James Meager: Justice Select Committee Chair on recommending Parliament to vote Treaty Principles Bill down

The Justice Committee is recommending Parliament vote the Treaty Principles Bill down. 

Out of 300,000 submissions, 90% were opposed, but ACT leader David Seymour still wants a referendum. 

Justice Select Committee Chair James Meager says the committees wants to "get on with things that are actually growing the economy and making a change to people's lives."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Select Committee looking into the Treaty bill gives a
big thumbs down three hundred thousand submissions ninety percent opposed.
Seymour still wants a referendum. If people believe that the
public don't support this, they should not be opposed to
having a referendum on it. James Meaga is the chair
of the Justice Committee. He's with me now, good evening,
Good evening, Ryn. Is this going to be voted down

(00:20):
next week?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Ultimately that's up to the House and what parties do
National's positions Being clear, we supported the bill through to
Select Committee, have a conversation, we don't support the bill,
so we'll be bringing against it.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Okay, and other parties.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
That's up to them.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
But does this next week the voti happen.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
That will be up to the Leader of the House
who manages the legis of the schedule. So as the chair,
I've got the report back done, so it's ultimately over
to the government. Now is to when it appears.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Has this been a giant waste of time or do
you feel that we have all grown as a nation
and learnt something.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I think there's a significant amount of work that's been
done and if researchers. Look back, you've got, you know,
three hundred thousand submissions on a particular issue at a
particular point in time, So there may well be some
academic value. But we've of the position where we don't
think the bill's going to proceed, so we're very keen
now to i think, get it done and just to
move on and get on with things that are actually

(01:15):
growing the economy and making a change to people's life.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
With the submission, there was a bit of who ha
are about the submissions and whether there be about tens
of thousands that weren't going to be read? Was everyone
read by will everyone be read by someone?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah? There was a bunch of game playing there, and
it's really frustrating because some of that was done a
little bit underhandedly. So here's the facts. Every submission that
was received was read by a human at the Ministry
of Justice. All of those submissions were incorporated into what's
called the Departmental Report, which was produced by the Ministry,
and then all those submissions were always going to be published. Now,

(01:50):
the difference was when submissions are still being processed for
consistency with standing orders. After the bills reported back, they
go into a bucket called the general business bucket. We
wanted to put a motion to have them treated all
as the same. Labor blocked that in Business Committe. That's
what Duncan Webb has not been telling you. He's been
telling you that the government's been blocking it. That's not true.
They wanted to do their own motion to extend the

(02:11):
report back because they wanted to play politics.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
So well, there's been a lot of politicking over this.
Let's be clear about that. I didn't know there was
a general business bucket. That sounds probably the least interesting
thing I've heard today. Hey, okay, so we've got here.
The Select Committee's reported back. We're going to have a vote.
It's going to go. No where should it have been
in your coalition agreement?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
James? That is most certainly not an answer or a
question for me. But the fundamentals is that it wasn't
a coalition agreement. That is the price we pay for
living in an MMP environment, and I guess the consequence
is that we have the opportunity to be in government
to make some real change for people's life. So he's
probably the extent of what I can do on that one.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Do you think this is something that we will come
back to and revisit as a country. Do the I mean,
you're a former lawyer, you're a politician, Marty. Do we
need to define them at some point?

Speaker 2 (03:04):
I think the underlying debate is probably one that was
worth having. We didn't agree with this particular mechanism. There
is another mechanism going through at the moment around reviewing
particular phrases in legislation where Treaty principles are mentioned, and
I think there were some valid concerns about whose role
is it to define what the principles are or aren't.
So I don't think it's going away, but I think

(03:26):
for this particular case, it wasn't the right way to
do it, and so now we'll move on to some
other ways. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
All right, interesting stuff, James, Thanks for that, James Mega,
who's the Justice Select Committee Chair? For more from Heather
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