A year after the Treaty principles bill was first debated on the Treaty Grounds, mana whenua are now turning their backs to David Seymour.
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There’s no beating around the bush about it all now. With backs turned to him, his microphone switched off then taken, twice, Act leader David Seymour’s speech and the reception to it on the Treaty Grounds’ Te Whare Rūnanga on Wednesday saw that there was no doubt about the distance between the coalition government and Māori.
The annual pōwhiri to welcome parliamentarians was a short and sweet occasion, all things considered. Compared to last year’s ceremony that ran overtime and featured more than a dozen passionate speeches, Wednesday’s welcome ended half an hour early – anyone who has been to a pōwhiri, especially one including government officials, knows that this is unusual. Only two kaikōrero from the Te Tai Tokerau side, Aperahama Edwards and Hone Sadler, addressed the government. The refusal from most to even look the manuhiri opposite them in the face said enough.
Seymour’s journey onto the atea from Te Rau Aroha, where the parliamentarians gathered to await their welcome, was not without challenge. Toitū Te Tiriti leader Eru Kapa-Kingi, who had other ideas on how the day’s proceedings should have panned out, led a group of about 100 demonstrators from the lower Treaty Grounds to the upper to counter the pōwhiri. Through a microphone, he addressed Seymour directly.
“You should be so lucky to be on this marae,” Kapa-Kingi told him. “I hope one day, you find it in yourself to love being Māori … Your people would want you to be here, if you would be so willing.” The Toitū Te Tiriti crowd retreated back to the lower Treaty Grounds, and soon after, the parliamentarians were invited onto the marae.
The challenge from the kaiwero was dotted with moments of severity as well, with Seymour being spat at (or rather, in the direction of), and shouting. The challenge inspired New Zealand First minister Shane Jones to later label the pōwhiri a “circus”, and threaten to pull funding from the Waitangi National Trust – a move both his coalition partners quickly told media they wouldn’t support.
A group of wāhine haukāinga wearing paraikete emblazoned with pro-te Tiriti logos and slogans, who had formed a human barricade at the front of the marae while minister for Māori Crown relationships Tama Potaka spoke, had rose again to obscure the crowd’s view of Seymour, then lightly sang waiata to drown out his words. Potaka had been the first on the government side to address Te Tai Tokerau iwi. By the time the Greens’ Teanau Tuiono (whose party leaders wore matching paraikete gifted by the haukāinga) and Labour leader Chris Hipkins spoke, the women had taken their seats. It was clear whose kōrero was welcomed, and whose wasn’t.
As Seymour spoke, the haukāinga were led further into the atea by Hone Harawira, who had been sitting at the mahau, and so the barricade to the entrance turned into a barricade between mana whenua and the government. Seymour was there to set the record straight on the “poison in the ears of young people” being shared about him, but the phrasing went down like a lead balloon for those who felt he was the only one spitting poison.
A mere two minutes into his speech, Seymour’s voice disappeared. His microphone had been switched off. But he was undeterred, and raised his voice to make up for the lost amplification. He tried to smooth it all over with some improvisation: “here’s some things you can’t turn your back on”. There were the predictable Seymour gags, but they were delivered almost half-heartedly – not quite with an air of defeat but with the energy of someone who knows he’s not speaking to his core crowd, and won’t bother trying to pretend they could be.
Seymour’s microphone was turned back on after a minute, before Ngātiwai chairman Aperahama Edwards, who opened the pōwhiri, walked over and took the microphone altogether. It was soon returned, then taken again, then returned. All the while, the human barricade and the backs now turned from those sitting in the mana whenua seats were singing ‘Mana Motuhake’.
“Ngā mihi, and I look forward to working with you,” Seymour ended his speech. “You know you want to, and you know that ultimately we all have to.” After the pōwhiri, members of the public heckled him as he walked across the grounds.
Seymour wasn’t as poetic as Potaka, who had earlier described feeling like he had been “whipped as if I am meat in a sandwich”. Potaka chose an interesting tactic to address the antagonism that had been following him well before he, or any of the ministers, got to Waitangi: by calling himself a kūpapa, a Māori who fought on the side of the British in the New Zealand Wars.
The comment was met with bitter laughter. If it were meant to be a moment of honesty and humility, it was received more as an acceptance of a belief shared by much of Ngāpuhi – that their own whanaunga had betrayed them. Newly returned Greens co-leader Marama Davidson later told media she agreed with the title, on the basis that Potaka has failed to show support for the “mana motuhake of ngā hapū Aotearoa”.
Shane Jones and Winston Peters were the last to speak from the government side. Referencing the Treaty principles bill, Jones called on Ngāpuhi to “stop worrying about a bill that won’t succeed”. When Peters took the stand, it was without any of the bravado displayed at last year’s pōwhiri. There was no yelling, no long spiels – the heat had been lowered on the hot air balloon and it was now falling to the ground: “those of you that turn your back, there will come a time when you want to talk to us more than we want to talk to you,” Peters ended, on an eerily similar note to Seymour.
Their words were greatly overshadowed by those of Hone Sadler, academic and respected Ngāpuhi elder, the second kaikōrero. “There are three heads of the monster that are leading the entire country – where are they? My friend, Tama, I thank you for your acknowledgements,” Sadler said. “I thank you, because I can recall what the government has done, that you are leading the way, you are leading the ways in terms of the hurt, the pain. You have broken the guarantees and promises to support Māori people, and we are the ones who have been hurt severely.”
For everyone, even the coalition government, the pōwhiri was a relatively mild affair. Across the six days observed for Waitangi celebrations, February 5 is the most politically tense moment on the Treaty Grounds, which is otherwise lounged upon by whānau enjoying the sun and kai. For the average Waitangi Day attendee, the politicians are just a blip. It’s something the media were reminded of prior to the pōwhiri by a Waitangi official: that there is more to the holiday than whatever happens in the atea between mana whenua and the government.
Will Seymour’s address at Waitangi be remembered in the same vein as Don Brash’s infamous Ōrewa speech? Unlikely. He didn’t say much at all. Those on the mana whenua side had a clear goal — to forget Seymour entirely, keeping their backs turned until the government morphs into something they believe reflects the interests of Māori. On the flip side, a short and largely uneventful event is likely what the coalition were also hoping for.
Instead, what will be remembered this time next year is that for half of his speech, Seymour was silenced and turned away from. After all, nobody remembers what Steven Joyce was saying when a dildo hit his face.