Labour MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel has called for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to “show leadership” and squash the contentious Treaty Principles Bill, saying it is “damaging” any hope of a positive relationship between the Crown and Māori.

“At an organisational level, it’s naturally disappointing. At an iwi and hapū level, it’s devastating.”

The policy has been a high priority for the Act Party, and part of Act’s coalition agreement with National. National, and Act’s other coalition partner, NZ First, say they will support the bill through its first stage but not beyond that.

The Waitangi Tribunal has described it as discriminatory and “a solution to a problem that does not exist”, while more than 400 church leaders have written an open letter calling for MPs to do everything in their power to stop the bill from going to select committee.

Act Party leader David Seymour has strongly pushed back against the criticism and defended the proposal, saying he wants to ensure all New Zealanders are afforded the same duties and rights.

He described pushback by the churches as undemocratic and not the first-time the church had tried to interfere in democracy.

Tangaere-Manuel, the MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, said Luxon was “wasting everyone’s time and actually, quite frankly, damaging what hope they had in terms of positive relationships with Māori”.

Asked what impact the conversations around the proposal could have on the Māori-Crown relationship, Tangaere-Manuel said: “People are thinking, ‘my goodness, here we are thinking we have made progress as partners of the Treaty. We feel oppressed again, we feel silenced, and they want to make us second grade citizens in our own country’.”

Seymour said changes had been made to the proposal to add references to iwi and hapū to the proposed definitions of the principles.

Labour MP Willie Jackson said Seymour’s changes “surprised” him but did not make the proposal any more palatable.

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“We don’t trust him, we don’t trust his motives, and this bill should be thrown straight out,” Jackson said.

“We know that the driver of this is to extinguish Māori rights, indigenous rights [...] you know where Seymour is coming from, he wants six months of mayhem in terms of the debate. It looks like Seymour is looking for a major debate over the next four to six months and it looks like he’s got it.”

National ministers and MPs who were asked by the Herald about the bill at Parliament on Tuesday morning all pointed to the party’s coalition agreement with Act.

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.