Summarised by Centrist
Ruth Richardson, former National Party Minister of Finance, has called the Treaty Principles Bill “a Bill of consequence,” arguing it could end decades of constitutional ambiguity.
In her December 2024 submission on the Bill, she declared, “Parliament must legislate by design, not accident,” slamming what she described as judicial overreach and lawmakers’ abdication of responsibility.
Richardson criticised the courts for introducing “the arrogance of unaccountable elites,” accusing them of weaving tikanga into law and expanding the Treaty’s scope far beyond its original intent.
“The Treaty was never intended to create a written constitution,” she asserted, framing it instead as a pact where sovereignty was ceded to the Crown, property rights secured for Māori, and citizenship granted to all.
She condemned separatist interpretations of the Treaty, warning of the dangers of “dividing us into people of the Treaty and people not of the Treaty.” Richardson drew parallels to apartheid in South Africa, labelling such approaches “morally wrong and bound to end in tears.”
Rejecting He Puapua’s claims that sovereignty was never ceded, she posed three sharp questions to separatist advocates: “Why was a Māori Parliament not constituted in 1840? How would a separatist regime be funded? And would ancestry dictate its jurisdiction?”
“My basic premise is that we are a one, not a two-tier society,” she concluded.
Read the whole submission here
Image: Taxpayers’ Union
