Mixed views on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, support for Aotearoa new NowNext survey finds

Friday, 22 April 2022

Stuff's NowNext Pou Tiaki survey finds most respondents believe we should celebrate Waitangi Day but only a third think we're living up to the Treaty of Waitangi.

Issues of social justice, diversity and inclusion are critically important to New Zealanders and the future of Aotearoa. In Stuff’s latest NowNext Pou Tiaki survey, more than 6000 Kiwis participated in challenging kōrero around race relations in Aotearoa. Most aspired to an inclusive nation but there is more work to do.

Attitudes towards Te Tiriti o Waitangi are split, but there is significant support for New Zealand’s founding document to be taught in schools, and for Aotearoa at least being part of our nation’s official name.

Those are just some findings from the Stuff NowNext online survey, which received more than 6000 responses over nine days.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Us

Respondents had varied thoughts about Te Tiriti o Waitangi and how it fits into modern Aotearoa.

More than 30% agreed New Zealand still had a long way to go to live up to the document, while 16% believed the country should be proud of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and what it represents.

* Marlborough's Treaty of Waitangi story and hope for next chapter

Dr Vincent O’Malley has written a number of books on the history of Aotearoa.

* Tiriti o Waitangi: Education and conversation essential to New Zealand becoming one

But 22% felt it wasn’t relevant to modern day New Zealand and 16% felt it had too much importance in setting government policy.

Historian Dr Vincent O’Malley said generations of New Zealanders had little exposure to the history of Aotearoa, which was a decades-old problem.

“So people don’t have the historical awareness or knowledge to fully understand and contextualise the present, and they don’t really understand the wider story of the Treaty.”

For example, he said, one of the lesser known facts about Treaty claims was that when an iwi signed a settlement, they typically signed away about 98% of the value of what was lost.

“So, far from getting rich from [Treaty settlements], iwi are actually making a huge sacrifice as part of that process, but people don’t really understand that …”

Younger New Zealanders tended to be more tolerant of diversity and difference and were prepared to engage with difficult aspects of the country’s history and society.

“It’s been young people, really, who have been leading the way in wanting to engage with this history in a more mature way and really, it’s sort of been the adults holding them back until now,” said O’Malley.

While leader of the National Party, Don Brash bemoaned what he described as “the Treaty grievance industry” in a speech at the Orewa Rotary Club.

Politics, New Zealand and Populism

More than two-thirds of the NowNext respondents agreed the slogan “Kiwi vs Iwi” incited racism, revealing the sentiment does not have wide appeal.

In 2005, the National Party released campaign billboards bearing the slogan, following the controversial “Orewa Speech” made by then-party leader Don Brash, the year before.

In that speech, Brash said he intended to remove “divisive race-based features from legislation” and the “anachronism” of Māori seats in Parliament.

Brash also lamented the “Treaty grievance industry” and said New Zealand was drifting dangerously towards racial separatism.

Political scientist at the University of Auckland Dr Lara Greaves said populism in New Zealand tended to focus on Māori.

“When you look at the things that New Zealand First and Winston Peters say, it’s generally anti-immigrant but also anti-Māori rights, or they have a different view of Māori rights, basically,” said Greaves.

“We see ACT come out quite a lot with anti-Māori rhetoric, and of course we go back to the famous 2004 Don Brash Orewa speech.”

Greaves said New Zealand populism often failed to recognise past injustices and differences of experience.

NowNext: 62% are open to Aotearoa also being New Zealand's name.

While New Zealand did not have much hate crime reporting, Greaves said instances of hate speech towards Māori could be seen on social media.

“Messaging of politicians, very hateful things and like that kind of targeting.

“So I think what we do have is that capacity in New Zealand to see polarisation around Treaty attitudes, but mainly that is more a minority doubling down with a lot of hate.”

Aotearoa New Zealand

Our nation's identity has been the spotlight for some time, with Te Pāti Māori launching a petition to get New Zealand's official name changed to Aotearoa in September 2021.

The petition collected more than 51,000 signatures on its first day and also called for the restoration of te reo Māori names for all towns, cities and places.

Earlier in the year the then National Party leader, Judith Collins, backed calls for a referendum on the name of New Zealand and said people had been getting “tetchy” about Aotearoa being used without consultation.

Respondents to the NowNext survey were asked how they felt about the idea of New Zealand being officially renamed Aotearoa.

While 21% agreed with the idea, believing it to be the more appropriate option, 28% weren’t totally sold, instead preferring “Aotearoa New Zealand”.

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Te Tiriti o Waitangi is New Zealand’s founding document and can be viewed at the National Library.

There was also a relatively large amount of resistance to any change, with 34% of respondents wanting things to stay as they are.

Just 13% said they would be open if a majority voted for it, and only 4% were undecided.

Looking backward to move forward

When it came to including Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the compulsory history curriculum, there were high levels of support, with 74% of respondents in agreement.

O’Malley said it was an encouraging response as people sometimes thought of the Treaty story as something that just happened in 1840.

“But of course it’s an evolving one, and I mean one of the aspects of that history that people don’t sometimes understand is that you know, there’s not one Treaty,” he said.

“There are various versions of that and, really, the Crown and Māori at the time had competing understandings and expectations of what that Treaty relationship would involve …”

For O’Malley, not having an awareness of where you have come from made it difficult to plot the road ahead.

“We need to have a sense of where we’ve come from, we need to have a sense of our own path, the good, the bad and the ugly, all of it,” he said.

“We need to have the maturity to own that history and that’s, I think, that’s a healthy thing.

“To be upfront and honest about our path and that provides a blueprint for moving on into the future in an upfront and honest way and a mature way, as well.”