The Treaty Principles Bill is expected to fall at its second reading in Parliament today. I confess to having struggled with how to respond to the Bill. There were aspects of it which I very much appreciated. In particular that it invited open public debate on how to interpret the Treaty – something which until now had been a closed narrative, tightly controlled by the liberal establishment in our country. Now ordinary New Zealanders were going to get their opportunity to have a say.
I also appreciated the fact that the Bill was an attempt to reconnect modern understanding of the Treaty with its historic roots. The dual-sovereignty paradigm of Treaty interpretation of recent decades has strayed far from those roots. It is a paradigm based primarily on assertions, loudly repeated in the echo chamber of modern “scholarship”, and bears little relation to what the actual historical evidence clearly shows. The Bill attempted to rectify that.
However, whilst the proposed principles of the Bill were a fair reflection of how all parties understood “Kāwanatanga katoa” in 1840 (i.e. Crown sovereignty over all New Zealanders), the Bill was less successful in capturing the historical essence of Article Two of the Treaty. “Tino rangatiratanga” dealt with chiefly authority (within the context of overarching Crown sovereignty). This was a collective right, but the Bill’s attempt to couch it in language framed in terms of individual rights missed the mark. As such I had to conclude it needed significant amendment on this front before I could support it.
You can read my full submission here Treaty Principles Bill – Submission Ewen McQueen
Ewen McQueen
April 2025
RenewNZ 
I agree about article 2 of the Bill but I still thought it worth supporting because to wait for perfection would mean waiting for ever. Moreover, I suggest that article 2 was altered so that National and NZF would at least support the Bill going through to the first reading and without that endorsement it would never have even seen the light of day. By any measure it has been a huge success I would suggest.
The place to put the pressure even now is with those two parties – especially NZF whose lack of support is especially reprehensible. Tell your local National or NZF MP just what you think of them and what you intend to do about it – and while you are at it tell David Seymour how well he has done!!! Do it!!
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Hi Roger
Yes you are correct that the Principle 2 of the Bill was amended and a significant improvement on the previous indications of what it might be in the Act policy paper. However it still fell short of being historically accurate and I think would have meant ongoing issues.
But I understand why people might still have supported the Bill. It took me a while to come to a conclusion about it given the many positives it included. If you read my full submission linked at the bottom of the blog post (only 3 pages) you will perhaps better understand where I am coming from. And the conclusion also suggests a possible way forward which Act (and I think National) are already progressing to some degree.
Thanks for your feedback.
Ewen
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