New Zealand First says it will abolish the Waitangi Tribunal and replace it with a temporary body that finishes off historical Treaty claims and then shuts down, a pledge Winston Peters made at a public meeting in Tauranga on Saturday afternoon with 42 days left before the 7 November election.
Speaking at Holy Trinity Church, Peters said the party would move quickly if it holds the balance of power again. “New Zealand First will table legislation within the first 100 days after the next election to immediately abolish the Waitangi Tribunal, and replace it with the Treaty of Waitangi Completion Commission,” he said, according to the full text of the speech published on Scoop.
The new commission would have a single job, which Peters described as “finalising all claims pre 2008, after which time its work will be finished.” Claims about current government policy, which the tribunal now hears through its urgent and kaupapa (theme-based) inquiries, would move to a strengthened Ministry of Māori Development. The ministry would also take back responsibility for Crown relations with Māori, as set out in the 1991 law that created it, and would be directed to speed up Māori land reform and fix administrative problems in the Māori Land Court.
Peters framed the policy as a defence of Parliament. “The Treaty of Waitangi tribunal has become a make work organisation,” he told the meeting, arguing it now hears claims that would once have been thrown out at the start. He singled out claims that challenge Parliament’s right to pass laws, calling them “a direct semi judicial threat against the very essence of our democracy.”
“The days of the tribunal acting as an authority above parliament will be over,” he said. “We will put an end to activists using the Tribunal and taxpayers money as a platform to interfere with the direction and legislation of parliament.”
RNZ reported the announcement on Saturday afternoon, and 1News said Peters argued the tribunal was no longer fit for purpose in today’s political environment. The party said the change would let New Zealanders get back to being equal citizens with equal rights.
The Tauranga speech was a wide-ranging stump speech. Peters also repeated New Zealand First’s promise to cut company tax to 20 percent for firms with turnover under $30 million, talked up the party’s prevention-first health plan, and closed with the party’s pitch of “one country, called New Zealand, one flag, one standard of citizenship, one law for all, and one democracy where everybody is equal.”
The pledge goes further than ACT, New Zealand First’s coalition partner, which released its own tribunal policy on 10 September. ACT would confine the tribunal to historical claims lodged before the existing 1 September 2008 cut-off, end its power to examine current government policy, and let it wind down once the last historical claims are heard, without setting a closing date. 1News reported the tribunal itself aims to finish its remaining historical inquiries by 2030.
Announcing that policy on 10 September, ACT leader David Seymour said “The historical claims were clearly wrong to anybody,” but argued that the tribunal’s recent inquiries into day-to-day government decisions went beyond its purpose. “This is not the tribunal’s role and never was,” he said.
The difference between the two parties is mainly about timing and certainty. ACT would let funding shrink as the historical workload runs down. New Zealand First would abolish the tribunal outright by law early in the next term and hand the leftover historical work to a new commission with a fixed end point.
Peters had signalled the move on the same day ACT released its plan. In a 10 September interview with Chris Lynch Media, he accused ACT of repeating an approach tried decades ago and said attempts under former Prime Minister Jim Bolger to bring claims to an end had not worked. “We’re going to stop this right here, right now,” he said then. He also rejected Te Pāti Māori’s proposal to make tribunal findings binding, adding “Worse still, this is not a court. This is a mere tribunal.”
Labour has taken the opposite view. Responding to ACT’s policy on 10 September, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said Labour would keep the tribunal and disputed claims it had drifted from its purpose. “The people who claim that don’t know the history of the Waitangi Tribunal,” he told reporters, according to 1News. “They’ve taken race relations back about 40 years already. Now they want to take race relations back 200 years.”
The tribunal was set up in 1975 as a permanent commission of inquiry, and at first it could look only at Crown actions from that year on. In 1985 Parliament extended its reach back to 1840, which laid the groundwork for the historical settlements that followed. Its findings are recommendations and, in almost all cases, are not binding on the Government.
That non-binding power has still made it a flashpoint this term. Since 2023 the tribunal has held urgent inquiries into the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, the rules for Māori wards on councils and the Treaty Principles Bill. It found the Crown had breached Treaty principles each time. The Government went ahead regardless, as it is legally entitled to do, and two of the three measures became law. The Treaty Principles Bill was voted down 112 to 11 at its second reading in April 2025.
The 2023 coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First already committed the Government to a review refocusing the tribunal’s scope and inquiries on its original intent. As of August, ministers were still considering how to respond to that review, which has not been released, according to 1News citing RNZ. National has not said whether it would back either coalition partner’s plan to go further.
Whether any of this happens depends on the numbers after 7 November. Tribunal reform is now a clear dividing line between the governing parties and Labour, and voters weighing where the parties sit on the Treaty and other issues can use our voting tool to see which party best matches their views.
Should the Waitangi Tribunal be abolished, limited to historical claims, or left as it is? Tell us what you think 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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