This year, we've seen a radical, white supremacist government ignoring its Tiriti obligations, refusing to consult with Māori, and even trying to legislatively abrogate te Tiriti o Waitangi. When it was criticised by the Waitangi Tribunal, the government sabotaged that body, replacing its legal and historical experts with corporate shills, historical illiterates, and swivel-eyed weirdos.
This radicalism is unacceptable to the people of Aotearoa, who overwhelmingly support te Tiriti and want it to be honoured. And it's producing pushback. We've already seen a proposal from Te Pāti Māori to strengthen the Waitangi Tribunal and protect it from government fuckery, and now they've gone better, with a proposal for a formal parliamentary guardian for te Tiriti:
Te Pāti Māori will demand the establishment of a new parliamentary commissioner with the power to overrule Parliament if proposed legislation violates Te Tiriti o Waitangi, should they form part of a government.Te Pāti Māori argues that a guardian should be able to do this because te Tiriti, as the foundation of our country, is superior to Parliament. I think most kiwis would agree with them. And if you asked them "should Parliament be able to ignore te Tiriti?" - well, you can see the public's response to that in the hikoi, and the overwhelming rejection of the Treaty Principles Bill.[...]
In a statement released alongside the media stand-up, Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer said their party would campaign on creating an independent Parliamentary Commissioner, who they described as an “advocate ensuring that Te Tiriti is honoured across all government policies and decisions made in Parliament”.
“The commissioner would have the role of auditing the government in being honourable of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It will provide independent advice to Parliament, and ensure Māori voices are central to decision-making processes,” Ngarewa-Packer said.
[...]
The pair explained the commissioner would be able to assess proposed legislation before the House and scrap any bills that did not align with Te Tiriti, describing the role as a “Te Tiriti auditor” and distinct from advice Parliament already received on bills impacting Te Tiriti.
As with Te Pāti Māori's proposal to make Waitangi Tribunal findings binding on the state, if we take te Tiriti seriously, then a guardian to audit proposed legislation for Tiriti compliance and prevent breaches from advancing is absolutely where we need to be going. Whether we get there all at once, or spend some time in a section 7 BORA-style advisory half-way house is an open question, but the destination should not be in doubt. As for those who point to America and say that judicialised solutions don't work, they work fine in Canada, Germany, and South Africa; so maybe America's problem is just American exceptionalism.
Still, it is worth remembering that there are no permanent solutions in our system. Parliament can over-rule the courts, and even disestablish them if they want to. A future parliament could simply replace a Tiriti-guardian with a racist crony (as National has done to the Waitangi Tribunal), rewrite the rules to prevent them from reporting honestly or over-ruling legislation, even disestablish them entirely. The only durable solution is to build strong norms which make such things unthinkable, and which make allying with norm-violating radicals like ACT political poison.
In a quasi-Westminster system, all "safeguards" are really just constitutional tripwires. But that doesn't make them useless. Tripwires send clear signals to the public that it is time to take action (escalating from protests all the way to a complete and violent rejection of the regime). And they can help strengthen the norms we need. We've seen this process with the BORA, originally casually disregarded, now with an increasing presumption that parliament will not legislate against it, and a formal mechanism making parliament accountable to the judiciary when it does (still, National wants to backslide on both jury trials and prisoner voting). A Tiriti-guardian can do that for te Tiriti. And that's what makes it worth doing.