Duncan Garner: David Seymour’s 2026 election campaign is underway

Tens of thousands of people wanted to make it clear to Act leader David Seymour that he was not going to get his way. Not this time. If ever there was a message sent to Wellington, we saw it when the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti arrived in the capital.

I was there in 2004 for the seabed and foreshore hīkoi and looking at the images and reading the commentary, this latest one had many more people and much more feeling. So, I misjudged it earlier in the week when I said I didn’t think it would be as big.

To anyone who might have missed it – where have you been? – the hīkoi focused on Act’s Treaty Principles Bill, but there are wider issues at play. As well as being against the bill, protesters are also concerned at what seems like a general erosion of Māori rights.

This week’s hīkoi was far bigger than 2004′s - and race relations are now more prominent than they were this time a year ago when the Christopher Luxon-led National Party was negotiating with Act and NZ First to form a government.

In fact, I’d say race relations are now more prominent than they have been for decades. It’s Luxon and his much-hyped negotiation skills that I blame for the potentially divisive and dangerous situation the country finds itself in.

What on Earth was Luxon thinking allowing such a debate to be run by the minor party to the right of his? Did he think it wouldn’t play out like this? Is he genuinely naive, or has he spent so much time overseas that he really has no idea about the history of New Zealand and the part race relations plays in it?

The fact that the Treaty Principals Bill has Seymour’s name on it and would, if passed into law, effectively water down hard-earned Māori rights, virtually neutralising Te Tiriti o Waitangi to that of a powerless historical document, was always going to get a massive reaction. Honestly, putting the Act leader’s face on a treaty debate is the equivalent of dressing in red and standing still at the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

Seymour claims the Treaty Principles Bill argues that it’s time to reinterpret and legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, so I asked him what Māori would lose if his bill was passed. He replied they would effectively lose their special status and sit alongside the rest of us, meaning they would no longer have an automatic right to be represented and consulted at every turn. It would mean Māori and Pākehā had the same equal rights - and while that sounds non-threatening, for Māori there’s a lot more to it. They’re not going to happily concede everything fought for and awarded since 1975 when the Waitangi Tribunal was formed.

So, why let it even reach this stage – particularly given that Seymour’s aim appears to be to play the long game? He wants this debate to endure well past the Parliamentary process. He’s told me he wants to get as many Kiwis on his side as possible, so it makes it awfully difficult for National to vote it down in six months’ time.