Taranaki Cathedral's Submission on the Treaty Principles Bill
Below is Taranaki Cathedral’s submission on the Treaty Principles Bill. To download a PDF version click here.
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To The Justice Select Committee
Tēnā koutou kātoa.
1. On behalf of Taranaki Cathedral, The Very Reverend Jay Ruka and Reverend Canon Daniel Lander submit our opposition to the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, commonly known as the Treaty Principles Bill (TPB). We ask that you reject it in its entirety. It is a tragedy that the Crown institution, as one signatory to Te Tiriti O Waitangi, would attempt to rewrite the meaning of our sacred contract without honestly and openly discussing potential amendments with Iwi Māori first, the other signatory. This poses a blatant act of dishonest politics and even breaks the Commerce Commission’s basic contract rules.[1]
2. It is grievous that democracy is being dangled before the public and exploited as a tool of betrayal, reminiscent of the injustices found in the 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act. At the time, that act deliberately excluded the Māori majority from governance by stipulating that a key requirement for voting was the possession of a Crown-issued land title, which most Māori did not have. It was a democratic process designed to restrict Māori access to political decision-making power. Today, despite the many Crown-issued Treaty Settlement apologies, will democracy again be deployed as a weaponised tactic against Māori? The Treaty Principles Bill undermines democracy by giving a majority who do not speak the language decision-making authority over the meaning of te reo Māori words. This change places Te Tiriti O Waitangi in the hands of those who lack a deep understanding of its historical context and the language in which it is written.[2] Therefore, true democracy is not only about majority rule but about common integrity, consistent logic and being true to our words and agreements.
3. For these reasons, we implore the Justice Select Committee to reject this Bill and prevent any possibility of a citizens-initiated referendum until the Crown can propose Treaty Principles that are developed in partnership with Māori. Only then could a democratic referendum be considered just.
4. As an Anglican Church, Te Tiriti O Waitangi is an embedded part of our story that we feel compelled to remind you of. In the mid-1700s, an unorthodox preacher named John Wesley, barred from preaching in his church, went outside the walls and preached in the fields and marketplaces. Through him a movement swept England for decades, creating a powerful moral influence that reshaped society. One historian writes of the overflow of Wesley’s influence:
First was the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the industrial workers in England. Then came factory schools…the humanizing of the prison system, the reform of the penal code…the London City Mission…the forming of evening classes and polytechnics…the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, the Royal Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the list goes on.[3]
5. On John Wesley’s deathbed in 1791, one week before he passed, he wrote a letter to a young politician named William Wilberforce and implored him: “Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”[4] Wesley inspired Wilberforce, the man credited with ending trans-Atlantic slavery.
6. Wilberforce helped establish the Anglican-based Church Missionary Society (CMS). He was initially invited to serve as the first president but declined. He later wrote to Samuel Marsden, encouraging him to join the CMS, which Marsden accepted.
7. Upon arriving in Sydney, Marsden frequently met adventuring Māori and befriended Ruatara, a Ngāpuhi rangatira. Ruatara recognized the value of Marsden's message and invited him to share the story of Jesus Christ with his people. Marsden preached the first sermon in Aotearoa on Christmas Day 1814.
8. In 1819, Henry Williams was inspired to join the CMS. In 1823 Samuel Marsden appointed Henry as the leader of the CMS in New Zealand. Eventually, Williams was given the task of translating a draft of the treaty into Te Tiriti O Waitangi and then back into English, gifting us our two versions.
9. It is important to note that the script given to Henry was based on the instructions written by Sir James Stephens, the permanent Undersecretary of the Colonial Office. Sir James was the nephew of William Wilberforce and was deeply influenced by the Christian humanitarian zeal of his father, uncle, and their peers. It was this humanitarian passion for justice that led to the 1837 Aborigines Report, which radically criticised the atrocities of British imperial colonisation over Indigenous peoples. The immediate result of this report provided a moral gravitas to deter the British government from partnering with the fledgling New Zealand Company, which sought to colonise our land.
10. This history had an accumulative effect on what became Te Tiriti O Waitangi. There is a whakapapa, from the work of Wesley to Wilberforce, to Marsden, Williams and Stephens, that clearly and magnanimously outlines a moral imperative in the intent and aspirations of Te Tiriti O Waitangi. Instead of the British Crown exercising a colonial and distant form of 'sovereignty' through British companies as was done with the East India Company, Hudson's Bay Company, and South Australia Company, the company/governance approach would be refused in New Zealand. Instead, a direct relationship would be established with the Rangatira of the land. This is the moral force of the Christian message at its best, shaping the morality at the heart of our Treaty. After 184 years, how can nine pieces of paper and over 540 signatures continue to command so much attention? It’s because, in our Treaty, a moral imperative demands the full manifestation of two nations through a governmental agreement that creates a home for all on this whenua. As a church, this is personal because it is our institutional history and work. We acknowledge that the Church is liable for a myriad of terrible mistakes, so it is with humility that we urge our nation to pay sincere attention to the historical and moral underpinnings of Te Tiriti O Waitangi. It is a document ethically relevant to our people and the future of our land.
11. The humanitarian ground made in the first four decades of nineteenth-century England had a clear and direct manifestation in the aspirations of Te Tiriti. However, from 1840, there was a swift change of heart in English political beliefs towards indigenous peoples. Politician and political theorist John Stuart Mill authored an essay in 1836 where he implored that ‘barbarians’ had no capacity to co-operate with civilised societies.[5] “Mill helped shape the growing support for British imperialism from the 1840s.”[6]
12. Whether humanitarian or racial imperialism, the point is that political decisions are the outcomes of political beliefs. Beliefs like Edmund Burke’s (1783): “…we must govern…upon their own principles and maxims and not upon ours”[7], or that of Thomas Carlyle (1849), who argues against the emancipation of slaves with racist rhetoric declaring. “Negro and White are unrelated!”[8] The facts are that one of these ‘beliefs’ is uplifting, honouring and considerate towards the best of another, while the other belief is domineering, conquering and a usurper of another’s wellbeing and rights.
13. As church leaders, we are acutely mindful of the beautiful and diabolical consequences of belief. The Treaty Principles Bill is a reformulation of John Stuart Mill’s 1840s liberalism, a belief in the supremacy and autonomy of the individual.[9] The Act Party and the TPB chief promotor, David Seymour, are the continuation of liberalism’s political beliefs. Their website states, “We believe it is inherent in the nature of human beings as individuals that they are the owners of their own lives”.[10] In 1840, this way of thinking did not exist in the indigenous world. Therefore, how could Te Tiriti O Waitangi possibly come close to meaning the same as the libertarian regurgitation in the Treaty Principles Bill? If political liberalism was the belief force that gave supremacy to the British individual, and by default, the superiority of the British government, if this is the belief that overthrew the humanitarian intent in our Te Tiriti–and absolutely decimated Māori–how could any support for this Bill produce an outcome outside a wilful, intentional and foreseeable tragedy of justice? There is no way that support for this Bill, nor how it has been presented to the nation, has any moral integrity. It simply does not. The Treaty Principles Bill does not flow out of the humanitarian hope that caused our Treaty but instead flows in the stream of British civilised superiority with the intent to force Māori into that paradigm.
14. This way of thinking is highlighted in one of your organisational forebears, Justice Minister Henry Sewell. Amidst the despicable politics of land confiscation in the 1860s he said the purpose of such acts was:
‘...to bring the great bulk of the lands in the Northern Island … within the reach of colonisation’ and ‘the detribalisation of the Māori–to destroy, if it were possible, the principle of communism upon which their social system is based and which stands as a barrier in the way of all attempts to amalgamate the Māori race into our social and political system.’[11
15. History proves how awful and wrong the democratically elected Minister Sewell was. History will hold the current Treaty Principles Bill in the same light. Therefore, we implore you to stand in the stream of humanitarian and civil-rights leaders the globe over, honour Te Tiriti, and reject the Treaty Principles Bill.
16. In closing, we categorically refute any claim that Tino Rangatiratanga and Kāwanatanga are incompatible concepts and mutually exclusive modes of operation. While some might say they are, that was and never should be how Te Tiriti is to be interpreted. By taking our organisational whakapapa seriously, as highlighted in this lengthy submission, we believe the success of Aotearoa New Zealand is to map out an indigenous and western future together, as hoped for in the motivators behind Te Tiriti. At Taranaki Cathedral, we believe there are both divine and human aspects of Te Kāhui Maunga[12] as the first peoples of Taranaki, granting natural decision-making authority over geographical area. Therefore, because of Te Tiriti (which over 70 of our tūpuna signed), we hold that Te Kāhui Maunga have agreed to do that with the Crown. The rest of this century is about our country maturing to make this Te Tiriti a reality. The Treaty Principles Bill drags the country into disinheritance and a debilitating state of immaturity. It is visionless for a collective and prosperous future. As Rev. Ruka closes his book, Huia Come Home, he writes, “We are a multicultural nation nestled in the grace of our bicultural partnership.” This is the vision of our land. This is the vision of Te Tiriti.
Thank you for considering our submission.
Meri Kirihimete,
The Very Reverend Jay Ruka (Te Ātiawa) Reverend Canon Daniel Lander (Ngāti Pākehā)
Manuhautū/Dean of Taranaki Cathedral Precentor of Taranaki Cathedral
[1] Unfair Contract Terms Guidelines, see note 101, p24: https://comcom.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/290190/Unfair-contract-terms-guidelines-August-2022.pdf
[2] Learning our national history was only made compulsory in 2023.
[3] Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 272.
[4] https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=engaginggovernmentpapers
[6] Ned Fletcher, The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books Limited, 2022),47. You can include here the belief of “social Darwinism and racial superiority” (p49) espoused in the writings of Darwin, James Mill, and Thomas Carlyle that Fletcher writes about.
[7] Ibid, 36.
[8] Ibid 47.
[9] https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism/Rights
[10] https://www.act.org.nz/principles
[11] http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/te-ture-maori-and-legislation/page-3
[12] The Iwi around Taranaki Maunga.