Māori Action Day won’t be the last

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Parliament reopened yesterday with calls to honour te Tiriti reverberating from a short but effective “National Māori Action Day”, led by Te Pāti Māori and iwi to challenge the new Government over its policies on the Treaty, co-governance and a host of other policies affecting Māori.

It was a taste of what will be ongoing protests. One question will be whether this mostly involves Te Pāti Māori activating its supporters, which was how new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon framed yesterday’s protests, or becomes a much wider movement against “anti-Māori sentiment” and back-pedalling on progress of the past 40 years. The latter seems likely, with many in Māoridom along with Labour and the Green Party raising the same concerns, if not in quite the same language as Te Pāti Māori.

Another key question hangs over where the Act Party’s Treaty Principles Bill leads. It wants Parliament to define the principles then put this to a referendum — which is highly unlikely to happen, as no other party in Parliament thinks that’s a good idea. What the parliamentary process will open the door to is a lot of discussion about Māori sovereignty — which is certainly not what Act intends.

It was impressive that Te Pāti Māori was able to coordinate protests around the North Island yesterday at short notice and with minimal fuss. Party secretary Lance Norman said the protest plans came from iwi leaders and Māori service providers meeting soon after the formation of the new Government, and yesterday’s action was planned on Sunday evening.

People gathered at about 7am in numerous cities and at high traffic locations, mostly in convoys of vehicles. There was traffic disruption but the protests were peaceful and it was all over by 8.30am. About 1000 protestors gathered on Parliament grounds, led on by Te Pāti Māori’s Rawiri Waititi who briefly addressed the crowd before handing over to co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

Luxon said he thought the action was “pretty unfair” considering the Government had only been in power for a week,  and that they intended to work for Māori and non-Māori alike.

“ . . . we are determined that Māori are going to do better under our Government than they have in the last six years,” he said.

Māori Crown Relations Minister Tama Potaka acknowledged genuine concerns and said “we’re investigating opportunities to deliver on the concerns and the problems that people raised today and previously and we’ll continue to do that”.

“We’re focused on solutions and outcomes and a lot of that will involve engaging with and devolving, decentralising resource and making sure we don’t get carried away with bureaucratic costs,” Potaka said.