The Waitangi Tribunal has called for an immediate halt to draft government legislation that would weaken Treaty obligations in the Education and Training Act, saying the proposed changes are as bad as David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill in their attempt to erase the Crown’s duty to the agreement signed in 1840.
In its stage one report released on Friday, the Tribunal found the Crown had breached the principles of partnership and good government when Cabinet agreed on 23 February to either weaken or entirely remove the Treaty clauses in the Act. Presiding officer Rachel Mullins addressed the report in a letter to Education Minister Erica Stanford, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, Regulation Minister David Seymour, Māori Crown Relations Minister Tama Potaka and Resources Minister Shane Jones, the five ministers responsible for the wider Treaty review.
According to the Tribunal’s report, published by RNZ, the Crown filed a memorandum the night before the inquiry was due to begin, disclosing for the first time that Cabinet had decided to downgrade the Treaty standard in multiple sections of the Act to no higher than “take into account”, to amend or repeal section 536A(1), and to replace references to te Tiriti with a reference to both the English and Māori texts.
“Cabinet’s decisions were new to us and had been made without any consultation or engagement with Māori,” Mullins said in the letter. She described Goldsmith’s view that the select committee process would provide a sufficient opportunity for input as “manifestly inadequate and an insult to Māori”.
The Tribunal found the Crown had ignored its own officials’ advice. “We considered that the Crown acted contrary to officials’ advice and demonstrated a reckless disregard for the (likely and advised) harm to the Māori-Crown relationship that would result from its approach,” Mullins wrote. The only national Māori body consulted was the National Iwi Chairs Forum, and that contact only came after substantive Cabinet decisions had already been made.
The original inquiry was filed by Ngāti Hine, Te Kapotai and the education union NZEI Te Riu Roa, and was set to examine the removal of school boards’ legal obligation to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi along with plans to reset the national curriculum. The Tribunal expanded its scope after the late Cabinet disclosure and has now granted urgency to a separate inquiry into proposed changes to Treaty clauses across eight other Acts.
The strongest language in the report compared the education changes directly to the Treaty Principles Bill, which Seymour championed before it was voted down in Parliament earlier in the current term. “It is as bad as the Treaty Principles Bill in its attempt to erase the Crown’s duty to comply with the agreement made between Māori and the Crown in 1840,” Mullins wrote. “It may even be worse, because the Treaty Principles Bill in theory was never going to be enacted.”
The Tribunal said the proposed shift from “give effect to” the Treaty down to “take into account” represented one of the lowest standards available in New Zealand law, and that the change would signal a clear retreat from the Crown’s existing commitments. “It is, as we put it, an attempt by the Crown to takahi the mana of the treaty and its place in the laws of Aotearoa,” the report said. “We do not have jurisdiction to discuss the amendments intended for other pieces of legislation, but we would be surprised if our findings did not apply equally to those as well.”
The report set out three specific recommendations. The Crown should immediately halt the advancement of any amending legislation that would change the Treaty standard in the Education and Training Act. It should engage meaningfully with Māori in the co-design of any future Treaty provisions in the Act. And it should take immediate steps to repair the Māori-Crown relationship after what the Tribunal described as a major breach of partnership.
Goldsmith has not yet made final decisions on changes to the purpose provisions in the Act, which currently refer to giving effect to and honouring the Treaty. The Tribunal said he appeared likely to downgrade those commitments as well, which would send ripple effects across the entire Act, including provisions on early childhood, the tertiary sector and the operation of the Teaching Council.
Comment was requested from Goldsmith’s office. The minister has previously argued the review is intended to bring consistency across statutes that have inherited Treaty references over many decades, and to remove what the Coalition Government considers a patchwork of unclear and inconsistent legal duties on agencies. National, ACT and New Zealand First all campaigned on tightening Treaty references in legislation before the 2023 election, although the specific Education and Training Act proposals had not previously been made public.
The Tribunal will now turn to stage two, which will examine the removal of school boards’ Treaty obligations and the planned curriculum reforms. A separate urgent inquiry into the wider eight-Act review is expected to begin shortly.
The case lands at a politically sensitive moment for the Coalition. The latest Curia poll showed the Coalition slipping with ACT and New Zealand First taking the heaviest knocks, even as it retained a 62-seat majority. Treaty policy has been one of the issues most strongly identified with the Government’s slide in Māori-roll seats, and a strongly worded Tribunal report comparing the Education Act work to the Treaty Principles Bill is unlikely to make the politics any easier.
With the 2026 general election now firmly on the horizon, Treaty obligations in legislation are shaping up as one of the defining policy contests of the campaign. If you want to see where each party sits on the Treaty, education, and the wider role of government, try our 2026 voting tool to compare positions.
What do you think of the Tribunal’s findings, and should the Government pause and re-consult before pushing ahead with the Education and Training Act changes? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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