Te Tiriti should 'shape how we are governed'

It’s all in the framing.

When the results of the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll hit the news headlines recently, the emphasis was on how many of those polled thought te Tiriti had too much influence over government – that figure was 38 percent. But almost as many – 34 percent – thought the influence of the Treaty was about right.

Add to those the 16.6 percent who thought the Treaty should have more influence and we have 50.7 percent of New Zealanders who are very positive about the political importance of te Tiriti.

That’s an interesting statistic. More than half of New Zealanders agree that te Tiriti o Waitangi has an important – and positive – role to play in our national political life.

Te Tiriti is not just an historical artefact sitting in the National Archives. Nor is it just an agreement for iwi to turn to in their discussions with the Crown over redress for past and present injustices, although it is that and that is incredibly important.

Te Tiriti is not just about Māori and the Crown. It is about all of us. And those poll results indicate that more than half of New Zealanders understand that.

Years ago in the 1980s, I remember Professor Emeritus Ranginui Walker referring to te Tiriti as the nation’s first immigration agreement. In signing the Treaty, rangatira generously and bravely agreed to formally and legally allow foreigners to come to live among them. In 2003, Dame Tariana Turia talked about the rangatira ‘open[ing] their hearts and homes to strangers’ and ‘taking a tremendous leap of faith’ in doing so.

Before I get to the politics of these statements, I just want to sit for a minute with the generosity and the hope they point to.

Signing te Tiriti was a gutsy and hopeful decision, based on an orientation to human life that understands that strength lies in relationships with others – including those different from yourself, those outside your immediate family and community. An understanding that we and our neighbours can flourish together. A deeply central component of te ao Māori is this orientation to others and interest in engaging with them.

In these dark times, when so many people across the world are turning inwards towards their own and against those unlike themselves, this is an incredibly precious way of being in the world – to hold onto and to emulate.

Of course, both Walker and Turia were invoking the Treaty in relation to the politics of the times. Walker’s statement was in critique of the changes made to immigration policy in the 1980s, the abandonment of a Eurocentric policy and adoption of the points system that opened up migration to Aotearoa to people from across the world. At heart, his point was that Māori – as Treaty partners – should be involved in political decision-making on such issues. Māori, collectively – not just as individual voters – should have a role in government.

Turia’s statement was made in a speech in December 2003 as Don Brash, leading the National Party, was stirring up anxiety that Māori were going to stop non-Māori from going to the beach that summer. This was his response to legal action taken by Ngāti Apa to explore their customary rights to the foreshore and seabed in the Marlborough Sounds.

Sadly, as 2004 unfolded, New Zealanders got in behind Brash’s tribalistic, anti-Māori stance, rather than Turia’s call to us to ‘make a leap of faith’ and be prepared to embrace the possibility that iwi still held mana whenua over the foreshore and seabed. The National Party got a huge bump in the polls (the polls again!), and Prime Minister, Helen Clark, responded by passing the Foreshore and Seabed Act to stop Ngāti Apa’s legal action in its tracks and legislate that the Crown owned/had sovereignty over the land below the high-tide mark.

These latest poll results show that we are still divided. While over half of us are positive about the political role of te Tiriti, a little over a third are not. Or to put it another way, over half of us favour a politics that is inclusionary, that makes space for diverse voices, that seeks to build alliances and agreements across differences. A little over a third of us favour a politics of division and exclusion and want to close the political tent against the voices that they don’t like.

Te Tiriti is our guide to politics based on alliances with others. and a reminder that resilience and flourishing lie down that path. In 2026 it seems that more than half of us now see that te Tiriti o Waitangi has a legitimate and important place in our political life. We have moved on from 2003. I take heart from that.