In 2006, when Winston Peters was leader of New Zealand First and a minister in the Labour-led government, his party sponsored a bill to delete references to ‘the principles of the treaty’ from legislation. Listen to this radio news clip to hear New Zealand First MP Doug Woolerton explaining why he and his party support the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill.
Transcript
We don't have a problem with the Treaty of Waitangi being defined in a court. We don't have a problem with it being talked about, we don't have a problem with it being in legislation. But we do have a problem with the word 'principles' because that was only put in there in 1996. And we have asked many, many times what that means, nobody has been able to tell us. And in our view, the courts interpret it differently and that precisely is the problem. Treaty of Waitangi? No problem.
Interviewer: So you're saying, say Wolf [?] from the Privy Council, he's saying we're saying the principle will become more important than its precise term. You don't accept that?
Well, no, because we don't, we haven't had proper answers out of the people in Parliament and if this was as precise as you say it is, they would've been able just to read it out to us.
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