Jamie Ensor: NZ Herald political reporter on the amount of submissions opposed to the Treaty Principles Bill

There's plenty of lingering questions about the future of the Treaty Principles Bill.

More than 300,000 written submissions were made to Parliament's Justice Committee - 90 percent of which opposed the bill. 

NZ Herald political reporter Jamie Ensor says David Seymour has refused to back down, and he's disputed the public is against the bill.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Edb enjoining me. Now, New Zealand Herald political reporter Jamie Enzil,
Good morning, Jamie.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning. How are you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm very good. Thank you. We've just been talking about
Trump and tariffs and discussing whether New Zealand should really
sort of team up with other countries who are interested
in free trade. But the response from the government this
week has just been softly, softly, we're just kind of
letting the dust settle, really, aren't we? Would that be fair?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, that is true. No one in the government was
overly surprised when we're hit by those tariffs. You President
Donald Trump's always been clear since his election campaign that
he saw tariffs as a way of bestoring American industry,
I guess and manufacturing. And the Prime Minister made a
point that even if we don't agree with these tariffs,
and we don't, you know, the American people did vote

(00:58):
for Donald Trump, and here's a mandate to take those actions.
But while there wasn't much surprise, there was a little
bit of confusion and uncertain around the beehive regarding what
exactly those tariffs entailed. You know, government ministers, like the
general public had to wait until Thursday morning and watch
TV to see what rate was going to be applied.
Wasn't also very clear exactly how the Trump administration had

(01:21):
done some of its calculations, or whether that ten percent
tariff was going to be stacked on other tariffs. But
Trade Minister Tom McLay and the Prime Minister, we weren't
going to outright criticize the Trump administration. Look, even though
we're a close partner of the US, like other countries,
we didn't get a sneak peak of what was coming.

(01:42):
We aren't going to retaliate. The Prime Minister noted that
that would only increase the prices here and pump up inflation,
and government clearly doesn't want that. I guess the main
message coming from the government was that New Zealand's done
as well as anyone else, and our exporters in the
long term still see value in the US market. It's
our second largest trading partner, so it's not one that

(02:02):
can be just easily dismissed. And in terms of how
it might affect our goal of doubling export values, the
government's been pointing to the range of other free trade
agreements we've got with other countries and saying this is
why the Prime Minister is going out into the world too,
places like India to try and diversify our trade portfolio.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Is it a concern though, because economic growth? Is it
the top of the priority list for the government.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Doesn't it?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah? It kind of I guess contrasts with what the
government's trying to do. On the one hand, to the government
saying this is our main thing, but they're now one
of our biggest partners is putting in an agenda that
goes against that. So yeah, the Government's going to have
to be pretty careful with how it responds to this,
and that's probably why you saw this week nothing major
coming from them. They want to take their time.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Very sensible. On Friday, the Justice Select Committee recommended that
the Dead on Arrival Treaty Principles Bill should not proceed.
What has the reaction been to this.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, it feels like we've been talking about this thing
for a very long time and like you said, it's
only just been reported back on by Parliament's Justice Select Committee.
Now the report and I guess the reaction to it
hasn't really been too surprising. No one's going to be
shocked that the Greens called it an international embarrassment or
party mold. He said it misunderstood the history of the treaty,

(03:15):
or Labour said it was just a waste of time.
But the response from the act Party has been quite interesting.
David Seymour is not backing down. He says that there
wasn't a strong argument to put forward against the legislation,
and he's also still disputing that the publics against the bill.
There were more than three hundred thousand submissions, it's the
largest ever received to all one bill. Ninety percent were opposed,

(03:39):
but David Seymour says the submission process on high profile
pieces of legislation like this one aren't always representative of
the wider public, and despite all the opposition, he still
thinks it's been a success. So look, this will go
back to the House for a second reading, where National
New Zealand First will finally be free of those coalition
commitments and have the opportunity to vote it down.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
And Jamie, we saw more controversy for the Greens Party
around Green MP Benjamin Doyle than some of his social
media posts have we wrapped this up or do you
think we'll be more on this this week?

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Potentially more on it this week. Doyle has been away
from Parliament for the past a few days after receiving
death threats. Now, the Green Party couldn't provide me with
an update on Friday in terms of whether they will
return to the House next week, but you can expect
that whenever Doyle does return, and he is a taxpayer
funded MP, so there will be some questions to ask

(04:33):
about the appropriateness of these posts that have been circulated.
They come from a private Instagram account that Doyle was
using prior to entering Parliament, and they included some posts
that had what one may see as sexually suggestive comments
alongside an image of Doyle's child. Now, the Green Party
did come out, as you would note, pretty fiercely in

(04:56):
defense of Doyle, saying, look, the specific term used by
the MP is often used by some subsets of the
Rainbow community in an reverend or absurdist manner needed to
be seen in context. But what exactly that context was
or what Doyle was trying to say, wasn't really clearly
spelled out by the Green Party. It's also come under

(05:16):
a bit of attack for suggesting that these types of
terms are used flippantly within the Rainbow community, something that
some in the community have found offensive, so there will
definitely be some questions going forward.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Jamie has always appreciate your time on a Sunday morning.
Thank you for being with us.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news talks that'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.