The Treaty: Improving the lives of New Zealanders is my greatest priority - Christopher Luxon

OPINION

This Waitangi Day, my first as Prime Minister, is an opportunity to reiterate my determination to see Māori and non-Māori flourish, genuinely making New Zealand a land of opportunity for all.

Crown and iwi – the signatories to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi - will always spend time on constitutional and legislative discussions.

However, I believe there should be much greater priority given to how more New Zealanders who work hard can have the opportunity to improve their lives and incomes, and their families’ prospects.

The Government knows many Māori are doing it tough – many Kiwis are doing it tough. Work is needed to improve economic, crime, welfare, health, education, and housing outcomes.

Let’s look at education. We are a first-world country, yet almost 55 per cent of kids, and nearly 67 per cent of Māori children, are not attending school regularly. If a child misses one school day a fortnight, by the time they are 15 they will have missed the equivalent of a school year. They will be less likely to secure the higher-paying jobs they and New Zealand desperately need to have a better quality of life. School absenteeism is a pending social and economic disaster. Yet, there is no sense of national indignation or urgency about it.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters lead the government delegation on to the marae at Rātana Pā. Photo / Mark Mitchell

New Zealanders have rights and responsibilities. Kiwis have a right to a free education, but as parents or caregivers, we have a moral and legal responsibility to get our kids to school every day, of every week of every year until they finish high school with something to show for it, and with exciting possibilities in front of them.

Yes, the Government has lots to do to improve education, and we will back the Kaupapa Māori education system, reintroduce partnership schools, invest in structured literacy, teach the basics well, ban cellphones and set targets for attendance and achievement so kids can have the futures they deserve.

But the Government alone can’t fix entrenched social problems. To face up to complex challenges, we all have to take responsibility and work together. Society is at its strongest when it does that. Businesses, iwi, community groups and the Government, working together with whānau, families and individuals, can achieve so much more than the Government can by itself.

While improving outcomes are my priority, Waitangi Day is an opportunity to reflect on our nation’s past and future. It was 184 years ago today, and seven decades after Captain Cook sailed south from Tahiti, that the Crown and Māori came together to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.

National leader Christopher Luxon, Act leader David Seymour, and NZ First leader Winston Peters after signing their coalition agreement.

We know that they likely had different understandings of what they were doing. And we know that in the years that followed, the promise and the obligations of the Treaty were not upheld by the Crown. But on the 6th of February 1840, Governor Hobson and the chiefs assembled at Waitangi, people just like us, were trying to navigate towards a united, stable, peaceful and prosperous future believing “he iwi tahi tātou: together, we are one nation”.

Part of the story of modern New Zealand has been our struggle to understand the intentions of those who signed it, and decide how we should act as a result. That work continues today and into our future.

Every nation’s past is imperfect. But the Treaty settlement process is something of which all New Zealanders can be immensely proud. It has required a generosity of spirit from both iwi and the Crown to restore mana. No other country has attempted to right its historical wrongs or dared to undertake an ambitious national reconciliation project as we have. For all the pain that process has sometimes entailed, we are a better, more open-minded and, I think, more tolerant country because of it.

The Treaty has shaped the country we are and the obligations it imposes on both sides will always be with us. But we must aspire to go forward not as two sides, but as one country. There is more that unites us than divides us.

Unity doesn’t mean all of us being or thinking the same. We can value our differences and debate them constructively while respecting each other, and still find a pathway to a better future. New Zealanders have always demonstrated the courage to identify, name and wrestle with our differences and challenges. We will, and we must, keep doing that. The arc of history and progress is not linear.

New Zealand is bursting with potential. To realise it, the Government calls on the responsibility of every New Zealander to play their part. Together we will create the country we deserve.

Christopher Luxon is Prime Minister of New Zealand and leader of the National Party.