Fear of democracy is growing. Not among the overwhelming majority of voters, but among those who fear their “prejudices”. The ideological consensus of the social-liberal elites, painstakingly assembled over the past 40 years, is under threat.  

Political parties operating in defiance of the social liberal consensus have achieved, by democratic means, a measure of executive state power. With this power behind them, they are pursuing policies inimical to the social-liberal consensus.  

It is this, the obvious effectiveness of populism, that explains the social-liberal elite’s growing fear of the political system that has rewarded it with power. 

Nowhere in New Zealand is this fear of democracy manifested more openly than in its social-liberal elite’s response to the electoral success of the Act Party. Inspired by Act’s determination to clarify the “principles” of the Treaty of Waitangi, a concerted effort has been launched to paint Act and its leader, David Seymour, as the puppets of global bad actors.  

Foremost among these is the United States-based “Atlas Network” – an institution dedicated to facilitating the spread of classical liberal ideas by setting up and supporting think tanks sympathetic to its cause. 

Driving Act’s Treaty Principles Bill is the party’s refusal to accept the historical, judicial, and political revisionism it perceives as threatening not only the political equality of New Zealand’s citizens, but also the unitary character of the New Zealand state.  

Act argues that this revisionism grew out of successive governments’ unwillingness to allow the legislature to define the Treaty’s purpose and meaning – preferring, instead, to let that responsibility pass to unelected judges and academics sympathetic to the cause of Māori sovereignty. 

And if Act’s plan to let elected representatives define the principles of the Treaty wasn’t alarming enough, the party proposes to have the voting public confirm, or reject, the legislature’s definition in a binding referendum. 

This proposal is utterly unacceptable to the social-liberal elites. Acting through the social-liberal political parties (Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori) their academic allies and sympathetic journalists in the mainstream, social and Māori media, the social-liberal elites have gone onto the offensive. 

Seymour’s associations with the “shadowy” (cue spooky music) Atlas Network, and the links between Atlas and other classical-liberal groups operating in New Zealand – most notably the Taxpayers’ Union – have been woven into “a vast right-wing conspiracy” to strip away the rights of Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. 

Why are the social liberals so determined to discredit Act’s plan for a referendum? They would say that the whole idea is an insult to the Treaty’s sacrosanct status as New Zealand’s foundation document. The New Zealand Parliament can no more meddle with the principles of the Treaty than it can meddle with the principles of Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights of 1688. 

To which Act would doubtless reply that the New Zealand Parliament, being sovereign, can meddle with whatever it likes. Besides, the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights of 1688 have been acknowledged as key constitutional documents by the New Zealand Parliament – which is more than can be said for the Treaty of Waitangi. Moreover, the meaning and purpose of those British documents is not subject to serious historical dispute. And, once again, the same cannot be said of the Treaty. 

The true motivation for the social liberals’ opposition to Act’s policies is that they would undo all the “good work” of the past 40 years. The same political party that abandoned its social-democratic conviction that ordinary New Zealanders were more than capable of defining their own economic interests, is equally unconvinced that they can be trusted to defend the interests of the indigenous Māori. 

When Labour’s Geoffrey Palmer referenced “the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” in the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986, he was very careful not to define them. As a former Professor of Law, Palmer understood that by declining to spell out clearly what the Treaty principles entailed, the legislature was handing the whole job over to the judiciary. That such a serious dereliction of the House of Representatives’ democratic duty remained unreproved is for one very simple reason. The Labour Government did not believe that ordinary New Zealanders could be trusted to deliver the right principles of the Treaty. 

This elite mistrust of ordinary New Zealanders became a bi-partisan phenomenon when National also contrived to keep the people at a safe distance from the Treaty. The same absence of democratic validation was a feature of the Treaty Settlement Process that Jim Bolger and Doug Graham quietly set in motion in the early 1990s. Neither National nor Labour ever seriously contemplated permitting the House to debate a Treaty settlement bill. These were done deals, which arrived pre-signed. Parliament merely applied its rubber stamp. 

This Treaty bi-partisanship continues – albeit maladroitly. While perfectly happy to sail under populist colours, especially those relating to race relations, before the 2023 general election, National Party leader Christopher Luxon was unwilling to go all the way with Seymour after the votes were counted. Luxon balked at committing himself to a referendum he was pretty sure Act’s Treaty Principles Bill would win. Asking the people to decide the meaning of New Zealand’s foundation document would, Luxon insisted, be “unhelpful and divisive”. 

Picking apart this confusing proposition, we arrive at a profoundly unsatisfactory conclusion. National knows that, given the choice, a majority of New Zealanders will very likely vote for a set of Treaty principles that accord with their understanding of democracy. Because they are likely to support Act’s legislation, which does exactly that, it is absolutely imperative that a referendum not take place. The revisionist, deeply undemocratic version of the Treaty now accepted as gospel by the social-liberal elites, must be constitutionally entrenched – whether the people like it or not. 

But there’s a problem. Seymour and Act will not stop promoting their Treaty Principles Bill. Even more worrying, recent polling suggests that their tenacity in this matter is being rewarded with rising public support. 

All of which raises the possibility that Luxon, and his other coalition partner, Winston Peters, under pressure from their caucuses and their supporters in the wider electorate, might change their minds on the desirability of a referendum. And, if the people get their way on the Treaty, what else might they feel emboldened to force to a binding popular vote? 

No wonder the social liberal elites are looking at democracy through narrowed eyes.