A New Zealand bill that would roll back Indigenous rights is unlikely to pass – but it’s emblematic of a growing climate of hostility from governing politicians. According to a recent survey, almost half of New Zealanders believe racial tensions have worsened under the right-wing government that came to power in December 2023.

The Treaty Principles Bill reinterprets the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. New Zealand’s founding text, this agreement between the British government and Indigenous Māori chiefs established British governorship over the islands in return for recognition of Māori ownership of land and other property.

The treaty was controversial from the start: the English and Māori versions differ in crucial clauses on sovereignty. In the decades following its signing, Māori people lost much of their land, suffering the same marginalisation as Indigenous people in other places settled by Europeans. As a result, Māori people – around 20 per cent of the population – live with higher levels of poverty, unemployment and crime, and lower education and health standards, than the rest of the population.

From the 1950s, Māori people began to organise and demand their rights under the treaty. This led to the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act, which defined a set of principles derived from the treaty and established the Waitangi Tribunal to determine breaches of the principles and recommend remedies. Since then, the tribunal has made many decisions that have resulted in compensation payments and the return of land.

But in recent years, right-wing politicians have criticised the tribunal, claiming it’s overstepping its mandate and interfering in government affairs – most recently because it held a hearing that concluded the bill breaches treaty principles.

Change in direction

The Treaty Principles Bill resulted from a coalition agreement forged after the 2023 election, which was held in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and brought a change of government. The centre-left Labour party, which won a rare outright majority just three years earlier, lost power. The centre-right National party came first, eventually forming a coalition with two parties to its right: the free-market and libertarian Act party and the nationalist and populist NZ First party. Act demanded the bill as a condition of joining the coalition.

This wasn’t the only story of the 2023 election. Labour also lost seats to its left, with the progressive Greens and Te Pāti Māori, which advocates for Indigenous rights, also making gains. But these aren’t the voices currently being heard.

The election was unusually toxic by New Zealand standards. In a polarised campaign, candidates were subjected to racial abuse and physical violence. A group of Māori leaders complained about unusually high levels of racism. Both Act and NZ First targeted Māori rights, promising to reverse Labour’s progressive policies. These included experiments in ‘co-governance’: collaborative decision-making between government and Māori representatives, for example in environmental management. Act and NZ First characterised these arrangements as conferring racial privilege on Māori people, at odds with universal human rights.

NZ First leader Winston Peters – who’s long positioned himself as an anti-establishment maverick, opposing what he characterises as special treatment for Māori people despite being Māori himself – pledged to remove Māori-language names from government buildings and withdraw New Zealand’s support for the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He’s compared co-governance to apartheid and Nazi racial theory. His reward was being appointed New Zealand’s deputy prime minister for the third time.

The polarised election and subsequent shift in discourse show that New Zealand, though far from Europe and North America, isn’t immune from the same right-wing populist politics that seek to blame a visible minority for all a country’s problems. In the northern hemisphere the main targets are migrants and religious minorities; in New Zealand, it’s Indigenous people. The focus on attacking Māori rights offers a glue to hold together a three-party government that otherwise has significant differences, particularly on economic policy.

The bill would preclude any interpretation of the treaty as a partnership between the state and Māori people. It would impose a rigid understanding that all New Zealanders have the same rights and responsibilities, inhibiting measures to expand Māori rights. And without special attention, the economic, social and political exclusion of Māori people will only worsen.

Bonfire of policies

The problems go beyond the Treaty Principles Bill. The government has already introduced several regressive measures. In February, it abolished the Māori Health Authority, established in 2022 to tackle health inequalities. In July, a government directive ordered Pharmac, the agency that funds medicines, to stop taking treaty principles into account when making funding decisions; one director resigned in protest. This is part of a broader attack on the mainstreaming of treaty principles, which the government has pledged to remove from most legislation.

Government departments have been ordered to prioritise their English-language names and communicate primarily in English, unless they’re specifically focused on Māori people. The government has pledged to review the school curriculum – revised last year to place more emphasis on the role of Māori people – and university affirmative action programmes. It’s ceased work on He Puapua, its strategy to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The bonfire of policies goes on. Another bill proposes to reverse 2021 legislation that aimed to increase Māori representation in local government. The government also plans to introduce a law to overturn a court ruling on Māori claims to coastlines, which will lessen rights to be consulted on environmental issues.

The government has cut funding for most of its initiatives for Māori people. In all, over a dozen changes are planned, including in environmental management, health and housing.

The government seems intent on defining itself by seeing how many of the positive steps taken by its predecessor it can walk back. Although many of the policies it’s axing were only introduced in recent years, they came after decades of advocacy in the face of the failure of successive governments to act on Māori exclusion.

What’s bad for Māori people is also bad for the climate. The intimate role the environment plays in Māori culture often puts them on the frontline of combating climate change. This year a Māori activist won a ruling allowing him to take seven companies to court over their greenhouse gas emissions, based in part on their impact on places of customary, cultural and spiritual significance to Māori people. Young climate activists calling for climate action in April recognised the connections, calling for the treaty to be upheld.

But the new government has cut funding for many projects aimed at meeting New Zealand’s Paris Agreement commitments, despite the country’s recent experience of the devastating impacts of extreme weather events such as cyclones and floods, made worse and more likely by climate change.

The National party essentially traded away its climate promises to form a coalition, ending a broad consensus between the two main parties. The environment and climate ministers aren’t part of the cabinet. The government plans to double mineral exports and introduce a law to fast-track large development projects, without having to navigate environmental safeguards. The draft law contains no provisions to ensure compliance with treaty principles. Māori people can only be disproportionately affected by any weakening of environmental standards.

Out in numbers

This is all shaping up to be a huge setback for Māori rights that can only fuel and normalise racism – but civil society isn’t taking it quietly. The threat to rights has galvanised and united Māori campaigners.

Civil society groups are taking to the courts to try to halt the changes. And people are protesting in numbers. In December, when parliament met for the first time since the election, thousands gathered outside to condemn anti-Māori policies. People also protested in other towns and cities, including by blocking roads. At the swearing-in ceremony, Te Pāti Māori politicians broke with convention by dedicating their oaths to the Treaty of Waitangi and future generations before reluctantly pledging allegiance to the head of state, King Charles III, as required.

That same month, 12 people were arrested following a protest in which they defaced an exhibition on the treaty at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. Protesters accused the exhibition of lying about the treaty’s English version.

On 6 February, the national holiday of Waitangi Day, over a thousand people marched to the site where the treaty was agreed, calling for the bill to be rejected. At the official ceremony, people heckled Peters and Act leader Peter Seymour when they spoke.

Most recently, Māori people had a chance to show their discontent at a ceremony held in August to commemorate the coronation of Māori King Tūheitia Paki, who has since passed away. Although normally all major party leaders attend, Seymour wasn’t invited, and a Māori leader told Prime Minister Christopher Luxon that the government had ‘turned its back on Māori’. The Māori King also called a rare national meeting in January, and the turnout – 10,000 people –showed the extent of the concern.

Wasted potential

At the same time, the Māori population is growing quickly – it recently passed the million mark – and is consequently youthful. Compared to previous generations, today people are more likely to embrace their Māori identity, culture and language. Māori people are showing their resilience, and activism has never been stronger. But this growing momentum has hit a political roadblock that threatens to throttle its potential – all for the sake of short-term political gain.

New Zealand’s positive international reputation is on the line – but it doesn’t have to be this way. The government should start acting like a responsible partner under the Treaty of Waitangi. It must abide by the treaty principles, as developed and elaborated over time, do its job and stop scapegoating Māori people.

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