Duncan Webb: Labour's Justice Spokesperson on the Treaty Principles Bill being introduced earlier than planned

Labour's questioning the Government's decision to bring forward the introduction of the Treaty Principles Bill. 

The bill was introduced to the House yesterday ahead of its first reading next week. 

If adopted, it would set treaty principles into law to be used when interpreting legislation. 

Labour's Justice Spokesperson, Duncan Webb, told Ryan Bridge that introducing the bill 11 days earlier than expected appears to have been a strategic move. 

Webb says introducing it during US election week has helped keep it on the "low down". 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We got the deets yesterday on the Treaty's Principal's Bill.
The second principle says the Crown will respect and protect
the rights that Hapu and Ewe Mardy had under the
Treaty of Waitangi. However, and this is the crucial bit
that seem more got in there, if those rights differ
from the rights of everybody else in New Zealand, they
only apply where there's an agreed treaty settlement. Duncan Web's

(00:22):
the Labor Justice spokesperson. Big protest plans next planned next
week is with US Live this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Good morning, good morning, How are you good?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Thank you? Are you going to join those protests?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I might get out there on the front lawn, but
you do get a seat in parliament. But I can
understand why those protests are happening. People are pretty angry
about this. It's a rewriting, right, just it's going backwards.
And you can't have the government sign something in eighteen
forty and then decide one hundred and eighty years later
later that it's not quite what they wanted and have
another crack.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
But isn't that what the courts have been doing?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Absolutely not. I mean what you've got with the courts.
And you know, I've heard about the courts making stuff
up and so on, but that's not the case. You've
got two texts of the Treaty of Waitangi, one in English,
one in Marii. They're both valid and there's a fair
distance between them, so the courts have to navigate a
path between them. And so in doing that, they've read
them both and said, look, the guts of it is,

(01:17):
or if they would say in their fancy language, the
principles of the treaty are, and that's where you get
the principleship.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Is that a job for the courts? Is that a
job for the courts to interpret our founding document.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Look, if you have a contract you're right on the
back of an envelope to sell a business, there's going
to be a lot of gaps in it. And when
you get at the court to argue about it, they're
going to fill the gaps for you. This was a
contract between two nations signed on a single piece of
paper one hundred and eighty years ago. There are gaps,
there are things that aren't clear. It's absolutely the job

(01:52):
of the courts to patch it up and make sure
that what the parties intended is what it rolled out
and deliver us over time.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Is it a big deal that this has been brought forward.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, it's been brought forward a week. It's not is
it a big deal? It's just it's just we've had
the American election. So the front page of you in
your league stories and everyone's front page is the American.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Do you think it's they've done it, They've done it delivered.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, it's comms management.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Hepkins reckons it is not a big deal. It's just normal,
normal parliamentary process and you wouldn't expect it to have
been told there was a change of date anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Well, who knows, but the reason for the change of
date was probably was probably to keep it on the
load down question. We've got we've got the heck quy
coming on the same day.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
My question for you is you're the gist of the
argument is this is so divisive and the same from
the Pati Mardi and the Greens, so divisive that you
shouldn't go near it. Do you think co governance was divisive?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Well, co governance clearly ra the hackles of a section
of society.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
And we're starting to and it didn't stop you doing it, though,
did it. I mean, so, it's not a reason not
to do something just because people might be upset by it.
I guess.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Okay, I would accept that, but if it's both divisive
and fundamentally wrong and depriving Mary of something that they
have actually been promised. So it's not just that it's
it's people, some people don't like it, it's that it's
fundamentally and constitutionally right. This isn't just some surface irritation.

(03:34):
This is going to the very heart of how we
form our nation and changing the foundation stones. And that's
why it's both divisive and deeply wrong.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Don'gan thank you very much for your time this morning.
Appreciate you coming on the show. That's Dunk and Web
Labour's justice spokesperson.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
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