BROADCASTS.com

I was wondering how long it would take, given what we have seen this week at Waitangi.\xa0

ACT have launched a campaign to outline some facts on their Treaty Principles Bill.\xa0

They have done this because, like most of these sort of debates, what you start out with by way of an idea very quickly turns into something else, due largely to those who oppose it and start to spread the misinformation.\xa0

The Treaty Principles Bill has turned into, if you listen to those who don\u2019t want it, a law to rewrite the Treaty, trash the Treaty, change the Treaty, strip rights away from M\u0101ori and so it goes.\xa0

The original idea was a referendum. We listen, we debate, we vote.\xa0

What is being pointed out in this campaign is that what we started with i.e. the same rights and duties for all New Zealanders, has been over the past few decades twisted into a series of ideas, not to mention laws, that somehow leaves us with a system whereby M\u0101ori, because they are M\u0101ori, get things non-M\u0101ori don\u2019t.\xa0

That, in simple terms, is not what was signed up to.\xa0

The M\u0101ori Health Authority, and its future for example, will be part of a Waitangi Tribunal case.\xa0

Firstly, the tribunal has no teeth, and they don't make law.\xa0

Secondly, the M\u0101ori Health Authority is, comparatively speaking, brand new and is a good example of what ACT argue.\xa0

The Treaty wanted all New Zealanders to have equal access to healthcare, and we do. Healthcare does not discriminate on race.\xa0

But a M\u0101ori Health Authority is a race-based organisation.\xa0

The interpretation of the Treaty has become an industry. The simplicity of a 200-year-old document has turned into an exercise in minutiae, with outworkings that may or may not have anything to do with the original intention.\xa0

And that is all ACT want to do - debate it, not rewrite it.\xa0

You could argue that if this goes nowhere it's a lot of energy for nothing, especially given the state the country is in elsewhere. But as the Curia poll showed, 60% of us broadly like the idea.\xa0

I think ACT are onto something.\xa0

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.