Michael Swanson.
A quick disclaimer before starting: I’m not a Tiriti ō Waitangi or Waitangi Tribunal expert. What follows is more a political analyst/public policy academic’s take, an attempt to lay out what the Tribunal actually is, why it was created, where the current criticisms are coming from, and what ACT’s newly announced policy would actually change. Treaty policy is contested terrain in Aotearoa New Zealand, so this is meant as an explainer (or at least my observations) rather than an argument for any side of it.
What the Waitangi Tribunal actually is
The Waitangi Tribunal (Te Rōpū Whakamana i te Tiriti o Waitangi) is a permanent commission of inquiry established under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. Its job, in the words of the Act itself, is to make recommendations on claims relating to the practical application of the Treaty’s principles, and to determine what those principles actually mean where the English and Māori texts of the Treaty diverge.
Importantly, the Tribunal is not a court. It cannot issue binding rulings or compel the Crown to act. It investigates claims, usually brought by Māori claimants, that Crown actions, laws or policies breach the principles of the Treaty, and then produces reports with recommendations. Successive governments have generally treated those recommendations as persuasive rather than compulsory, though many have shaped subsequent Treaty settlement negotiations and legislation. Te Puni Kōkiri describes it simply as a body that makes recommendations on claims relating to Crown actions that breach the promises made in the Treaty.
The Tribunal’s work is generally split into two streams. Historical claims relate to Crown acts or omissions before 21 September 1992, the cut-off date set when the claims process was formalised for settlement purposes. Contemporary claims relate to more recent Crown policy or conduct, and are typically heard either through standard inquiries or through two faster mechanisms: urgent inquiries, which deal with pressing matters (often legislation moving through Parliament), and kaupapa inquiries, which look at a theme or issue across the country rather than a single claim.
Why it was set up in the first place
The Tribunal’s origins sit inside a longer story of Māori political activism through the 1960s and 1970s, as land loss, urbanisation and unresolved grievances pushed Treaty issues back onto the national agenda. The Act was introduced by Matiu Rata and passed with National’s support in 1975, though one opposition MP at the time reportedly commented that the tribunal’s responsibilities appeared minimal.
That was not an unfair assessment at the time. In its original form, the Tribunal could only investigate alleged breaches occurring from 1975 onward, meaning it had no power to look at nineteenth century grievances such as land confiscations during the New Zealand Wars, which were among the most significant breaches Māori wanted addressed. Te Ara notes that the political scientist Andrew Sharp has suggested the Tribunal was originally something of a way to defer, rather than directly confront, ongoing Māori demands that the Treaty be given legal effect, and historian Bill Oliver similarly observed it was not expected to hear many claims or cost much.
That changed substantially in 1985, when the Tribunal’s jurisdiction was extended retrospectively back to 1840, the year the Treaty was signed. From that point the Tribunal became the primary vehicle through which historical grievances were investigated and, eventually, negotiated into settlements between iwi and the Crown, a process that continues today, alongside its narrower but more politically live role in reviewing contemporary government conduct.
The current criticisms
The criticism now driving ACT’s policy centres on that second, contemporary role. ACT leader David Seymour has argued the Tribunal that exists today is a considerably different institution from the one Parliament created in 1975. His central complaint is that urgent and kaupapa inquiries increasingly allow the Tribunal to scrutinise, and effectively pass judgement on, day-to-day government policy, producing what he has called alternative policy prescriptions that properly belong to elected governments and Parliament: as Seymour put it in ACT’s announcement, this “is not the tribunal’s role and never was.” ACT’s policy document goes further, describing contemporary kaupapa inquiries as increasingly resembling alternative policy processes.
Recent examples help explain where that frustration comes from. In May 2026, the Tribunal recommended an immediate halt to draft legislation it said would weaken the Crown’s Treaty obligations in education law, comparing the move to the earlier Treaty Principles Bill, as reported by RNZ. More recently, the Tribunal examined the government’s Treaty Principles Bill process itself and a related review of legislation referencing Treaty principles, warning of what it called revolutionary constitutional change, as discussed by political scientist Grant Duncan. For critics, cases like these illustrate a tribunal reaching well beyond adjudicating historical land grievances into live political and constitutional debate. For defenders, they illustrate the Tribunal doing exactly the job Parliament gave it: testing government conduct against Treaty principles, particularly where legislation would otherwise pass without that scrutiny.
It is worth noting the criticism is not one-sided. Te Pāti Māori occupies close to the opposite position, campaigning to amend the Treaty of Waitangi Act so that Tribunal recommendations become binding on the Crown, and to establish an additional independent Te Tiriti Commission, a position the party has described as a bottom line for any coalition negotiations. The current government has also commissioned its own review of the Tribunal’s functions, though it has not yet been released, and RNZ has reported that the unreleased review does not recommend curtailing the Tribunal’s ability to launch kaupapa inquiries, suggesting ACT’s position sits further along the spectrum than official advice so far.
What ACT’s policy actually proposes
The plan has four components.
First, the Tribunal’s work would be limited to historical claims lodged by the existing statutory deadline of 1 September 2008, with those claims completed rather than rushed.
Second, the Tribunal’s contemporary jurisdiction, meaning its power to review current Crown policy and conduct through urgent and kaupapa inquiries, would be ended entirely.
Third, funding would be reduced in step with the Tribunal’s shrinking role as historical claims wind down.
Fourth, and most significantly, ACT would amend the Tribunal’s governing legislation so that it is automatically disestablished once every eligible historical claim has been heard and resolved.
Crucially, this is not a fixed closing date. ACT has explicitly avoided setting an arbitrary deadline that might force remaining historical claims through prematurely; disestablishment would happen only once that historical work is genuinely finished. Seymour has framed the policy partly around 2040, the bicentenary of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as a symbolic point by which he wants that historical work substantially complete. The policy also sits alongside other ACT proposals, including entrenching parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law in the Constitution Act, and adding a property rights protection to the Bill of Rights Act, which the party frames as an alternative avenue for challenging Crown overreach without relying on the Tribunal.
Whether this policy becomes law depends on the 2026 election outcome and any subsequent coalition negotiations, particularly given how far apart ACT and Te Pāti Māori sit on the Tribunal’s future. For now, it remains a policy position rather than legislation, but one that has put the Tribunal’s long term existence squarely into election year debate.
