The Supreme Court stands up for fairness

National is planning to breach te Tiriti o Waitangi by amending the Marine and Coastal Area Act to effectively make it impossible for the courts to recognise Māori rights over the foreshore and seabed. But its also been playing dirty in other ways. Earlier in the year it announced changes to the funding regime for Marine and Coastal Area Act cases, cutting their funding in an obvious attempt to limit both claims and their success. A side-effect of this change - a total coincidence, I'm sure - was to cut funding for the claimants in the Edwards case (which had made it easier to recognise rights over the foreshore), who were attempting to defend their victory against the government in the Supreme Court. This is obviously an unjust abuse of power to strap the legal chicken - and now the Supreme Court has recognised it as such, issuing a rare prospective costs order against the government:

In a rare decision, heavy with judicial and political implications, the country’s top court has told the Crown it must give advance financial support to a group of hapū challenging it over the Marine and Coastal Areas Act.

[...]

The five-judge panel of the Supreme Court observed the Crown had previously been an interested party in the case.

Now it had become a direct party by appealing the Court of Appeal’s findings on customary marine title, raising the prospect of one party to the argument taking funding away from the other.

“This alteration represents a substantial disadvantage in effect now imposed by one litigant upon another, at the final stage of proceedings,” the Supreme Court found, “despite that litigant having previously recognised the responsibility to ensure all sides of the argument before the courts could be advanced with full and adequate funding.”

Effectively this restores the status quo ante of government funding for the case, undoing the harm of the government's cuts and allowing the case to be decided on its merits, rather than who has the biggest wallet. And despite the Court's disclaimers, its difficult to see this as anything other than a strong criticism of unfair behaviour and abuse of power by the government.

National has of course already pledged to overturn the judgement no matter what the court decides. Which shows what they really think of Māori rights and the rule of law. They may very well pass such legislation. But if they do, the next government will simply undo it. Which raise the obvious question: wouldn't it be better to avoid all that civil disorder and damage to both the Crown-Māori relationship and the legitimacy of the state, and simply let the court decide the case on its merits? Or would they rather destroy our society in order to cling to an outdated colonial mindset for a few more years?