Mata Season 2 | Episode 20: Andrew Little on the Treaty Principles Bill

Former Minister for Treaty of Negotiations Andrew Little has strongly criticised the coalition government's handling of Māori issues, and fears the ongoing settlement process could be at risk.

In an interview with Mata's Mihingarangi Forbes, the ex-Labour MP also mourned the loss of Te Aka Whai Ora and defended his party's efforts to reform the health system against criticism it was too little, too late. 

Little was reelected on the list in 2023, but chose to step aside to make way for someone younger. Since then, he says work in his some of portfolios - which included justice, health and Treaty negotiations - has been gone into reverse.

"I think certainly Treaty and certainly justice, there's no question - I think we're going backwards," he told Forbes. "In fact I'd say - if not so much with Treaty negotiations - certainly Crown-Māori relations is, I would say, is in a really dark spot at the moment and that's by choice by this government."

Little singled out the ACT Party - one of the two minor parties in the coalition, alongside New Zealand First and the larger National Party - for criticism.

The government has cut jobs at the Office for Māori Crown Relations / Te Arawhiti, as it has with many of Aotearoa's public services, Little called it an "evisceration". 

"We struggled to resource all the demand on us for negotiations when we were in government - I think that's going to get worse.

"And I think the point we're at with a lot of negotiations of the Treaty grievances, we're at the really hard end. There's a lot of iwi who have, it's taken a long time for them to get to the point where they can engage with the Crown… so this is the hard end of it and it's actually going to require some intense work.

"And if we start to dissipate the resources for that, it's just going to push things out… Dissipating that, those skills and that capability on the Crown side, can only cause problems further down the track. I mean, it's not just negotiating the Treaty settlements, it's about monitoring them and making sure the Crown is honouring what they've signed up to. I think when Kelvin Davis was the minister at a register of 7000-odd commitments, Crown's got to make sure it's honouring those commitments.

"You know, the history of the Treaty is the Crown's failure to honour its promises and we can't let history repeat itself."

The controversial Treaty Principles Bill - introduced as part of ACT's coalition agreement with National - showed ACT's view of the Treaty was "totally misconceived", he said.

"I think when you look at the language, the way they couch things, this whole idea of 'everybody has tino rangatiratanga, we're all self-determining', what I find really I think insulting to everybody who has been so critical to the modern reconciliation and restoration process, is the idea that the acts and gestures of reconciliation and restoration are somehow grounds for accusing the Crown of inequality - because that's actually what the ACT Party stands for… 

"I think what they represent is a total misunderstanding of the Treaty, what the promise was, what it was actually about. It's an ignorance of the history and the Crown's history of conduct under the Treaty, a failure to understand what reconciliation and redress looks like and means."

While past governments had not always aligned their policies with the Treaty, Little said there was "something different" about the coalition, which he put down to ACT's presence. 

"For a party registering eight or 9 percent support, they just seem to have been given in an incredible sort of open slate to potentially do extraordinary damage to the Crown-Māori relationship and the relationship of Māori and their place in New Zealand."

Te reo pākeha

As for the government's directive for departments and ministries to favour the use of English over Māori, Little said that would not last. 

"I look at my son, for example, in his early 20s and his generation, none of that is even an issue. My son calls me out if… I've mispronounced… and I just think that is so good. 

"And when you hear young people using Māori words casually and in te reo pākeha… it's just amazing. It's just great to see and to hear and people respecting the language enough to pronounce it correctly. 

"So I think the dynamic has been unleashed now. It's been battered by this government but I think the roots are too strong and the shoots are too green and have gone too far to be cut down completely, and it'll come back."

Health

The Labour government in 2022, five years into its six-year time in power, set up Health New Zealand / Te Whatu Ora and a sister agency, Te Aka Whai Ora, tasked with improving Māori health. The latter was quickly disestablished by the incoming coalition government, which said race should not be a factor when determining health coverage. 

Asked if that was too late, Little said the recommendations, following the submission process, did not come in until 2020.

"We had the election that year. Of course, we were disrupted with Covid, and there was a real question about whether, do we do the health reforms? By the time I became health minister, we were well into Covid, we were still waiting for a vaccination programme… 

"But in the end Covid is what illustrated what the problems with the system were, and so we agreed that we needed to make change and we made the change.

"Whatever time we were going to make the change, given the challenges for health, given the issues that they were having, it was always going to take time to get new systems and structures in place and actually a new culture in place too, and get that bedded in and get that going as smoothly as possible."

In the past year under coalition rule, the agency's board has been replaced with commissioners after concerns about its finances. 

Little had confidence in commissioner Lester Levy, but little insight into what went wrong.

"I don't know the full detail about why the board didn't work out. I know Lester Levy a wee bit. He was a Crown observer at Canterbury District Health Board when I was a minister. We got on very well. He was very good. I found him, you know, he is very incisive. And the good thing about Lester is he's got the clinical background and the clinical knowledge, so he's not phased by that stuff."

But he was saddened by the scrapping of Te Aka Whai Ora.

"I felt genuinely emotionally down when the Te Aka Whai Ora order was repealed. I made a personal commitment about that work with (Labour MP) Peeni Henare on it… I'm not saying [it was] you know, the best and… the only answer to, but it was a good gesture of tino rangatiratanga on a very important issue. And that's gone.

"So I hope within whatever shape it takes in the future that there is room for that Māori leadership on health, because it's desperately needed."

He denied claims it was "unequal" to have a Māori-focused health department. 

"Since whenever has actually restoring somebody who's unlawfully and illegitimately lost something, when has that been an act of inequality? It's an act of restoring equality. And that's where I think the ACT party thing is so bitterly distorted and so wrong."

Polling 

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has struggled to restore support for Labour, polling has shown. Little famously resigned as leader just weeks before the 2017, handing the reins to Jacinda Ardern, who quickly went on to become prime minister. 

Asked if Hipkins - who led Labour into defeat in 2023 - should step aside, Little said that was a matter for him.

I see Chris occasionally, I see other former colleagues, occasionally. I want them to do the best they can - how they organise themselves and their leadership really is going to be a question for them.

"Look, Chris, it's a tough gig. Leader of the opposition is tough anyway; doing it straight after a new government's been elected and you've been put on the opposition benches, it is the toughest moment and he's got to just keep his head down, keep his team together.

"They've got to pick the right issues, because not every issue is going to work for them, and I think he is trying to do that. 

"So, look, I think this is a phase we go through in the electoral cycle. The government's in its first year or just had its first year. It's got the wind and its sails and the opposition just has to, you know, do its regrouping activity as quickly as it can."

Elsewhere in the interview, Little and Forbes discussed the sinking of the Manawanui, the upcoming apology for abuse in state care and his life after politics.