February 6 became a national holiday under Norman Kirk from 1974, though renamed as \u201cNew Zealand Day\u201d \u2013 the occasion was marked with an audience, Queen Elizabeth among them, being treated to an elaborate performance including a dancing moa laying an egg<\/a>. Nobody knows what happened to the moa, but in 1977 the name reverted to Waitangi Day.<\/p>\n From a political perspective, there tends to be an added fascination in an election year. How have prime ministers in our recent history approached that challenge? Let\u2019s start by alighting on 1990, another of the years in which the Crown was represented by someone who wears an actual crown.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pop quiz: Who was the New Zealand prime minister in February 1990? It was Geoffrey Palmer, then halfway through his 13 months in the job. There was plenty of attention on Waitangi \u2013 it was, after all, the sesquicentenary of the treaty signing. This was the year that a protester hurled a wet T-shirt at the Queen.\u00a0<\/p>\n M\u0101ori and P\u0101keh\u0101 must \u201clive together as one nation\u201d, said the prime minister at Waitangi. \u201cIn the past decade we have confronted realities about the Treaty of Waitangi. Grievances are being resolved now in a way which is just and which is ordered \u2026 This generation will be judged by its successors on the way we managed to deal with issues raised by the document whose signature we mark today.\u201d<\/p>\n The Queen said, \u201cToday, we are strong enough and honest enough to learn the lessons of the last 150 years and to admit that the treaty has been imperfectly observed.\u201d Her speech, like Palmer\u2019s, was heckled throughout, before the crowd was won over by a rousing impromptu exhortation <\/a>from Whakahuihui Vercoe, the bishop of Aotearoa. \u201cThe treaty was a compact between two people, but since the signing of that treaty, 150 years ago, I want to remind our partner that you have marginalised us,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have not honoured the treaty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Jim Bolger arrived at Waitangi after a combustible couple of years <\/a>notable for reforms including the \u201cmother of all budgets\u201d and the Employment Contracts Act. In terms of Crown-M\u0101ori relations, the Sealord deal \u2013 which received a mixed response in te ao M\u0101ori \u2013 had been sealed a few months earlier. There was some protest, but the occasion was reported to be largely \u201cincident free\u201d. Bolger did prompt some controversy after the commemorations by suggesting M\u0101ori commentators had too often overlooked a \u201cvery simple word of thanks\u201d. He said: \u201cI think it is important that New Zealand hears that word from time to time when legitimate claims have been genuinely addressed. It is easy to just go on and extend the list of claims, but occasionally just remember to say thanks, and I think that perhaps that was forgotten too often in this year\u2019s Waitangi celebrations.\u201d<\/p>\n To talk about 1996, we need to talk about 1995. Then, Waitangi Day came in the molten heat of the \u201cfiscal envelope\u201d controversy, with opposition to the government\u2019s billion-dollar cap on treaty settlements spilling into angry protest around Te Tii Marae. Speaking to a business audience 10 days later, Jim Bolger said: \u201cWhat happened at Waitangi means there can be no going back to commemorate and celebrate Waitangi as it was. That is over. That shouldn\u2019t cause too much grief. In recent years it has served as a focus for anger, protest and rudeness. There has been a lot of shouting but little, if any, listening.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Winston Peters, leader of the newly formed New Zealand First Party, retorted: \u201cWho is he to decide what will become of Waitangi Day? Whatever it becomes, it will assume a form that best suits all New Zealanders, not just Jim Bolger. To maintain otherwise demonstrates the kind of clumsy arrogance that has characterised the prime minister\u2019s handling of the debate so far.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When February 1996 rolled around, neither Bolger nor the governor general attended Waitangi, though deputy PM Don McKinnon and Labour leader Helen Clark were there. Protesters clashed with police over access to the upper grounds but it largely passed uneventfully.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having toppled Bolger in 1997, Jenny Shipley as prime minister continued his commitment to ongoing treaty settlements. (The fiscal envelope had been finally torn up as part of the first MMP coalition agreement, between National and NZ First, in 1996.) Shipley attended the dawn ceremony in 1998, but that was in many ways overshadowed by what happened to her rival. Helen Clark, the Labour leader, was visibly distraught at being challenged by Ng\u0101puhi activist Titewhai Harawira and prevented from speaking on Te Tii. Formal Crown representation \u2013 the first since 1995 \u2013 would resume in 1999, when both the prime minister and governor general took part, but not Clark.<\/p>\n Helen Clark returned to Waitangi for the first time since 1998, and for the first time as prime minister. Escorted on to the marae by Titewhai Harawira in a gesture of conciliation, Clark did not speak, and declined to have a male MP speak in her stead.\u00a0<\/p>\n Helen Clark travelled to Waitangi, but this time stayed away from Te Tii Marae. That came after heated exchanges in 2004, during which she was heckled and jostled by protesters enraged by controversial foreshore and seabed legislation, which vested ownership of the terrain to the Crown and ruled out M\u0101ori seeking customary title. (2004 was also the year when Don Brash, fresh from his \u014crewa speech as National leader, was splattered in Waitangi mud.)<\/p>\n Again, Helen Clark visited Waitangi but steered clear of the Te Tii p\u014dwhiri. John Key, the leader of a National Party that had by now opened up a big polling lead over Labour, and dubbed <\/a>a \u201cglamour boy\u201d at Waitangi by a Northern Advocate reporter, did attend the marae, and promised to attend every year if he became prime minister.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the third year, prime minister John Key encountered protest on his way to Te Tii. In 2011, after being escorted on to the marae by M\u0101ori Party co-leader Pita Sharples, he praised the party for their support in government and urged M\u0101ori to focus less on grievance of the past and more on the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n John Key was at Te Tii Marae for the political welcome and the dawn service on the day itself. Locals reportedly <\/a>called the mood \u201cfairly low-key and tame\u201d, and the prime minister felt much the same way, despite a dead fish-themed protest over environmental policy. \u201cYes, some guy threw a bag of pilchards or something on the way out but, bluntly, I\u2019ve been coming now for eight years, and \u2026 this would have to be at the milder end of the spectrum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This was also the first year that women were allowed to speak at Te Tii Marae, and Greens co-leader Metiria Turei became the first female politician to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2016, with controversy swirling around the TPP trade deal, John Key had decided against going to Waitangi a few days beforehand, after being told he could not speak on the marae \u2013 effectively a \u201cgagging order\u201d, he said. In his absence, Steven Joyce stole the show, kind of<\/a>. Would he return in 2017? That was never tested, because he resigned as prime minister later that year.\u00a0<\/p>\n His successor, Bill English, was refused full rights to speak at the Te Tii Marae in 2017, so decided to scarper after the February 3 Iwi Chairs Forum. On Waitangi Day, he joined Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua at Bastion Point, which received at least one glowing review<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In February 2018, six months after she became Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern had arrived as prime minister at Waitangi. The first female prime minister to speak at the political p\u014dwhiri \u2013 now relocated across the bridge and up the hill at Te Whare R\u016bnanga \u2013 declared <\/a>from the verandah: \u201cHold us to account. Because one day I want to be able to tell my child that I earned the right to stand here \u2026 Only you can tell me when I have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, she called back to that speech, saying: \u201cWhen I first came here, I said hold me to account and I will keep coming back here so you can do just that. Not because we lack scrutiny, there is plenty of that, but because we should never be afraid of it.\u201d The National leader, Simon Bridges, said if she were held to account, Ardern would be found wanting, provoking a rebuke from Ardern\u2019s deputy, Winston Peters, who accused Bridges of politicising the occasion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ardern would go on to win the 2020 election by a landslide in a time of Covid, but it would be her last election-year Waitangi.\u00a0<\/p>\n After two years of commemorations cancelled because of the pandemic, the political exchanges resumed at Waitangi, with a pair of Chrises newly in the top jobs, Chris Luxon having replaced Judith Collins, who had replaced Todd Muller, who had replaced Simon Bridges, and Chris Hipkins having replaced Ardern, who just a few days before Waitangi Day had decided to quit as prime minister.\u00a0<\/p>\nA moa in labour<\/p>\n
Jim Bolger and speaker of the house Peter Tapsell at Waitangi in 1995 (Photo: Ross Land\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Titewhai Harawira and Jenny Shipley during Waitangi commemorations at Te Tii Marae in 1999 (Photo: Phil Walter\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Helen Clark and Titewhai Harawira at Waitangi in 2002 (Photo: Michael Bradley\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Jacinda Ardern speaks at Te Whare R\u016bnanga at Waitangi in 2018 (Photo: Phil Walter\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Christopher Luxon accepts a wero during the p\u014dwhiri at Te Whare R\u016bnanga in 2024 (Photo: Fiona Goodall\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n