A few weeks ago, Elliot wrote after a Hobson’s Pledge supporter received a response from Minister Paul Goldsmith saying he did not “intend to release the report” on the Treaty clauses. This review is part of the National-NZ First coalition agreement, and sought to identify legislation with Treaty clauses that were unclear, ambiguous, or even unnecessary. We quickly set up a website to enable you to email the Minister demanding to know what is going on.
Minister Goldsmith was sitting on a completed review of Treaty clauses, refusing to release it, knowing full well he and Cabinet colleagues had discussed and decided the matter and – by all appearances – hoping the issue would simply fade away. But we were not going to leave the matter lie.
Thankfully, our supporters did not leave it be either. They spoke up and applied the pressure necessary to force action.
So I want to personally congratulate you all. Thousands of Hobson’s Pledge supporters flooded the Minister’s inbox, demanded accountability, and now, the Government has been forced to break their silence and signal action on the “Treaty Clauses” unnecessarily embedded in so much of our legislation.
But now is not the time to let up.
While it is encouraging to see that the review has been completed and that decisions are now being made, we know very little about what the decisions are and how they will be enacted. We don’t know which legislation is to be amended, and we haven’t seen the report.
It is essential that this process is transparent.
The Minister and the Government have a mandate to do this work. We want to be able to wholeheartedly support it, but we cannot do so with so little information.
We want to provide confidence to the Government and get the silent majority to speak up because there will be criticism from the mainstream media. But they do not speak for all New Zealanders. Many of us support the objective of removing vague and open-ended Treaty clauses and replacing them with clear, specific law. This is the right direction.
So join me in telling Minister Goldsmith that we are tentatively supporting him, but need to know more!
There has also been a new risk introduced, which we have questions about. A new potential source of confusion.
We are seeing reports that the Government is proposing to acknowledge both “the Treaty of Waitangi” and “Te Tiriti o Waitangi” in new legislative frameworks.
We must ask the Government: Why?
By explicitly separating the two, the Government risks reinforcing the radical activist narrative that there are two markedly different documents with conflicting meanings. This is a recipe for further legal chaos.
This separation supports the idea of dual sovereignty and invites activist judges to pick and choose their interpretations to suit a political agenda. It creates more confusion, not less.
If the goal is clarity and equality, why are they entertaining a “two-document” approach that only deepens the divide?
[SEND A MESSAGE TO THE MINISTER ASKING FOR CLARITY]
We cannot let up now. The Minister needs to know that while we welcome action, we will not accept half-measures or new “hooks” for co-governance.
Minister Goldsmith needs to see that there is overwhelming public support for repealing these clauses entirely and replacing them with clear, universal language. No more double-speak.
We need to tell him:
- Finish the job. Remove the vague principles that create two classes of citizenship.
- One Document, One Law. Stop the move to distinguish between “The Treaty” and “Te Tiriti” in a way that suggests different sets of rights for different people.
- No more delays. We are watching, and we expect the promises made in the coalition agreements to be kept in full.
We have the momentum. Let’s make sure the Minister hears us loud and clear.
[SEND A MESSAGE TO THE MINISTER HERE]
Don Brash
Trustee of Hobson’s Pledge