The Luxon Government is busy waging a war on nature by removing hard-won protections for the natural world and fast-tracking destructive projects such as seabed mining and dairy dams. At the same time, they’re launching a blatant attack on indigenous rights with the ‘Treaty Principles Bill’.
The Act Party’s controversial and damaging Treaty Principles Bill has been brought forward and was introduced to Parliament yesterday.
This divisive Bill is an attempt to nullify Te Tiriti o Waitangi. As the Waitangi Tribunal stated this week:
“We found that if this Bill were to be enacted, it would be the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty/te Tiriti in modern times. If the Bill remained on the statute book for a considerable time or was never repealed, it could mean the end of the Treaty/te Tiriti.”
We’ve seen previous attempts to nullify Te Tiriti. In 1877 Chief Justice Prendergast declared Te Tiriti a ‘nullity’ because it had been signed with a ‘group of savages’ who were not capable of signing a treaty. Nearly one hundred and fifty years since this racist legal judgement, we must not let our nation be dragged back to once again making Te Tiriti a nullity.
Te Tiriti is one of this country’s founding documents and is vital for everyone who calls Aotearoa New Zealand home.
As a nation, Te Tiriti has provided a framework to make slow, difficult progress in addressing the painful truth of the history of colonisation and its present-day impacts. In a disgusting concession to the hard right funders of the Act Party, Luxon threatens to undo decades of courageous work by Māori and Pakeha. The Bill will cause untold conflict if it progresses and set back our journey of reconciliation by decades.
I think we all have a responsibility to defend Te Tiriti.
Greenpeace and Toitū Te Tiriti
Protecting Te Tiriti is also entwined with the Greenpeace mission to protect nature and peace.
Greenpeace Aotearoa is proud to have stood alongside iwi and hapū in the struggle to defeat deep sea oil drilling, stop seabed mining, and so many other environmental campaigns. We couldn’t have won without these partnerships. Let me say that again – we could not have won without those partnerships with iwi and hapū.
Furthermore, the text and principles of Te Tiriti have been critical in our legal actions to protect the natural world, such as the Supreme Court win against seabed mining.
Thus we defend te Tiriti not only because it is the right thing to do to honour the treaty with the indigenous people of this land; not only because we seek a path of reconciliation and justice for our children and their children; but also because it is critical to protecting the natural world from those who seek to destroy it for profit.
The forces pushing against indigenous self-determination and the right to protect the natural world as taonga are the same forces that have no regard for the importance of the natural world.
That’s why we’ll be attending and supporting the nationwide hīkoi next week to protest David Seymour’s Bill.
Toitu te Tiriti – Toitu te Taiao
Our message is Toitu te Tiriti – Toitu te Taiao. Stand up for the treaty, stand up for nature.
We’ll be there in Tāmaki / Auckland to walk from Onepoto Domain on the North Shore across the Harbour Bridge, and we are encouraging our members all over Aotearoa to join the hīkoi where they can.
I encourage you to join too. Look out for the Greenpeace flags if you want to walk with us
Prime Minister Luxon will be watching the public response to decide how he will respond to the ACT Party’s racist bill. Now is not the time to watch from the sidelines, now is the time to be part of history.
See you there!
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