SYDNEY — A nine-day march to protest race relations laws in New Zealand ended Tuesday with a rally of more than 40,000 perople in the capital, Wellington.

Introduced last week by New Zealand’s center-right government, the Treaty Principles Bill, would enshrine a narrower legal interpretation of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.      

The right-leaning government says a bill – or a proposed law reform – would allow political and constitutional questions raised by the Treaty of Waitangi to be decided by lawmakers instead of the courts.  

However, some insist the measure would damage the rights of Indigenous Maori.

Emmy Rakete is a lecturer at the University of Auckland’s School of Human Sciences.  She told Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report program that there is great anger at the proposals. 

“This is, kind of, the live wire underneath this country – the fundamental contradiction between dispossessor and dispossessed and colonizer and colonized, which has, kind of, been ignited again,” she said. “People are here in huge numbers. It is really beautiful to see, actually.”

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by the British monarchy and more than 500 Maori chiefs, and it laid down how the two parties agreed to govern New Zealand.

The controversy over the Treaty Principles Bill is how the document is interpreted.

David Seymour, the leader of the libertarian ACT Party, a junior partner in the governing coalition, introduced the reform to Parliament last week. 

He believes the treaty discriminates against non-Indigenous citizens. Seymour told lawmakers its guiding principles need to be clarified. 

“There was one big problem,” he said. “Nowhere in the Treaty of Waitangi Act and at no time since, has this Parliament said what those principles actually are. The democratically-elected body of this Parliament has been silent.” 

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has described the bill as “divisive” – despite being part of the governing coalition alongside David Seymour’s minor political party.  

New Zealand is a Pacific nation of just over 5 million people. Indigenous Maori make up about 20% of the population, but suffer high rates of imprisonment and ill-health.
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