300,000!

Over the holidays, there was a rising tide of calls for people to submit on National's repulsive, white supremacist Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, along with a wave of advice and examples of what to say. And it looks like people rose to the occasion, with over 300,000 submissions received so far:

Initial estimates showed that over 300,000 submissions have been lodged online. The committee said more than half of those submissions came on Tuesday, which caused the site to crash.

The previous record for submissions was just over 100,000 on the conversion therapy legislation in 2021.

Assuming that they're all kiwis, and not foreign MuskBots, that means more than 5% of the population of Aotearoa felt strongly enough about this bill to speak up about it. Which is a massive level of mobilisation.

We don't know yet - and won't know for months, given the numbers - whether the balance of submissions favour or oppose the bill. But Luxon's hopes of being able to vote this down at second reading and put the issue to bed quietly are clearly dead. No-one is going to be talking about anything else for as long as this bill is before the house, and even once it is voted down or voted through, people are not going to forget. Especially if it is voted through, because there's clearly enough of a motivated base of activism here to drive a significant anti-government protest movement if National passes this law, and to push for it to be reversed (I'm less concerned about the other case, because while there are clearly some motivated racists - the National and ACT caucuses, for a start - its not like there were a hundred thousand of them in front of parliament calling for the Treaty to be abolished).

Given the numbers - three times the previous record - its no wonder the parliament website melted under the load. The good news is that the Justice Committee has done the right thing, and extended the submission deadline for another five days. So, if you haven't already, Submit!. History is watching, and like the Tour, people in twenty or forty years time will want to know which side you were on. Are you going to do your part, or stay silent in the face of white supremacy?

Submitted!

Submissions on National's racist, white supremacist Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill are due tomorrow! So today, after a good long holiday from all that bullshit, I finally got my shit together to submit on it.

As I noted here, people should write their own submissions in their own words, so I'm not going to post the thing. But in keeping with the idea of not wanting to waste my time on what is essentially a disgusting ACT trolling exercise, or in trying to compete with recognised Tiriti and constitutional experts who will say things better than I ever could, I kept it short. My key point was that the bill effectively unilaterally abrogates te Tiriti without consultation with the Tiriti partner, let alone negotiation or agreement, and that this is deeply dishonest and dishonourable. Sadly, I failed to include a Darth Vader reference, but that's probably for the bests. ACT would probably think being compared to one of SF's most notorious villains is cool, because like sad little incels they took all the wrong lessons from those movies.

I also pointed out that Parliament has shamed itself and undermined its own legitimacy by even considering the bill, and that it needs to make restitution for this. Most obviously, this means killing the bill dead. But they need to do more: apologising to Māori and the people of Aotearoa for even considering this bullshit, publicly censuring the Minister for bringing the bill to the House, and putting safeguards in place to prevent similar actions in future. I suggest a BORA-style mechanism to help prevent unwitting Tiriti breaches, as well as legislation similar to Tākuta Ferris' Treaty of Waitangi (Empowerment of Waitangi Tribunal) Amendment Bill (currently in the biscuit tin) to ensure Parliament is well-informed and prevent executive interference in the Tribunal's functions. I don't expect the current pack of racist arsehats to consider either option - but hopefully the opposition will be more committed to protecting the basis of our constitution from racist meddling.