On 24 December 2024, the Auckland City Mission made an official submission to parliament expressing our opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill.

As an organisation, we are committed to recognising and honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and being a Te Tiriti partner. We believe the Treaty Principles Bill (‘the Bill’) undermines this founding document of our country and align ourselves with the submissions of Housing First and Kore Hiakai, as well as the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal’s Ngā Mātāpono report.

Read the Mission’s full submission below:

Submission made by Missioner – Manutaki, Helen Robinson on behalf of Auckland City Mission – Te Tāpui Atawhai

24 December 2024

Introduction to Auckland City Mission – Te Tāpui Atawhai

• Auckland City Mission – Te Tāpui Atawhai (‘The Mission’ / ‘Mission’) is a social services organisation based in Tāmaki Makaurau.
• Our vision is an Aotearoa where everyone can thrive. We focus on access to housing, food and healthcare for people experiencing poverty, while advocating for systemic change.
• The values guiding our work are: Manaakitanga, Rangapū, Manatika / Mana Oritē, Atawhai.
• For more than 104 years, we have supported people facing poverty and trauma.
• In the last year alone, we provided more than 50,000 boxes of food to families experiencing poverty and provided more than 20,000 medical consults to people otherwise unable to access the healthcare they need. We are landlords to more than 200 people experiencing homelessness and support hundreds more people sleeping rough or vulnerably housed.
• We stand at the forefront of witnessing the enduring impacts of colonisation on the people we serve. Over half of those seeking our support are Māori, disproportionately represented compared to the national population. Māori face intergenerational poverty and trauma stemming from the alienation of whenua, the loss of te reo Māori, and the erosion of sovereignty.
• Four years ago, we were gifted our ingoa Māori – Te Tāpui Atawhai. At that time, we acknowledged the harm we had caused Māori through colonial actions. From that point, we have fully committed to understanding and working towards honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the provision of services through a culturally safe, anti-racist, pro-equity framework.
• Te Tāpui Atawhai – Auckland City Mission’s Te Tiriti policy, acknowledges Te Tiriti as the founding document of Aotearoa NZ, and has developed a Te Tiriti strategy document to support our commitment and track our progress as Te Tiriti partners.

Background

• Te Tāpui Atawhai is committed to recognising and honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi. However, we believe the Treaty Principles Bill (‘the Bill’) undermines Te Tiriti as the foundational document of Aotearoa. We strongly oppose the Bill and align ourselves with the submissions of Housing First and Kore Hiakai, as well as the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal’s Ngā Mātāpono report.
• As an organisation, we are committed to recognising and honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and being a Te Tiriti partner. We believe the Treaty Principles Bill (‘Bill’) undermines this founding document of our country.
• At the Mission, we witness daily the harm caused by breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Our team works to create pathways that empower Māori, recognising this as central to healing intergenerational trauma. However, we believe the proposed Bill will exacerbate these harms by applying an interpretive lens of equality – one that assumes equal access to resources for all. This flawed approach will perpetuate inequities, leaving the Mission to support a disproportionately high number of Māori for generations to come. It assumes equal outcomes based on the (inaccurate notion of) that equal access. Our experience teaches us, that there is no such thing in Aotearoa/NZ as equal access, not equality of outcomes. As such an equity lens needs to be applied.
• We believe Te Tiriti o Waitangi provides a foundation for both equality and equity for everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand. If it had been upheld as intended since 1840, it would have addressed historical injustices and structural disparities—and it still holds the potential to do so today.
• The Bill redefines Te Tiriti o Waitangi, diminishing its original intent of establishing a relationship between hapū, iwi, and the Crown. Instead, it frames Te Tiriti as a document governing the relationship between all New Zealanders and the Crown, effectively erasing the unique status of tangata whenua.
• The Mission believes that all who reside in Aotearoa New Zealand have the right to live well and by the law in our country. This can be done without undermining the Articles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, through current practices and law. There is therefore no need for the Bill.
• The Mission acknowledges the generosity of tangata whenua in providing space for settlers through Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Te Tiriti was grounded in Māori offering a place for immigrants from the British Empire. In contrast, the proposed Bill disrespects and undermines this generosity by seeking to sever the Crown’s relationship with the unique status of iwi and hapū, effectively erasing their standing. This proposal represents yet another tool of colonisation, echoing historical mechanisms like the Native Land Court.
• The Bill is a form of colonial legalism, using the law to legitimise the erosion of Māori rights while portraying these actions as moral or lawful. This is reminiscent of mechanisms like the Native Land Court, which historically stripped Māori of whenua and sovereignty.
• The Bill is being promoted as an opportunity for all New Zealanders to engage in a robust discussion, which is already laden with connotation and bias, as:
  • it was devised without consultation, engagement of discussion with iwi and hapū. Tāngata Whenua and Tāngata Tiriti have spoken out against this proposed legislation.
  • as a country, we are not yet honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi as it was intended, therefore it is impossible to hold a well-considered national debate about the Bill. People are not well enough informed to understand the implications of the Bill, therefore the outcomes will not reflect the best possible path forward for our country.
• The referendum itself is a colonial construct designed to serve the majority—many of whom, as previously noted, may not be adequately informed. This approach risks imposing a Pākehā-centred interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, further sidelining its true intent and principles.
• The Bill perpetuates the false narrative that Māori receive special privileges. In reality, it would further entrench Pākehā dominance and diminish the voices of Māori, leading to greater harm for generations to come.
• The Bill would legitimise the many current actions to undermine Te Tiriti and cause further harm to Māori. A current example is the Government proposal to remove Treaty obligation clauses in 28 laws, including significant laws like the Conservation Act and Resource Management Act.
• As a founding partner of both Housing First and Kore Hiakai, the Mission supports those organisations’ Bill submissions in their entirety.

 

• In addition to supporting the Housing First submission in its entirety, we highlight the following three clauses as being particularly important:
  • Over the decades the Crown has invaded, confiscated, threatened, swindled, and legislated away Māori land, rights, culture, economy, and tino rangatiratanga. This has created systemic inequalities that are uniquely faced by Māori as tangata whenua.
  • They would also undermine the partnership between Māori and the Crown that has been carefully developed over the past 50 years to redress the breaches of Te Tiriti. A partnership that has – despite challenges over that time – relied on a significant amount of good faith from iwi and hapū who have accepted only a fraction of the compensation that they should have been entitled to in order to make such Te Tiriti settlements be politically acceptable to Pākehā.
  • Provisions in legislation, regulation, and policy that draw on the Crown’s obligations to Māori under Te Tiriti have been instrumental in starting to address the systemic disadvantage that exists for Māori across our society.

 

• In addition to supporting the Kore Hiakai submission in its entirety, we highlight the following comments as being particularly important:
  • The government has a role and responsibility to protect human rights of its people, as required by international laws and treaties to which New Zealand is a signatory. These rights include access to food, shelter, water, education and adequate healthcare. The financial resource, estimated to be in the millions, that has already been spent on allowing this bill to progress to select committee could have been more effectively spent addressing issues that compromise provision of these basic human rights – particularly in healthcare, housing and food security.
  • These proposed principles contradict and undo the tino rangatiratanga guaranteed to Māori by Article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The proposed principles speak of a strongly individualistic western worldview, which contrasts with the Te Ao Māori worldview encompassing tino rangatiratanga.
  • Reducing tino rangatiratanga by using a European worldview to interpret both its meaning and application strips whānau, hapū and iwi from this form of decision making. It would put Māori at risk losing access to mahinga kai, losing both knowledge of and access to places of food provision. Without that, food security in Aotearoa New Zealand is unachievable for all, for until all of us are food secure, none of us are food secure.

 

• We support the Waitangi Tribunal Ngā Mātāpono report which recommends the Bill be abandoned. It notes:
  • the Crown pursued the Bill without engagement or discussion with Māori, and that Māori did not want this policy with many strongly opposed to it from the beginning.
  • that the Bill risks undermining social cohesion, is unfair, discriminatory and inconsistent with the principles of partnership and reciprocity, active protection, good government, equity, redress and is contrary to article 2 guarantee of rangatiratanga.
  • the Bill would limit Māori rights and Crown obligations and undermine social cohesion.
  • the rights of all new Zealanders and equality before the law are protected by a combination of domestic statutes, the common law and international instruments.

 

• As noted by Roimata Smail, if the Treaty Principles Bill is passed and becomes law, it will mean that Ministries, government Departments, and the Courts will be forced to apply these three new principles and ignore breaches against Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
• As an organisation that is constantly supporting people negatively impacted by colonisation, we cannot stand by and let this Bill continue, particularly in the wider context of recent government actions impacting Māori. To do nothing would be to inflict further harm.

 

Recommendations

• We strongly oppose the Treaty Principles Bill and call on the Justice Select Committee to recommend its rejection at the second reading.
• We recommend retaining Te Tiriti o Waitangi while removing references to the Treaty of Waitangi. This approach would eliminate conflicting interpretations that arise when attempting to reconcile the two documents. By doing so, the need for the Principles, which form the basis of the Treaty Principles Bill, would be eliminated.
• Furthermore we recommend that Te Tiriti become more deeply entrenched and embedded into our legal system so that the two parties represented in Te Tiriti are recognised and honoured appropriately, for the betterment of everyone in our country.
• We advocate against the Bill’s attempt to subordinate tino rangatiratanga to Crown sovereignty by supporting the right of hapū and iwi to define and articulate their own rights and relationships with the Crown.