How the Labour Party can navigate an issue on which its supporters are evenly divided
THE EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS OF the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti leaves Labour with a serious problem. How is it to reconcile the parliamentary party’s fervent adherence to the now orthodox interpretation of te Tiriti o Waitangi, with the scepticism – even outright opposition – of its electoral base? When it comes to the Treaty Principles Bill, how does Labour stay on the safe side of one red line, without crossing another?
By all accounts, the huge demonstration of Tuesday 19 November left most Labour MPs feeling inspired and vindicated, in equal measure. With the roar of fifty thousand Hīkoi participants ringing in the ears of Labour’s caucus, their unequivocal opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill doubtless struck its members as the party’s only viable political option. Certainly, any other stance would not only have rebounded to the advantage of Te Pāti Māori and the Greens, but also opened up deep fissures in Labour’s own parliamentary ranks.
As the content and purpose of David Seymour’s legislation percolates down to Labour’s electoral base, however, the parliamentary party’s opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill is likely to raise some difficult questions. If the answers provided to Labour’s more conservative Pakeha voters fail to convince, then the party could lose them.
Polling data released by David Farrar’s Curia Research shows around one-third of Labour party-voters supporting the Treaty Principles Bill. In happier and more democratic times, that level of support would have been readily discernible at both the branch and regional levels of the Labour Party. Individual Members of Parliament, acutely sensitive to their electorate’s political temperature in those far-off First-Past-the-Post days, would have cautioned against allowing the caucus’s soft ideological heart to rule its hard political head.
Today, in the Labour Party that first Rogernomics, and then MMP, so radically reshaped, the opinions of Labour supporters don’t carry anything like the same weight. Forty years of upholding the neoliberal order in New Zealand have left their mark on Labour. From a party organically linked to the interests and aspirations of the working-class, Labour has become a tightly-controlled political vehicle for the ambitions of the professional-managerial elites. The moral and ideological imperatives of this supervisory social strata do not include accommodating itself to the reactionary reckons of the retrograde classes.
In the increasingly fraught political environment created by the Treaty Principles Bill, the Labour Opposition’s unequivocal alignment with the Bill’s opponents is only likely to intensify, even as up to one-third of Labour’s support-base grows increasingly restive with the stance of their parliamentary representatives. This is not a situation which Labour can afford to tolerate for very long. The risk of precipitating a decisive break in core electoral allegiances is simply too high.
Presumably, Labour’s senior leadership is banking on the voting-down of Seymour’s bill, in or around May 2025, putting the whole issue to bed. Whatever misgivings Labour’s working-class Pakeha voters may have about the party’s position on the legislation will then fade away and political life return to normal.
But, there is a glaring problem with Labour’s plan. (Which is almost certainly National’s plan as well!) If it is to succeed, then Act must also be willing to let political life return to normal. Quite why Act would do that is hard to fathom. Its coalition partners’ complicity in the defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill presents the party with an opportunity to persuade disgruntled National and NZ First supporters to desert their pusillanimous parties for the steadfast ranks of the libertarian-capitalists. Far from allowing things to quieten down, it is in Act’s clear political interest to rark things up.
The ideological divisions exposed during the Justice Select Committee hearings on the Treaty Principles Bill are, therefore, much more likely to widen than close.
The other problem with Labour’s plan is that it does not adequately factor-in the impact of NZ First’s proposal (made known and fully sanctioned in the 2023 Coalition Agreement) to excise all but the most inconsequential references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi from existing legislation. It is impossible to see either Te Pāti Māori, or the Greens, acquiescing meekly in the face of what they will doubtless condemn as yet another attack on te Tiriti. And if Te Pāti Māori and the Greens are in the fight, then Labour must be in it too.
There is, consequently, no possibility of political life returning to normal – not when so many parties have a clear interest in keeping New Zealand’s political life as abnormal as possible.
It is possible that Labour has already convinced itself – or soon will –that all the real, on-the-ground, political momentum now lies with Māori nationalism and the Left. Certainly, the forty-to-fifty-thousand people who turned up in support of the Treaty on 19 November argue strongly for that conclusion. It is, however, equally arguable that the political mobilisation represented by the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti was the response of a movement that fears its position is weak, not strong. From the perspective of Māori nationalists and the Left, Curia Research’s finding that 46 percent of New Zealanders support Seymour’s bill, while only 25 percent oppose it, is hardly encouraging. Hīkoi, or no Hīkoi.
The admirable discipline of the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti certainly points to its organisers’ acute awareness that anything other than impressive demonstrations of aroha and kotahitanga is liable to prove fatal to their cause. Nothing will rally Pakeha New Zealanders to the side of Act and NZ First faster, nor cause them to abandon more completely those parties whose commitment to equality and democracy is seen to be less than fulsome, than acts of violence and/or destruction undertaken in the name of te Tiriti.
The singular tragedy of the present historical moment is that Labour’s strategists are incapable, ideologically, of perceiving the vast opportunity opening up in New Zealand politics for a party that celebrates, rather than fetishises, the Treaty of Waitangi; draws moral strength from New Zealand’s egalitarian and democratic traditions; promotes a more decentralised, locally-controlled economy; and defends the untrammelled sovereignty of an accountable, facilitative, empowering, and, most importantly, colour-blind New Zealand state.
Such a party, and Labour used to be one, would be free to challenge the dismal and demoralising policies of the Right, without being dragged down electorally by the obnoxious and indefensible policies of, for want of a better word, the “woke”. Were Labour to re-engage with the philosophy that made New Zealand such a treasured place to stand for all its people, then it would have no need of either the Greens or Te Pāti Māori.
But Labour cannot be convinced, any more than the United States Democratic Party could be convinced, that citizens will not be shamed into electing a government that wants nothing more from them than their vote. That ordinary working people will not support politicians who show every sign of neither liking, nor understanding, them, and who loftily disdain their most cherished beliefs and values.
New Zealanders will knock down anyone who suggests that Māori are not the equals of Pakeha, but they will never consent to the creation of an Aotearoa in which the reverse is true. If Labour crosses that red line, or looks the other way as others cross it, then it should not expect to govern New Zealand for a very long time – if ever.
Chris Trotter is New Zealand’s most provocative leftwing political commentator, with 30 years of experience writing professionally about New Zealand politics. He identifies as a “libertarian socialist” and now writes regularly for the Democracy Project, producing his column “From the Left”. This article was first published at the Democracy Project substack