time, the bill wouldn’t matter.
Were it actually passed, it would unravel nearly four decades of case law, which would need to be re-established, destabilising investment intentions, economic growth, social cohesion and our “unwritten” constitution. But the deal was it never would be.
After a year as Prime Minister, Luxon now knows the claimed compromise wasn’t in either New Zealand’s national interests or his party’s electoral interests.
Honouring coalition agreements is important but Prime Ministers have greater responsibilities to act prudently as leader of the country – and, as leader of their party, to avoid traps set by friends or foes, of which Act is both for National.
To progress, the Treaty Principles Bill must be signed off by Cabinet, which is chaired by Luxon and has a 14-6 National majority. National’s caucus must then agree to vote for it unanimously.
As Seymour knows, this means National could then never claim the bill carries major risks for New Zealand’s economic stability, race relations and constitution. National will have to own it being ticked off by Cabinet and reaching select committee.
Organisations supportive of Act will then generate tens of thousands of identical submissions to the committee to claim majority support, despite them not representing more than a small minority of all voters.
Helping Act’s political agenda, a small minority of left-wing radicals purporting to represent Māori will make submissions and take to the streets demanding some kind of Māori dictatorship.
Act will happily amplify those demands - and try to lump radicals together with the Māori mainstream, which will also protest publicly – while Act positions the bill as necessary to save liberal democracy.
February’s Waitangi celebrations will be more shambolic and divisive than ever before.
Polls that misrepresent the bill will be published indicating the overwhelming majority of National voters support it.
That won’t be true but it will be supported by an important minority of National voters who disagree with the Bolger-Shipley-Key-English inheritance. Then, after all that, sometime in 2025 – or even 2026 if Act slows things down enough – it will be Luxon, as Prime Minister and National Party leader, who publicly kills the bill.
With National polling about 36%, only a quarter of its voters would need to be enraged for another 9% of the vote to become available to Act. Seymour would have every reason to be confident of securing 20% at the election, especially if he can delay Luxon’s intervention long enough.
Act candidates would travel the country holding up copies of the defeated bill. “Act’s plan would have given every New Zealander equal rights and stopped Māori getting race-based privileges,” they would declare disingenuously, “but Christopher Luxon and National sided with iwis against Kiwis to stop it becoming law.”
For Luxon to join National’s and New Zealand’s pantheon of great Prime Ministers rather than irretrievably trash National’s Bolger-Shipley-Key-English legacy, he will assert himself as leader of the country and call time on Act’s Treaty circus now.
That is any Prime Minister’s prerogative, whatever any coalition agreement says. Act could threaten new elections, but all Luxon need do is not blink this time. In the unlikely event Seymour did pull the plug, Luxon would make clear it was Act risking Labour’s return – and endangering even its own important work to reduce the power and size of the state – to performatively defend a bill it knows full well will never become law.
As Prime Minister, Luxon has a responsibility to New Zealand and National to kill it now.
