Waitangi Day forces a question New Zealand can’t avoid forever: Will we be one country with equal rights, or a country divided into political classes based on ancestry?

You know ACT’s position. And you also know something else: no other party has the consistency, or the courage, to stand up for equal rights when it matters most.

Yesterday morning I returned to the Treaty Grounds to share ACT’s vision for New Zealand – and to make clear that our campaign for equal rights is far from over. My full speech is at the bottom.

I spoke unapologetically in defence of liberal democracy, the rule of law, and equal rights – the values that, despite its challenges, make New Zealand a far better place to live than most countries on earth. Aside from the usual heckling and horn-blowing from those who prefer noise over debate, I got a strong sense that many people were there to listen. I suspect some were pleasantly surprised.

But as the journey toward ACT’s vision of a free and equal New Zealand continues, our opponents will get louder again. 

That’s why it’s so important we have the ability to get our message out unfiltered and undistorted by those who seek to paint ACT as something it’s not.

You saw this play out with the Treaty Principles Bill. First, they tried to stop the Bill from even being debated. Then they tried to shut the conversation down with fear and misinformation. And when that wasn’t enough, they tried intimidation – from disrupting speeches at Waitangi to abusing the haka in Parliament.

In an election year, this will ramp up to keep our national identity off the agenda. 

They use these tactics for one reason: because they can’t argue with the fundamental logic of equal rights.We may have lost the vote on the Treaty Principles, but we didn’t lose the argument.

The Treaty Principles Bill is not dead, its principles are alive and flourishing, whether people see it or not. One day the bill, in some form, will rise again and be the law of the land, because equal rights are the only kind that make any sense.

Too many countries have learned the hard way what happens when you go down the path Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori are pushing. Once you divide people by ancestry and turn politics into a zero-sum battle between groups, it’s a long, hard slog back to a free, united society.

You know only ACT has what it takes.We work constructively with our coalition partners, and we’re proud of what we’ve achieved together – but without ACT pushing, the waka would move slower and drift away from the values that underpin every successful, cohesive society.

Just some of ACT has achieved for equal rights with just 11 MPs:

• Co-governed Three Waters is gone

• The Māori Health Authority is gone

• Public services are being delivered on need, not race

• School boards no longer have a duty to “uphold the Treaty”

• Charter schools are expanding choice for all New Zealanders, including MāoriOranga Tamariki now puts the safety of children first, not their ethnicity

• Resource Management reform is cutting red tape without embedding race-based division into every decision

This is exactly why Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori are desperate to get ACT out of Government.

Because if ACT is weaker after November, the path back to race-based politics is wide open.But if ACT is stronger, we can finish the job.The alternative is worse than last time

If you thought co-governance, race-based healthcare, and grievance-based education were bad under Jacinda Ardern, imagine what New Zealand looks like under a Government where Labour is forced to rely on the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to stay in power.

Labour has made ACT the target

On Tuesday, Labour sent a fundraising email to their supporters. It wasn’t about the cost of living, crime, education or health.It was about me.

That tells you the truth Labour doesn’t want to admit:ACT is the obstacle in their way.They want to drown us out, because they know another term with ACT in Government will go further in stamping out the corrosive ideas that erode our national identity.

Address at Waitangi Pōwhiri: 5 February, 2026
David Seymour, Deputy Prime Minister

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira mā. Tenā, koutou katoa.

I’m proud to be here, celebrating the 186th anniversary of the Treaty being signed on these grounds. I show up because I care about this country, and about liberal democracy. That is the idea that each person has an equal right over political decision making in this country.

Someone has to deliver that message because the comfort we enjoy in our lives is thanks to the liberal democratic order. I’m always amazed by the myopic drone that colonisation was all bad. The truth is that very few things are completely good or completely bad.

Let’s acknowledge the simple truth that this society is one of the mode successful in history. Without acknowledging these basic facts, it is difficult to make progress.

This morning, I was in the dining hall of the Copthorne Waitangi. I was surrounded by all the good and the great, mostly the people sitting over there. Someone said to me, ‘this is like Māori Davos’. The queue stretched around the corner and you couldn’t get a flat white for any money. I thought, and here’s me, a poor boy from Whangarei.

Last year my message was a challenge to the elites, to the outspoken opponents of this Government and its policies: How do we actually go together, and what is actually needed by the people most at need in this country? And it was a call for a liberal democratic framework where all have the same rights and duties.

Now, for some reason my political radar did not pick up universal embrace of this message, but popularity does not make a message true. Nor does unpopularity make one untrue.

The truth is our Government has just got on with fixing what matters for all Kiwis, and that is good for Māori, too. Let me count just a few ways we’re changing policy to make life better.

Crime is down across the board. It always astonishes me when people believe being tough on crime is anti-Māori. Tell that to the Māori who are disproportionately victims. I’m proud that we live in a society with fewer victims than two years ago, no matter who they are.

The most vulnerable victims are children. I couldn’t be prouder to stand with our Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, a true New Zealand hero. She is the first Minister to actually visit all 58 Oranga Tamariki facilities. Crime in those facilities is going down and this week she signed a landmark partnership to cooperate with Ngāpuhi. That is fixing what actually matters for all children, but helping Māori the most.

In education, we’re getting school attendance up every term, because it may be hard to learn at school, but it’s impossible if you’re truant. Up and down New Zealand, children are discovering education can be more attractive to attend, if communities do education their way. Communities are starting charter schools for children with autism, teaching French, classical education, Pasifika schools, and many Māori schools including the wildly successful Te Rito up north in Kaitaia. That is tino rangatiratanga for all, as it should be.

The Resource Management Act is being replaced so it is easier to build. It’s not just about building houses, even though they are very important. It’s also about the roads, the pumping stations, and the treatment plants that connect those houses to jobs. It’s also about making mining and aquaculture possible so those jobs are high paying. Here is the question if you really care about Māori: Is it more important to have a warm dry home and a high paying job, or does your mana depend on the ability of some distant relative to object to progress?

In healthcare, we are funding more medicines than ever, and getting them approved faster. We’re getting vaccination rates up, so third world diseases don’t reappear on our shores. On every health target we’re making progress. We’re benefiting Māori with a focus on efficiency for all people, shedding the inefficient bureaucracy that divided people into identities they never chose.

I could give more examples, but I trust you get the picture. I’m proud to be part of a government that is driving efficiency, from a set of values that say all New Zealanders have equal rights. We each have the right to one five millionth of the opportunity this great country has to offer. That ratio doesn’t change if your ancestors were the first settlers, or the last. Our common humanity is greater than the superficial differences some try to amplify for their own purposes.

It should also be noted that a system of equal rights can include equal rights to live on your own terms. And our Party’s values that each person should be able to choose how they live is more in keeping with tino rangatiratanga, real self-determination for people. We see it in charter schools today. We see it in Karen’s approach to Oranga Tamariki.

And what to make of the Treaty Principles Bill? I can tell you that voting down the Bill was a pyrrhic victory. Many significant Bills in our history were defeated several times before they became the way things always were.

The principles themselves remain strong and popular. You cannot defeat an idea by taking away my microphone. You can only surpass an idea by putting forward a better one. There is no better system than liberal democracy, with equal rights and opportunity for all. Those principles are not only the principles our government operates by, but the ones that will one day define the Treaty in modern law.

No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa.