I will just add that a constitution is not a treaty and te tiriti can't just be 'assimilated' - its a founding document unto itself.
That is, its original form is not lost or changed (as how it has been & Seymour and others are trying to do) and from there a constitution is drawn up to address the rights of all people/ New Zealand.
Much of what you said has been happening already (except the constitution part) with local authorities across the country working to initiate co-governance contracts with māori and communities, land ownership issues through the Waitangi Tribunal, māori Land Court, through council consent processes (where they're not snuck through unnotified) especially for water issues and waahi tapu through Hertitage NZ and Archaeological expertise, and more besides. Its been a slow arduous process but gains have been made where all sides have reached consensus. And those gains are a large part of what will be affected through the 100day action list & the oiling of the squeaky wheels of those that have monetary/ pecuniary interest in seeing repeal of environmental, health & wellbeing, and māori self-determination reforms, or just plain bias.
A constitution drafted outside of politics would go a long way to bringing everyone onto the same page but it cannot relegate the original treaty to a clause somewhere just because māori are 'outnumbered' today.
Just a point of clarity - NZ has a constitution already, which includes the treaty. It isn’t a single separate “constitution” document, as in say the US. Our constitution is the total sum of our treaty, our laws and case law.
The treaty itself is a fairly concise document. Normally contractual law is somewhat straightforward to apply in disputes. The debatable part of the treaty, subject to considerable contention, is that despite the "form" of the treaty,
māori have argued their ancestors “believed” the substance of the treaty was that they could enjoy continued self governance. Recent court decisions and tribunal arguments been sympathetic to this argument, and we see a partial acknowledgement in the existence of
māori electorates.
Even if this argument is true, then how fair to both sides is it to address this? If my ancestors signed an agreement in 1840, can I then argue generations later that they didn’t mean to, and they thought it meant something else?
The recent political climate has been any pro-Crown debate around this point is racist, and we all heard from the Greens, TPM and Labour during the debates that to raise these concerns you'll be called a racist.
Independent judiciary is one of the hallmarks of democracy Wiz.
That's true, but how independent is the judiciary currently?
One of the challenges here is the role of the Attorney General, who appoints judges and is supposed to be apolitical. David Parker was anything but apolitical, and you can quite easily see that in the judges he appointed, and the guidance he gave to the courts around discounting sentences and being cognizant of the
māori element of sentencing.
One judge (whose family I know) is fractionally
māori. She was appointed recently and all the hoopla at her swearing in was hailing her
māori heritage. She was welcomed into the court by
māori (as in, "we welcome you to our court"), Waiatas, tracing her whakapapa etc. No acknowledgement or praise of the 88% of the rest of her blood.
So we have had an AG appointing a judiciary that is
māori, and pro-
māori. An “independent” judiciary, that makes court decisions and sets precedent for tribunal decisions and
māori co governance aspects.
So here we are now where a good portion of NZ is saying, hang on, let's discuss this and agree a way forward.
If we leave it to continue, we are kicking a festering mess down the road whereby you are either born into a separate set of laws and rights
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