Labour votes to keep Treaty clauses

Labour have been quite effective in making people think they have made changes to their habit of inserting treaty clauses everywhere, but in reality it has talked the talk but won’t walk the walk. Even the Treaty Education Minister admits that there is no need for his electorate staff to have treaty clauses in their adverts, yet it still goes out with them.

The latest is Labour, Greens and Maori Party voting not to even send to select committee the NZ First bill to remove all references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation. It was defeated 51-63.

Now the bill, being a NZ First bill, was overly simplistic. But it would have been very useful to have it go to select committee, which could then consider in more detail the areas where having treaty clauses is inappropriate. Labour by voting against have shown that they are not resiling from past practice.

As for John Tamihere saying “everyone knew what the principles were”, he must be kidding. The version given by Margaret Wilson in 2002 are simply her opinion, with no weight in law.