More than eight hours of submissions were heard yesterday. That’s just the beginning, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund for The Bulletin.
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
A long day at parliament
Welcome back, it’s a short week for me – I hope those in Auckland enjoyed the extra (blustery) day off. While us in Tāmaki Makaurau got a day off, it was business as usual in the capital as parliament prepared to resume. The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Joel MacManus spent eight hours sitting in on the first day of oral submissions on the controversial Treaty principles bill – “the most anticipated select committee hearing parliament has ever seen”.
Though the proposed law, put forward by Act’s David Seymour, is destined to fail, the government has opted to give it the full select committee process before it heads back to parliament later this year. The Act leader was given the first speaking slot on the bill, reported The Post’s Kelly Dennett, comparing his bill to other controversial issues through history that have ultimately become law, including homosexual law reform and end of life choice. “Once you have an idea that relates to emancipating people and freeing them from systems that oppress them, by giving some privilege to one group at the expense of another, which the partnership principle most certainly does, then eventually the tide for human freedom, the tide that people will want to join… that idea will eventually succeed.”
As Waiwiri-Smith and MacManus reported, the first day of hearings included appearances from former ministers, lawyers, Treaty experts and iwi representatives. Among them former Treaty negotiations minister Chris Finlayson, who criticised the proposed bill as a case of “much ado about nothing”, and former National MP Marilyn Waring, who said the bill was “based on the old approach that pretends that everybody’s born equal and that people can have the same treatment regardless of differences”. Those in support of the bill included a Conservative influencer and two members of “The Listener seven”.
‘Largely procedural’
In her report for ThreeNews last night, Jenna Lynch described the day’s events as “largely procedural” and going off “without a hitch”. For a bill that triggered the largest protest in the country’s history, the first day of oral hearings didn’t generate the fireworks some may have expected – though Lynch noted there were a few additional security guards in place at parliament just in case. Many of yesterday’s speakers were opposed to the bill, but that won’t be the case across the entire select committee process. There is a long road ahead. More than 80 hours of oral submissions have been scheduled over the next month, alongside scrutiny of over 300,000 written submissions. Newsroom Pro’s Laura Walters reported (paywalled) that external consultants have been contracted to analyse those written submissions, at an undisclosed cost expected to be in the “hundreds of thousands”. Walters said this isn’t unheard of when there is a high number of submissions, though the use of additional resources for a bill that has no chance of becoming law has raised eyebrows.
National tries to hold the narrative
Though the prime minister has repeatedly assured that the Treaty bill will not become law, it has nevertheless become an unwelcome thorn in the side of Christopher Luxon. The bill’s select committee hearing is likely to dominate discourse this week and, with Waitangi Day, the next. The Herald’s Claire Trevett wrote (paywalled) over the weekend that Luxon’s challenge is now to draw attention back to himself and his party, especially given the first polls of the year have brought bad news for National. That’s going to be particularly challenging given the amount of public interest in issues the prime minister doesn’t want to talk about, the Treaty bill included. “The problem with coalition partners is that every time they say something or set out a position, it results in a never-ending stream of questions for the prime minister on where he sits,” wrote Trevett.
The reshuffle and state of the nation last week were a first attempt by the prime minister at controlling the narrative and picking up as much airtime as possible. An announcement yesterday aimed at enticing overseas “digital nomads” to boost the economy was significant, but it was still overshadowed by the Treaty bill on both 6pm news bulletins.
What the year holds
I don’t know about you, but it feels like a lot has happened in the two weeks since The Bulletin has returned. Given this is the middle year of the coalition’s term, the government will be expecting to make significant headway on a range of issues in order to be in a good place to seek reelection in 18 months. The Herald’s Derek Cheng (paywalled) had an excellent look ahead at what’s on the agenda, and where tensions may be found between the three coalition parties. As we’ve talked about previously, much it will focus on building the economy, whether it be through luring more foreign investment, a long-planned overhaul of the Resource Management Act or pushing ahead with “fast-track” projects. Writing for The Spinoff this morning, former Green MP Gareth Hughes argued that we should be focused as a country on the “quality of economic growth”, rather than the quantity. “We’ve chased economic growth for decades and the way we’ve gone about it has come at great cost,” he wrote. “New Zealand’s unswimmable rivers, toxic mine sites, migrant exploitation and precarious, unsatisfying, low-paid jobs are testament to this fact.”