Speech by David Seymour, Deputy Prime Minister
Te Whare Rūnanga, February 5th, 2026
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira mā. Tenā, koutou katoa.
I’m proud to be here, celebrating the 186th anniversary of the Treaty being signed on these grounds. I show up because I care about this country, and about liberal democracy. That is the idea that each person has an equal right over political decision making in this country.
Someone has to deliver that message because the comfort we enjoy in our lives is thanks to that liberal democratic order. I’m always amazed by the myopic drone that colonisation and everything that’s happened in our country was all bad. The truth is that very few things are completely good or completely bad.
Let’s acknowledge the simple truth that this society is one of the mode successful in history. Without acknowledging these basic facts, it is difficult to make progress.
This morning, I was in the dining hall of the Copthorne Waitangi. I was surrounded by all the good and the great, mostly the people sitting over there. Someone said to me, ‘this is like Māori Davos’. The queue stretched around the corner and you couldn’t get a flat white for any money. I thought, and here’s me, a poor boy from Whangarei.
Last year my message was a challenge to the elites, to the outspoken opponents of this Government and its policies: How do we actually go together, and what is actually needed by the people most at need in this country? And it was a call for a liberal democratic framework where all have the same rights and duties.
Now, for some reason my political radar did not pick up universal embrace of this message, but popularity does not make a message true. Nor does unpopularity make one untrue.
The truth is our Government has just got on with fixing what matters for all Kiwis, and that is good for Māori, too. Let me count just a few ways we’re changing policy to make life better.
Crime is down across the board. It always astonishes me when people believe being tough on crime is anti-Māori. Tell that to the Māori who are disproportionately victims. I’m proud that we live in a society with fewer victims than two years ago, no matter who they are.
The most vulnerable victims are children. I couldn’t be prouder to stand with our Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, a true New Zealand hero. She is the first Minister to actually visit all 58 Oranga Tamariki facilities. Crime in those facilities is going down and this week she signed a landmark partnership to cooperate with Ngāpuhi. That is fixing what actually matters for all children, but helping Māori the most.
In education, we’re getting school attendance up every term, because it may be hard to learn at school, but it’s impossible if you’re truant. Up and down New Zealand, children are discovering education can be more attractive to attend, if communities do education their way. Communities are starting charter schools for children with autism, teaching French, classical education, Pasifika schools, and many Māori schools including the wildly successful Te Rito up north in Kaitaia. That is tino rangatiratanga for all, as it should be.
The Resource Management Act is being replaced so it is easier to build. It’s not just about building houses, even though they are very important. It’s also about the roads, the pumping stations, and the treatment plants that connect those houses to jobs. It’s also about making mining and aquaculture possible so those jobs are high paying. Here is the question if you really care about Māori: Is it more important to have a warm dry home and a high paying job, or does your mana depend on the ability of some distant relative to object to progress?
In healthcare, we are funding more medicines than ever, and getting them approved faster. We’re getting vaccination rates up, so third world diseases don’t reappear on our shores. On every health target we’re making progress. We’re benefiting Māori with a focus on efficiency for all people, shedding the inefficient bureaucracy that divided people into identities they never chose.
I could give more examples, but I trust you get the picture. I’m proud to be part of a government that is driving efficiency, from a set of values that say all New Zealanders have equal rights. We each have the right to one five millionth of the opportunity this great country has to offer. That ratio doesn’t change if your ancestors were the first settlers, or the last. Our common humanity is greater than the superficial differences some try to amplify for their own purposes.
It should also be noted that a system of equal rights can include equal rights to live on your own terms. And our Party’s values that each person should be able to choose how they live is more in keeping with tino rangatiratanga, real self-determination for people. We see it in charter schools today. We see it in Karen’s approach to Oranga Tamariki.
And what to make of the Treaty Principles Bill? I can tell you that voting down the Bill was a pyrrhic victory. Many significant Bills in our history were defeated several times before they became the way things always were.
The principles themselves remain strong and popular. You cannot defeat an idea by taking away my microphone. You can only surpass an idea by putting forward a better one. There is no better system than liberal democracy, with equal rights and opportunity for all. Those principles are not only the principles our government operates by, but the ones that will one day define the Treaty in modern law.
No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa.
