NZ First: Shane Jones’ Case for Te Tiriti Entrenchment

Shane Jone's Plan to Entrench the Treaty

By Dr Harpreet Singh | drhsinghnz.substack.com | FB: @DrHSinghNZ | BSky: @DrHSinghNZ | IG: @DrHSinghNZ

Shane Jones spoke as if he would overturn the system. In the end, the system proved it could turn him into one of its own. - Dr Harpreet Singh

Author’s Note: The following is my assessment of what was proposed by Shane Jones at Waitangi in 1985. The vision set out at Waitangi by Shane Jones was revolutionary: a blueprint to bind power to the Treaty rather than treating it as decoration. Its logic still echoes because it offered something rare, a structural answer to a structural problem. Had it been realised, many of the attacks we see today would have hit a constitutional wall. Instead, the pattern repeated. The system did not have to crush the revolutionary. It only had to absorb them, and what remained was not a breaker of the machine, but someone fluent in how it pays, persuades, and survives.

Background: From Protest to Constitutional Blueprint

In the mid-1980s, Shane Jones was associated with Te Kawariki, a Far North-based activist movement that combined public protest with structured political thinking. Rather than limiting itself to symbolic disruption at Waitangi, the movement also developed written submissions and proposals intended to reshape how the state recognised and applied Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The 1985 Waitangi Hui: The Proposal Takes Written Form

A pivotal moment for this programme came at the Waitangi Hui held from 4–6 February 1985, where a submission was presented under Shane Jones’ name and framed as the voice of Te Kawariki. The submission set was not a single demand but a platform that was constitutional, institutional, and practical, designed to move the Treaty from moral argument into enforceable authority.

The Core Idea: Entrench the Treaty as Constitutional Supreme Law

At the centre was an ambitious proposal: Te Tiriti o Waitangi should be entrenched in New Zealand’s constitutional law, functioning like a Bill of Rights standard that all proposed legislation must meet before it becomes law. In this framing, the Treaty was not simply a historic document to be “recognised” in policy; it was positioned as a foundational constitutional compact that should sit above ordinary statute-making. The practical effect of entrenchment, as advanced here, was to require government to treat Treaty commitments as a controlling benchmark, something that restrains power at the point laws are made, not only after disputes arise.

Why Entrenchment (Not Ordinary Statute Law) Was the Point

A key concern behind the proposal was that placing the Treaty in ordinary statute law could leave it politically vulnerable, amendable, sidelined, or diluted by shifting majorities and changing priorities. The entrenchment approach sought a different outcome: a constitutional order where Treaty guarantees, especially the authority implied by concepts like tino rangatiratanga, are not treated as optional or secondary to general “citizen rights” frameworks. In contemporaneous commentary, Jones argued that generic rights instruments can unintentionally pull debate away from the core question of authority and self-determination, which he treated as central to the Treaty relationship.

Making the Treaty Effective: A Stronger, Re-designed Waitangi Tribunal

The proposal did not stop at constitutional principle; it also insisted on institutional power to give the Treaty practical force. The Waitangi Tribunal was treated as the vehicle for redress, but the submission argued it needed stronger authority, moving beyond a body whose conclusions depend on political goodwill to be implemented. Among the more radical elements was the idea that the Tribunal should be empowered in ways that would allow it to drive settlement outcomes more directly, rather than merely recommend them.

Structural Reform: Who Decides, and Where Decisions Sit

The platform also proposed significant structural changes to the Tribunal’s makeup and architecture. It argued for decentralising the Tribunal into tribal bodies, with an overarching parent body in an appellate-style role, reflecting a model in which Māori authority and tribal decision-making are central rather than peripheral. The proposal also included a firm stance on membership and control, signalling a desire to ensure Māori decision-making was not subordinated within institutions meant to address Māori Treaty grievances.

Substantive Outcomes: Whenua, Kaimoana, and Hapū Restoration

The programme connected constitutional entrenchment to tangible domains of Māori life and authority. It linked Treaty obligations to the protection of resources such as kaimoana, and to the principle that lands returned through Treaty processes should be restored to hapū where appropriate. In short, the proposal treated the Treaty as a living constitutional framework, one that should shape control over whenua and taonga rather than exist as a symbolic reference.

A Wider Platform: Recognition, Guardianship, and National Identity

The 1985 submission set also included broader political and symbolic demands designed to reinforce Treaty primacy in public life. These included calls to halt celebratory commemoration until the Treaty was genuinely honoured, proposals relating to the status and guardianship of Te Rerenga Wairua and Te Reinga, and a push toward national naming and identity consistent with Māori constitutional standing.

From Paper to Platform: Public Advocacy at Waitangi

These ideas were advanced not only on paper but in public settings. By the late 1980s, Jones was recorded speaking at Waitangi Day events as a representative of Te Kawariki, reflecting how the movement’s constitutional arguments were carried into the most symbolically charged national forum for Treaty politics.

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For NZ First Deputy Leader, Shane Jones, entrenchment was the point because ordinary law can be rewritten. A Treaty placed in statute can be amended, sidelined, or diluted by shifting majorities, but a Treaty entrenched as constitutional authority makes its guarantees non‑optional and keeps tino rangatiratanga at the centre, not lost inside generic “citizen rights” language.

Looking back at Shane Jones, those ideas and measuring them against the present feels like a profound loss. Something rare was within reach: a leadership moment that could have anchored Māori aspirations with lasting force. I write this with heavy disappointment and sadness.

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