Trotter says Te Pāti Māori has put constitutional transformation on the ballot

Summarised by Centrist

Chris Trotter says Te Pāti Māori is spelling out a plan to fundamentally redistribute political, economic and cultural power between Māori and the Crown.

Writing for LawNews, Trotter begins by retelling colonisation as Māori dispossession and betrayal. “This is the story Māori tell themselves,” he writes. “It is not the story most Pakeha New Zealanders tell themselves.”

He contrasts that account with the nation subsequently built by settlers, memorably describing it as “the wholesome omelette Pakeha made out of all those broken Māori eggs”.

For Māori, Trotter says, the Treaty of Waitangi remained the principal means of answering the question: “How to unmake that omelette?”

He traces the movement towards constitutional change through new historical scholarship, the 1981 Springbok tour, Treaty settlements, Māori economic development and the insertion of undefined Treaty principles into legislation.

Trotter names the late Moana Jackson as “the prime architect” of the reforms now championed by Te Pāti Māori. He says Jackson sought a Māori constitutional authority “equal to, if not greater than, the authority of the Crown”.

Jackson’s Matike Mai report proposed alternative constitutional arrangements reflecting Māori sovereignty. Trotter describes it as the inspiration for He Puapua, which he characterises as a “step-by-step implementation plan” for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Te Pāti Māori’s manifesto, he argues, now makes explicit “the reforms required to effect a constitutional transformation of Aotearoa-New Zealand”. If Labour and the Greens helped implement them, Trotter says Māori political and economic authority would be restored “in large measure”.

His sharpest criticism concerns how such change would occur. Trotter argues that Jackson doubted a Pākehā majority would approve the programme through a referendum and therefore favoured working gradually through influential Māori and sympathetic institutions.

He calls the result a possible “top-down revolution on behalf of a minority”. Te Pāti Māori’s candour, he concludes, may prove politically risky because the wider electorate can now see what is being proposed and vote accordingly.

Read more at Law News 

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