Before a new government rolls out their more proactive policies, they tend to focus their efforts on undoing things enacted under the last guys - returning things to how they were.
This week, one of those bills is returning to the House from Select Committee for its 2nd reading. The Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill reverses legislation passed by Labour in 2021 that removed the need for a referendum (the legislation uses the word poll) in establishing Māori wards and constituencies on local councils.
Some of the crowd at a meeting organised by the Concerned Citizens group about Māori wards in Tauranga in 2021. Photo: SunLive
Think of Māori wards (the word constituency is used when the entity is a regional council) as being like Māori electorates in Parliament, but at a local government level. They give councils the option to establish a mechanism of guaranteed Māori representation, which historically hasn’t been demographically proportional to the population.
Intentions of this abrogation appeared in National’s coalition agreements with both Act and New Zealand First, with Local government minister Simeon Brown citing a need to give local communities the power to determine their own governance arrangements, by scrapping what the National Party described as “divisive changes” introduced by the previous government.
Other than making changes impacting who gets a seat at the table, the Bill also seeks to extend the statutory timeframes for the distribution of voting papers, as well as extending the voting period by ten days. The thinking here is that voters in rural and provincial jurisdictions who increasingly aren’t engaging with local government, will have more time to do so in elections.
You can probably guess which of these two proposed changes received attention in the 10,000 plus submissions (as well as 13,403 submissions made through the Taxpayers Union submission tool and emailed on) considered by the Justice Select Committee.
A five figured number of submissions is a pretty reliable barometer of how much public interest there is in a bill. This number is actually quite extraordinary considering the five day deadline for submissions (a deadline which typically spans at minimum six weeks).
The government has defended the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ period for submissions, making the case that councils need as much time as possible to make their decisions in advance of next year's local elections.
Perhaps encouraged by a sense of urgency due to the short timeframe, a diverse array of interested individuals and groups submitted either supporting, opposing, or giving advice on the proposed legislation. Among them, was right-wing lobby group Hobsons Pledge, who have long opposed Māori wards (and Māori Parliamentary seats for that matter), on the grounds that representation shouldn’t be based on race.
Conversely, the submissions which opposed the bill, more often than not, cited a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Te Maruata, Local Government New Zealand’s Māori advisory group called the bill divisive, adding that it had potential to damage longstanding iwi-council relationships.
In the Justice Committee’s report back to Parliament, Labour members, who after hearing “a tsunami of evidence” opposing the bill, echoed the assertions of submitters that claimed a treaty breach, with specific claims that the Government failed to consult with Māori, and that the bill undermines tino rangatiratanga.
During the second reading on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, National banged the restoring normality drum, while the Opposition doubled down on its accusation of treaty breaches. Likely given the racial aspect of the bill, hostility in the House was (even) more noticeable than usual. As MPs tend to do during the second reading, Te Pāti Māori’s Mariameno Kapa-Kingi brought up one of the submissions made to the committee which, controversially, compared Māori to Jews during World War II.
Maori Party MP Mariomeno Kapa-Kingi listens to evidence in select committee. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
This unsurprisingly set off a bellicose mood for the remainder of the debate, with a point of order being raised soon after, when Act’s Simon Court accused Kapa-Kingi of calling National’s James Meager a nazi.
The amendments recommended by the committee are technical, and seek to improve the bills’ workability. They were agreed to by the House on Wednesday morning, bringing an end to the second reading.
The 2021 legislation that this bill seeks to reverse was the subject of a twelve-hour filibuster debate during the committee of the whole house stage.
If this is anything to go by, it’s likely the Opposition will try and mount something similar, which, other than delaying the bill’s passing, makes the whole process a lot more tiresome.
