The speech was entitled “A Time for Healing and a Time for Growth”. In it, he pointed out the problems that New Zealand had with race relations and addressed the need for the country to move speedily on realistic solutions. In the course of the speech, he deliberately said, “I will never be a racist, no matter how many votes might be gained by going down that road.”
What follows is a fascinating insight into the character of Jim Bolger:
“ … I could never take advantage of race issues to gain political advantage. Nor can I understand those who do. That was the reason I reacted so sharply to the way Winston Peters raised the question of Asian immigration prior to the 1996 election. He was clearly feeding the prejudices of those who blamed recently arrived Asian families for many of Auckland’s problems. It was another version of blaming Pacific Islanders in the ′70s … After my speech at the conference in 1988, I was saddened that a few of the delegates and one or two parliamentary colleagues approached me and said, ‘Don’t rule out the race card, Jim. We may need it to win in 1990 yet’. I recall my answer: ‘Playing the race card may help us win – then come Monday, how do we run the country?’ They had no answer.”
Jim then outlined some of the initial settlements for which he and Doug Graham were responsible, including the Sealord deal, signed on September 23, 1992, the Tainui settlement, signed on May 22, 1995, and finally the Ngāi Tahu settlement, signed on November 21, 1997.
Having been involved in the Ngāi Tahu team, I was lucky to be at Kaikōura the day outgoing Prime Minister Jim Bolger arrived by helicopter and, with huge pride, signed the deed of settlement with Sir Tipene O’Regan. It was Jim’s last official function prior to resigning as Prime Minister.
Jim Bolger was a great New Zealander. History will treat him very well.
Jim never played the race card. As he said, it may help us to win, but how do we run the country the following Monday? The delegates and the MPs had no answer then, and they have no answer now. Regrettably, Jim Bolger’s statesmanship is missing today.
Jim understood that courage means not only standing up to your enemies, but also standing up to your friends. The current generation of politicians seems to have forgotten that.
So what have we seen in the years 2023 to 2026? Although it is arguable that the Ardern/Hipkins Government moved too fast in the Treaty space between 2017 and 2023, the reaction from the coalition Government between 2023 and 2026 has been lamentable. This has manifested itself in a number of ways, ranging from petty and mean-spirited to very serious.
Examples of the petty, mean-spirited approach can be seen with the clamping down on the use of te reo, particularly on public notices. So the names of government entities, for example, have been changed to reflect the fact that they must be referred to in English. Some of this is just plain silly. Our national museum has been known as Te Papa since 1990.
No-one realistically is suggesting that its name be changed to the Museum of New Zealand. What some of the members of the current Government don’t seem to understand is that English in any event has a greater capacity than any other language to absorb “foreign” terms. Everyone knows what “blitzkrieg” means. So too with “tsunami”, “sushi” and so many other words.
But this chapter is not intended to be a linguistic lesson, so I will leave it there. Suffice to say that many te reo words are used interchangeably by ordinary New Zealanders in their everyday conversation. Kai, whare … the list is endless. Deciding to expunge or denigrate te reo words is both petty and pointless.
So, too, the almost obsessive attempt to expunge any reference to the phrase “Treaty principles” from legislation and Government pronouncements. The phrase has only been around for 50 years.
Then there are the substantive changes. The worst of the substantive changes was the passage in 2025 of the Marine and Coastal Area Amendment Act. This legislation represented a first in lawmaking. Governments will from time to time change the law if there is an adverse decision in the courts.
This Government pressed on with changing the law even though they had won a seminal case in the Supreme Court. Most odious about the 2025 amendment were the repeated incantations by coalition MPs that the Amendment Act was clarifying the law. That is a falsehood.
‘Falsehood was continually repeated’
The changes introduced by the 2025 amendment now mean that it will be virtually impossible to satisfy the test for customary marine title and applicants will have the onus of proving non-extinguishment.
It is simply untrue to say that this change was intended to better reflect the parliamentary intention when the Marine and Coastal Act was passed in 2017. Yet this falsehood was continually repeated and there was no real challenge in the media to the proposition.
The Minister of Justice was, for example, asked on a number of occasions why he was reversing the onus of proof and simply responded that the foreshore and seabed is the birthright of all New Zealanders and the Government wanted to ensure public access. That was not only a complete non-sequitur of an answer, but was untrue.
Chris Finlayson (kneeling) when he was Minister of Treaty Settlements at the Maungaharuru Tangitu Treaty Settlement Signing at Tāngoio Marae, Tāngoio, Hawke’s Bay, on May 27, 2013. Photo / Duncan Brown
The real reason for the passage of the 2025 amendment is that Māori claimants, having in good faith started to engage in the process in the courts, were winning too many cases. There are two responses to this.
First, that Māori were winning reflected the quality of their evidence and submission and, secondly, arguments to the contrary mounted by the Crown and others were poor. And, in any event, even if a Māori claimant was successful in the High Court, the Crown and other interested parties could appeal any decision to the appellate courts.
This is shameful and unjust legislation, which does not reflect the parliamentary intention as at 2010. Other legislative developments, while not as egregiously discriminatory as the Marine and Coastal Area Amendment Act 2025, have also hurt and inflamed Māori. Recent legislative developments, particularly in the RMA and conservation areas, have the potential to undermine Treaty settlements.
Some proposals are more misguided than vicious, like the 2025 amendment. The debate about the Treaty Principles Bill was much ado about nothing. It was doomed to fail and should never have got off the ground.
The principles articulated in that legislation could possibly be included in a constitution (with others), but they did not reflect Treaty principles. The Regulatory Standards Act was not so much an attack on Māori as a misguided theoretical attempt to deal with an issue which had already been addressed by the Legislation Act.
In 2010, the Law Commission had published a very good report on the quality of legislation and, as Attorney-General, I was very supportive of the recommendations in that report.
This resulted in the passage of the Legislation Act 2011, which contained proposals to ensure more effective law-making. It was quality legislation and did not need to be supplemented by the Regulatory Standards Act which, in any event, makes partisan that which should be almost blandly bipartisan – the making of good law.
Tony Abbott, a former Prime Minister of Australia, has written a history of that country and describes how an ancient land became a great democracy. In that account of Australia’s development, he refers to the comment made by Sir Robert Menzies, the Liberal Prime Minister from 1949 to 1966, when he said that he would rather vote Labor than vote for a party that had no soul.
Increasing numbers of New Zealanders are looking at the present coalition (2023–2026) in that light. For the sake of the coalition, and far more importantly New Zealand, things have to change. So where to from here?
This is not a puff-piece extolling the virtues of the Treaty of Waitangi. Nor is it intended to be a legalistic analysis of the Treaty forming the basis of a partnership. All those arguments have been well traversed in some of my speeches over the years and I do not repeat them here.
My prescription for the immediate future is:
Respect Māori property rights. Those rights are not the same as Pākehā property rights but should be respected.Māori should have the same access to the justice system that all New Zealanders have. The immediate reaction to that statement will be “well, of course that is the case”. But the shameful experience of the Marine and Coastal Area Amendment Act 2025 shows that not to be the case.Avoid hyperbole on both sides. The rhetoric is too intense and needs to be toned down. My particular concern is the constant invocation of the misleading and deceptive phrase “Māori privilege”. There is no Māori privilege in this country. That kind of hyperbole does nothing to advance race relations.Both sides of politics need to understand that there needs to be buy-in from the general public. Sometimes a revolution is required.
Many people will disagree with me when I talk about the revolution that occurred from 1984 to 1987. That kind of massive change was required for the sake of the country. But, generally speaking, careful incremental change can have better results. Making haste, not necessarily slowly but steadily, is a better prescription for success.
2026 will be a very important year in New Zealand politics. Election years always are. But in the area of relationship between the Crown and Māori, careful thought needs to be given to the future. The actions of the last three years have been destructive and harmful to that relationship. What is needed now is a careful and generous approach to this most important relationship.
Chris Finlayson, KC, was the former Attorney-General under Sir John Key and negotiated many Treaty settlements.
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