Jason Walls: Political Editor on the review into the Waitangi Tribunal

The Government’s announced a review into the Waitangi Tribunal will begin shortly.

The review was announced on Friday by Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka, who said it would ensure the tribunal “remains focused, relevant, effective and fit for purpose”.

Political Editor Jason Walls says no one should be surprised this is happening.

“Every time Christopher Luxon has talked about the Waitangi Tribunal, he essentially says it has been removed from it’s brief.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jason Wool's News sog Zibbies political editors with US Now.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Jason, Oh, good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Okay, So why are they announcing today that the review
kicks off?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Madear? Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it. I mean,
the cynical among you could say that it was an
attempt to distract from all the bad press that they've
been getting this week about their pay equity situation. But
you know, looking at this on balance, nobody should really
be that surprise that this has happened. I mean, every
time Chris Luxon has talked about the White Pungy Tribunal,

(00:29):
he essentially says that it has been sort of is
removed from its brief somewhat, and it's been happening quite
a bit over the last couple of years. And then
of course it was in the New Zealand First National
Coalition agreement that this would be a review would be undertaken.
And of course it was Shane Jones of New Zealand
First that was happy as larry when the news came

(00:50):
out this afternoon. He says the time has come for
the White Pungee Tribunal to take a statutory haircut for
a Shane Jones esque of him. He says, after fifty year,
the Tribunal has gone off script, pursuing ideological fantasy instead
of what it was created to do. And that is,
of course, consider claims relating to breaches of the Treaty
of Why Tangy Now. David Seymour is also pleased with

(01:13):
this one. He says that the Tribunal had become increasingly
activist and had gone well beyond its brief, and he
said it's time to be put in its place. So
they're all arguing, essentially that it's not what it's not
doing what it's supposed to be doing in law. And
there's a number of examples that Seymour's office have actually
given me when I said, well hang on, what give
me some examples of when this happened. For example, if

(01:35):
you remember when they attempt to summon and question Karen
Shaw about the repealing of Section seven a A, they
said that that was not within the White Tangi Tribunals brief.
They talk about requiring the government to provide confidential documents
to the Treaty Principal's Bill, and then those documents being
leaked pretty quickly depressed before even Cabinet had seen them

(01:56):
and then things like urgent inquiries that they have in
terms of things like the Regulatory Standards Bill. So obviously, Heather,
this comes no surprise that this is going to get
a lot of backlash from the opposition parties. The Green
said that this is about making it easier to trample
over the treaty and punch down on pungat Fenawa and
Labour said it's extremely bad faith to conductor of review

(02:18):
right when the right Waitangi Tribunal is conducting urgent inquiries
into the action of this government, to which I would
say you'd be pretty hard pressed to find the time
with the Tribunal was not conducting an urgent inquiry into
something this government's doing.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Right, that's actually a fair point. Listen, what's been the
reaction to the government redress and compos scheme.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, so the opposition parties are not a fan of
this either. I mean, this is of course the government
investing or spending rather seven hundred and seventy four million
dollars in the budget for the rejess scheme. The average
rejest payment for new claims will go from nineteen thousand
to about thirty thousand and a fifty percent top up
will be provided to survivors who have already settled claims

(02:58):
to ensure a bit of can consistency with the increased
payments for the new claimants. So immediate pushback from Labor
and the Greens. Labor said putting more money into an
existing redress system that so many of the survivors have
already said they have no confidence in is just not
good enough, and the Greens say an apology is empty
without action. The government has failed survivors by repeating the

(03:21):
mistakes of old that resulted in abuse and trauma that
sparked the whole commission in the first place. And this
has kind of come down to the fact that, and
to be fair to the opposition parties, the government did
say when they gave the apology that they would be
creating a new entity in charge of facilitating this redress,
but they're actually keeping what they've already done. Here's what

(03:41):
Chris Luxon said today as to why they're doing this. Sorry,
this clip is a bit hard to hear. He would
see he was standing somewhere in a warehouse with a
lot of rain. But have a listen. It takes time
to put a new redress system in place. They costs
a lot of money and you can't guarantee. You've got
and gether guarantee and you can get a bit of
result from what you're doing right. So his argument is
a essentially listen, we want to do this at speed.

(04:02):
There's a lot of survivors that actually want to see
this done quickly and we don't want to leave them
in limbo.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Good stuff. Hey, thanks very much, Jason, appreciate it. Jason
wools our political editing. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,
listen live to news talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays,
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