Author: MIL OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Petousis-Harris, Associate Professor in Vaccinology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

When NZ First leader Winston Peters responded to the recent US withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) by questioning whether New Zealand should continue funding it, he employed a familiar narrative.

Peters was not speaking in his capacity as foreign minister, but describing the WHO as an organisation full of “unelected globalist bureaucrats” nonetheless plays into fears that New Zealand’s membership is a risk to national sovereignty.

The rhetoric mirrors wider international narratives that frame global health cooperation as a threat to national interests.

But such fears are misplaced.

The WHO is a global advisory body and cannot override New Zealand law. No WHO instrument has any legal force in New Zealand unless it passes through a domestic implementation process like any other international treaty.

In practice, that means decisions are made in Wellington, through Cabinet and Parliament – not in Geneva.

The most recent amendments to the WHO’s international health regulations explicitly preserve national decision-making flexibility. The pandemic agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly last year, does the same.

Even during the COVID pandemic, WHO guidance remained advisory. Countries deviated constantly. New Zealand adopted measures stricter than WHO baselines in its elimination strategy by choice. Sovereignty was not lost in 2020. It was exercised.

Why the WHO is easy to attack

Part of the problem for the WHO is not that it is too powerful, but that it is oddly invisible.

As the scientific journal Nature recently noted, the WHO struggles to succinctly explain what it does, not because it does little, but because it does everything only a global public health authority can do. It is the sole body mandated to coordinate international public health action across borders, systems and income levels.

For low-income countries, the WHO is a lifeline providing access to affordable medicines and vaccines, quality and safety standards, laboratory capacity and expertise during disease outbreaks.

For high-income countries like New Zealand, the benefit is less visible but no less real. We rely on the WHO to limit the international spread of infectious diseases before they reach our borders through surveillance, data sharing and coordination that no single country can run alone.

The WHO’s signature achievement was the eradication of smallpox in 1980. It is often invoked nostalgically, as if it were a relic of a more cooperative era. In reality, that success defined the WHO’s modern role, shifting from time-limited eradication campaigns to permanent global surveillance and coordination.

During the COVID pandemic, the WHO provided early alerts, technical guidance and global intelligence, but it did not dictate New Zealand’s response. New Zealand’s elimination strategy was only possible because global information flowed early.

In recent years, the organisation has also strengthened its scientific backbone by embedding evidence review more deeply in decision making, including through its chief scientist’s office. This development rarely features in political attacks on the WHO, which tend to portray it as ideological rather than technical.

The irony is that the WHO is most effective when it is least visible. When surveillance works, outbreaks are smaller. When standards hold, medicines are safe. When coordination succeeds, crises are quieter.

That makes the WHO easy to caricature and to dismantle rhetorically.

What New Zealand gets from the WHO

Lost in this debate is a more important question. What would New Zealand lose by stepping back?

New Zealand benefits from global disease surveillance systems we could not replicate independently. For example, the global influenza surveillance and response system provides early warning, viral strain characterisation and vaccine reference data that feed directly into Medsafe decisions and national preparedness.

The WHO also sets international reference standards for vaccines, blood products and diagnostics that small regulators rely on to function efficiently and safely. Without that shared scientific baseline, New Zealand would have to either duplicate global work at extraordinary cost or accept greater uncertainty in regulatory decisions.

Then there is the Pacific. New Zealand’s role as a regional partner is amplified, not diluted, through the WHO.

During recent health emergencies in the Pacific, the WHO provided the coordination framework that allowed New Zealand and Australia to act quickly, coherently and legitimately.

Walking away would not make New Zealand more independent, but rather less effective at detecting, preparing for and responding to health threats.

The current resurgence of WHO hostility is not happening in isolation. It closely tracks developments in the United States, where public health institutions have become ideological targets.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, sovereignty has always been exercised through negotiated authority and collective responsibility, not isolation. Sovereignty is not the ability to opt out of reality. It is the ability to choose how you engage with it.

Information sharing, early warning and coordination are not signs of weakness. They are tools that allow national governments to act decisively in their own interests. In practice, sovereignty has never meant standing alone.

New Zealand’s COVID response was successful not because it ignored the WHO, but because it used global intelligence and then made its own choices – sometimes stricter, sometimes different – based on local conditions and values. That is a model to be defended, not caricatured.

Helen Petousis-Harris has recieved funding from GSK for expert advice. Her organisation receives research grants from industry. She is a member of the Aotearoa New Zealand National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NITAG). Helen does not work for, consult for, or receive funding from the World Health Organization. She is a former Chair of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) and has provided unpaid expert input to vaccine research initiatives, including work related to gonorrhoea vaccines.

– ref. WHO membership doesn’t threaten NZ’s sovereignty – walking away from it would – https://theconversation.com/who-membership-doesnt-threaten-nzs-sovereignty-walking-away-from-it-would-274844

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/who-membership-doesnt-threaten-nzs-sovereignty-walking-away-from-it-would-274844/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Farley, Assistant Lecturer, History, The University of Melbourne

In early January, authorities from South Australia’s Department of Primary Industries took to the streets of Adelaide on the hunt for a suspicious individual.

This individual had been spotted several times in the preceding weeks: they had red cheeks, brown wings and a black crest. It was a red-whiskered bulbul — a non-native bird, often seen around Sydney and Wollongong but not normally present in SA. Most Australians have likely never heard of a red-whiskered bulbul, much less seen one. But these birds have been living here since the First World War.

A spokesperson for the state explained why one little bird was causing such a fuss:

the red-whiskered bulbul is a high-risk pest bird that can damage SA’s vineyards and orchards by eating soft fruit, flower buds and insects, potentially reducing yields or causing crop failure

Is this bulbul really a harbinger of catastrophe for SA’s fruitgrowers? As a historian who researches introduced species in Australia, I suspect there is more at stake here than a few grapes and cherries.

Australia is a country forged through suspicion and fear of outsiders – a theme still prevalent in politics today. The bulbul first arrived here in the heyday of the White Australia Policy, and at the time, its Asian origin influenced the way Australians reacted to it. Could this history still influence attitudes towards it today?

First bulbuls were likely escapees

The red-whiskered bulbul’s “natural range” — where it lived before humans transported it elsewhere — includes much of India, southern China and Southeast Asia. But humans have brought it to places as far apart as Mauritius, Hawaii and Florida, as well as Australia.

Many of the birds Australians see every day have been introduced since the beginning of colonisation. This is true of domesticated birds such as chickens and pigeons, brought here on the First Fleet in 1788. In the 19th century, “acclimatisers” — naturalists who made it their mission to move species of animal and plant across the globe — successfully introduced several species of wild bird, such as blackbirds and common (or “Indian”) mynas.

Bulbul populations appeared almost simultaneously in both Sydney and Melbourne in the late 1910s. The bulbul was a popular pet at the time, and it’s probable these populations arose from aviary escapees. (This seems to be how the bird became established in the wild in other regions such as Florida.)

At first, the bird prompted not much more than curiosity. Some warned its penchant for fruit would lead it to becoming a pest; others praised it for eating troublesome insects such as aphids.

Bulbul scrutinised in era of xenophobia

The bulbul arrived during the zenith of the White Australia Policy, and its Asian origin meant it received extra scrutiny. As early as 1922, commentators wrote about the bird under headlines like “Another Asiatic Menace”, “Asiatic Settler” and “Immigrant Bird”. A 1926 headline in the Melbourne Herald was even more explicit: “Mr. Bulbul: Asiatic Bird That Has Beaten the Migration Laws”. Farmers and gardeners wrote to newspapers to complain of bulbuls eating their fruit, calling the birds “undesirables” and “foreigners in feathers”.

Some people thought these responses were prejudiced, and said so. One correspondent of Sydney’s Evening News called on readers to give “the bul-bul a fair go”. There was no denying that the bird was charming and had a beautiful song, even if it did eat fruit and flowers. Some commentators argued the bulbul had become “naturalised” – that it had earned a right to belong in Australia, regardless of origin.

There is something hopeful in all this. Even at a time of intense and wide-ranging racism and xenophobia, an Asian bird could still “become Australian”.

But these voices were always a minority. As the species was never protected by law, orchardists and gardeners encouraged each other to shoot and trap bulbuls whenever possible. By 1935, an employee of the Sydney Botanic Gardens was shooting up to six bulbuls a day.

Much ado about nothing?

Today, bulbuls still thrive around Greater Sydney, their range stretching north to Newcastle and south to Nowra. But Melburnians rarely see them, according to publicly accessible data on the Birdata and Ebird platforms. Perhaps they have been muscled out by growing numbers of aggressive and adaptable native birds such as noisy miners and pied currawongs.

Like the recent visitor to Adelaide, bulbuls have been spotted occasionally in SA since the 1940s, but decades can pass without a single bulbul being seen in the state. Whether or not bulbuls someday form a viable population in SA remains to be seen. But if they did, would it really be so bad?

We know that some non-native birds, like starlings, cause immense problems for farmers and do compete with native birds for nesting sites. However, there is very little peer-reviewed research on the red-whiskered bulbul in Australia. In 2014, ecologist Matthew Mo wrote there was no evidence that competition between bulbuls and native birds is “ecologically significant”. Even the evidence for its impact on fruit crops and role in spreading weeds remains scant. At best, we have a deficiency of research. At worst, we’re getting worked up about a relatively harmless bird, just because it’s not native.

White Australians of the interwar period let their xenophobic attitudes towards Asian humans distort their view of an Asian bird. I’m not arguing those worried about the bulbul today are doing so because they are personally racist. But today’s anxieties about the bulbul do seem acute, given the lack of any hard evidence. After all, native birds can do enormous damage to fruit crops, too.

In many cases, we’re right to be concerned about the ecological and agricultural impacts of non-native wildlife — I’m not here to defend rabbits, brumbies or feral cats. But that doesn’t mean every introduced species is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The story of the bulbul in Australia should give us pause. During more than a century on this continent it has been, at worst, a minor nuisance. When the intensity of our emotions does not match the evidence, we need to ask ourselves why.

Simon Farley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Can a bird be an illegal immigrant? How the White Australia era influenced attitudes to the bulbul – https://theconversation.com/can-a-bird-be-an-illegal-immigrant-how-the-white-australia-era-influenced-attitudes-to-the-bulbul-273347

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/can-a-bird-be-an-illegal-immigrant-how-the-white-australia-era-influenced-attitudes-to-the-bulbul-273347/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

There has been a spate of articles and commentary in recent days calling on the Australian government to reduce spending.

Those calling for government cuts – mostly long-time advocates of smaller government – claim this would lower inflation, and as a consequence reduce interest rates.

In fact, claims that government spending is now a very large share of the economy are exaggerated.

So, what’s actually going on with government spending?

Federal government spending has fluctuated between 23% and 27% of the economy (gross domestic product or GDP) since the mid-1970s. The exception was a spike during the COVID pandemic. Its current level is not particularly unusual.

Straight talking from the RBA

The latest Reserve Bank forecasts estimate that “public demand” (spending by all governments, federal, state and local) expanded by 2.2% during the course of 2025. This was less than the growth in consumer spending (3.1%), home building (5.5%) and business investment (2.5%).

Nor has increased government spending on services led to a wage explosion in the public sector, which was a significant contributor to inflation in the 1970s.

Both public and private sector wages have been growing around an average of 3.5% in recent years.

Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank governor, does not try to direct the government on fiscal policy. Likewise, the government does not tell her what to do with interest rates.

The RBA prides itself on independence. Bullock is an independent agent and a direct speaker. If she thought government spending was the main force driving up inflation, she would say so.

Asked directly at her press conference this week, she instead cited other factors driving the pick-up in inflation:

• supply constraints in some sectors
• private demand being stronger than forecast
• greater-than-expected resilience in the global economy
• and easier financial conditions.

Under questioning in parliament, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has also said government spending has not contributed to the latest rate rise decision.

How do we want our taxes to be spent?

An increase in government spending without a matching increase in taxes would, in theory, fuel higher inflation. However, it would depend on the type and location of the spending.

Spending on foreign aid in other countries (or for that matter on US submarine shipyards) pushes up domestic demand by workers and companies in those locations – not in Australia.

It is entirely reasonable for the community to decide it wants a greater share of its resources to be spent collectively. It may want better health and child care or support for the disabled, for example. This is not inflationary if funded from taxes, as the taxes reduce other areas of demand.

The government budget has moved back into deficit this financial year, after two years in surplus. But the current position, and projections over the next decade, are for relatively small deficits by historical standards.

The projected deficits are also lower than in many comparable countries.

There is no correlation between high government spending and high inflation. Nordic countries with much larger governments than Australia, such as Norway and Sweden, have inflation rates of 3.2% and 0.3%, respectively. Turkey, with some of the lowest government spending and debt among advanced countries, has an inflation rate persistently higher than 30%.

Where government spending can lift prices

It could be argued that it would be better for Australia to return to budget balance more quickly. This would make us better placed to respond to a future recession.

But the current fiscal settings are not the primary cause of the uptick in inflation.

They are, at best, a contributor in some areas of the economy. For example, infrastructure spending during COVID caused prices to rise in construction, more generally.

Other things being equal, cutting government spending, while leaving taxes unchanged, could in theory help reduce inflation. It is incumbent on those arguing for this to specify precisely what they would cut.

To make a difference to inflation, cuts would need to be large, targeting areas where spending is growing the fastest, such as health, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, defence and natural disasters.

Trimming at the margins — for example, cutting public service budgets — would not help much. In any case, the federal government has reportedly already asked public service department heads to suggest where 5% could be cut.

In health, costs are rising mainly due to advances in medical technology, which then leads to government spending. This pressure is hard for government to push back on. Voters tend to prefer a longer and healthier life over helping the government reduce inflation.

Another way government can help inflation is on the supply side, by improving productivity. That is a long, hard journey, but one that offers more promise in the long term.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with the Australian Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Stephen Bartos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Is federal government spending really to blame for higher inflation? It’s not clear cut – https://theconversation.com/is-federal-government-spending-really-to-blame-for-higher-inflation-its-not-clear-cut-274961

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/is-federal-government-spending-really-to-blame-for-higher-inflation-its-not-clear-cut-274961/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver turns 50 this month. Nominated for four Oscars and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Festival, Scorsese’s searing, hallucinatory portrait of urban alienation is widely regarded as one of the most important American films of all time.

It is also unquestionably one of the most troubling.

Taxi Driver channels the anger, paranoia and alienation of an American decade shaped by economic decline, imperialist violence and political scandal. Set in the dilapidated squalor of a rapidly deindustrialising New York, the film proffers a forlorn portrait of a society coming apart at the seams.

At its heart sits a deeply unsettling vision of masculinity, bound up in racism and misogyny.

The social and psychological forces Taxi Driver brought into focus have not disappeared. If anything, they have simply migrated – finding new expression in digital cultures shaped by the platforming of grievance, aesthetised resentment and the monetisation of male rage.

American existentialism

Travis Bickle (portrayed with unnerving intensity by Robert De Niro) was the creation of screenwriter Paul Schrader, who drew heavily on his own experiences of isolation and emotional crisis. Schrader also looked to literature for inspiration, citing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s misanthropic Underground Man as a formative influence.

In placing the European existential hero in an American context, said Schrader:

you find that he becomes more ignorant, ignorant of the nature of his problem. Travis’ problem is the same as the existential hero’s, that is, should I exist? But Travis doesn’t understand that this is his problem, so he focuses it elsewhere: and I think that is a mark of the immaturity and the youngness of our country.

Schrader also drew on contemporary events, including the attempted assassination of right-wing politician George Wallace by Arthur Bremer. The result was a character who crystallised the violent confusions of the era.

Like Bremer, Travis keeps a diary. We see him writing in it at various points in the film and we hear excerpts from it in voiceover:

All the animals come out at night. Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain’ll come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Travis, a decidedly unreliable narrator who claims to have served in Vietnam, takes a job as a taxi driver because he has trouble sleeping. Working almost exclusively at night and wound impossibly tight, he rides through the city in a state of heightened unease.

One morning, after clocking off from a long shift, he notices a young woman through the window of a midtown Manhattan office. This is Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), an ambitious campaign worker employed by a presidential hopeful Charles Palentine (Leonard Harris).

Betsy quickly becomes the object of Travis’s fixation. He begins loitering in his cab outside her workplace, watching her from a distance. Eventually, he somehow persuades her to go on a date with him. It does not go well.

Socially inept, Travis’ idea of a good time is a trip to a Times Square porno theatre. He appears genuinely baffled when Betsy decides she has had enough and storms out, cutting off all contact with him. This only deepens Travis’ indignation and culminates in an angry confrontation at Betsy’s office, where he berates her in front of her coworkers.

Travis starts to spiral, confessing to a fellow cabbie that he’s got “some bad ideas” in his head. He settles on a plan of action. His diary entries become even more ominous.

He starts working out obsessively, loads up on guns and plots the public assassination of Betsy’s boss. Political violence becomes a way of giving shape to his discontent, transforming indignation into a pipe dream of historical consequence. He practices shooting in front of the mirror in his dingy apartment.

De Niro’s improvised line, “You talkin’ to me”, became (to borrow from film scholar Amy Taubin) “arguably the most quoted scene in movie history”.

When his plan to murder Palantine collapses, Travis redirects his attention to Iris, a 12-year-old sex worker played by Jodie Foster. He decides he must “help” her get away from her pimp, believing himself morally just. Carnage ensues – so ferocious that it initially led to the film being refused a commercial rating.

It ends on a bleakly ironic, ambiguous note.

A dark afterlife

Taxi Driver divided critics but proved an immediate hit with viewers.

Its disquieting power did not diminish with time; if anything, the film’s afterlife has been almost as troublesome as the work itself.

In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. – who had become obsessed with the film – attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in an effort to impress Jodie Foster. This incident shook Scorsese, who briefly considered giving up filmmaking altogether.

Travis Bickle has been repeatedly elevated to the status of anti-hero. The character has cast a long cultural shadow, most obviously in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019).

A 2025 documentary series reflecting on Scorsese’s career returns to this question of legacy. Director Rebecca Williams puts it to Schrader that she gets the impression that “there are a lot of Travis Bickles, especially right now.” Schrader’s reply is blunt:

They’re all talking to each other on the internet. When I first wrote about him, he was talking to nobody. He really was, at that point, the Underground Man. Now he’s the Internet Man.

It is a sobering thought.

Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Taxi Driver at 50: Martin Scorsese’s film remains a troubling reflection of our times – https://theconversation.com/taxi-driver-at-50-martin-scorseses-film-remains-a-troubling-reflection-of-our-times-261662

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/taxi-driver-at-50-martin-scorseses-film-remains-a-troubling-reflection-of-our-times-261662/

By Russell Palmer, RNZ News political reporter

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon faced sustained heckling and had to fend off questions about a revived Treaty Principles Bill as he returned to Waitangi this year.

ACT leader David Seymour predictably attracted his own jeers, and NZ First’s Winston Peters focused on a return serve.

The opposition was not spared criticism either yesterday, with Labour accused of backstabbing, and Te Pāti Māori given a stern word to sort out their internal problems and finish the work it started at Parliament.

But Luxon was clearly the one attracting the most ire.

Even before MPs walked onto the upper Treaty Grounds, a group of 40 or so protesters led by activist Wikatana Popata gathered as he made a rousing speech beneath the flagstaff — calling the coalition “the enemy”.

“These fellas are accountable to America, they’re here on behalf of America e tātou mā. Don’t you see what my uncle Shane [Jones] is doing?” he said.

“My uncle Shane, he’s giving the okay to all the oil drilling and the mining because those are American companies e tātou mā. So wake up.

‘Not scared of arrests’
“We’re not quite sure who our enemy is, well let me remind us: those people that are about to walk in, that’s our enemy . . .  we’re not scared of your arrests, we’re not scared of your jail cells or your prisons.

“We’ve been imprisoned . ..  we kōrero Māori to our tamariki at home, we practise our tikanga Māori at home, so you will never imprison us.”

The group performed a haka in protest against the politicians’ presence amid the more formal haka welcoming them to the marae. A small scuffle broke out as security stopped some of the protesters — who were shouting “kupapa”, or “traitor” — from advancing closer.

Speaking from the pae in te reo Māori on behalf of the haukāinga, Te Mutunga Rameka paid tribute to retiring Labour MP Peeni Henare and challenged Māori MPs working for the government, asking “where is your kotahitanga, where is your unity?”.

The next speaker, Eru Kapa-Kingi, acknowledged the protesters outside — saying he had challenged from outside in the past and now he was challenging from within the marae.

“Why do we continue to welcome the spider to our house,” he asked.

“This government has stabbed us in the front, but others stabbed us in the back,” he said, referring to Labour.

“Sort yourself out,” was his message to them, and to Te Pāti Māori, which in November ousted two of its MPs.

Part of ructions
Kapa-Kingi was arguably a central part of those ructions, however, having been employed by his mother Mariameno — one of those ousted MPs — and leading some of the criticism of the party’s leadership.

His criticism of Labour highlighted the departure of Henare, who he said had been — like his mother — silenced by his party.

Henare soon rose to his feet, saying according to custom those named on the marae were entitled to speak — and he spoke of humility.

“We must be very humble, extremely humble. And so that’s why I stand humbly before you . . .  Parliament kept me safe over the years.

“We have reached a point in time where I have completed my work. And so I ask everyone to turn their thoughts to what was said this morning: the hopes, aspirations, and desires of our people.”

Henare and his soon-to-be-former boss, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, have both batted away speculation about other reasons behind his departure — not least from NZ First deputy Shane Jones.

Hipkins himself acknowledged Henare in his speech, saying “our hearts are heavy today. We know we are returning you to your whānau in the North, but you are still part of our whānau. And we know where to find you”.

‘Lot of rubbish’
He later told reporters Kapa-Kingi was talking “a lot of rubbish”, that the last Labour government did more for Māori than many others, and Labour had already admitted it got the Foreshore and Seabed legislation wrong.

Seymour was up next and spoke of liberal democratic values; dismissing complaints of colonisation as a “myopic drone”; and saying the defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill was a pyrrhic victory because — he believed — it would return and become law in future.

Defending his comments on colonisation later, he said it had been more good than bad, as “even the poorest people in New Zealand today live like Kings and Queens compared with most places in most times in history”.

Conch shells and complaints about growing sick during Seymour’s speech clearly fired up the next speaker, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters — who said he did not come to be insulted or speak about politics.

“There’s some young pup out there shouting who doesn’t know what day it is,” he said, calling for a return to the interests of “one people, one nation”.

As the shouting started, Peters repeated his line there would come a time where they wanted to speak to him long before he wanted to speak to them.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson then rose to speak from the mahau, echoing the words of the late veteran campaigner Titewhai Harawira, urging the Crown to honour the Treaty, “it is not hard”.

Green candidates
The party announced during the events yesterday it would be standing candidates in three Māori seats, including list MP Huhana Lyndon, lawyer Tania Waikato, and former Te Pāti Māori candidate Heather Te Au-Skipworth — and Davidson staked out her party’s claim to those seats.

“When the giants, the rangatira of our Green Party — before the Pāti Māori was even formed — were the only party in the 2004 Foreshore hīkoi to meet the people, the masses, to uphold Te Tiriti,” she said.

With the government trampling treaty and environment while corporations benefited, she said giving land back was core.

While her speech was welcomed with applause, the government’s hecklers soon turned up the noise for the Prime Minister.

After skipping last year’s pōwhiri amid tensions over the Treaty Principles Bill, Luxon began by saying it was a tremendous privilege to be back, someone already shouting “we’ve had enough”.

He spoke about the the meaning of the Treaty as he saw it, and the importance of discussing and debating rather than turning on one another.

“It speaks so highly of us that we can come together at times like this, but it is also relevant on Waitangi Day as we think about how we’ve grappled and wrestled with other challenging issues as well,” he said.

Shouts and jeers
Shouts and jeers could be heard throughout, but he ploughed on undeterred.

“. . .  I think we have the Treaty to thank for that, because that has enabled us to engage much better with each other and we should take immense pride in that.”

One person could be heard yelling “treason” as Luxon spoke. He later said it was “typical of what we expect at Waitangi . . .  I enjoyed it”.

Asked if his government was honouring the Treaty, he said “yes”.

“We take it very seriously. It’s our obligation to honour the Treaty, but we work it out by actually making sure we are lifting educational outcomes for Māori kids, we work it out by making sure we are lifting health outcomes, we work it out by making sure we’re making a much more safer community.”

Luxon has been rejecting the idea of a revived Treaty Principles Bill since the day after it was voted down, but his coalition partner Seymour has been pledging its return for even longer.

The Prime Minister has reiterated his stance several times in the lead-up to Thursday’s pōwhiri, and did so again: “David can have his own take on that but I’m just telling you, it ain’t happening,” he said.

Referendum ‘divisive’
Ahead of the 2023 election, he had said redefining the Treaty’s principles was not his party’s policy and they did not support it, that a referendum — as the bill proposed — would be “divisive and unhelpful”, and a referendum would not be on the coalition table.

He was asked, given that, how ironclad his guarantee could be with an election campaign still to come and governing arrangements yet to be confirmed.

“We’ve been there and we killed it, so we’re done,” he said, clearly hoping for finality on the matter.

Te Tai Tokerau kaumātua and veteran broadcaster Waihoroi Shortland bookended the speeches.

Beginning with a Winston Churchill quote — that democracy is a bad form of government but the others are worse — Shortland said it was easy to remark on how divisive Māori were “when you all live in the most divisive house in the country”.

He called for Henare to be allowed to leave politics with dignity, but extended no such luxury for Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi.

“Rawiri, I cannot allow you to come away. Your work is not done. It is crushing to see and to hear what the House does kia koutou, kia tātou, ki te Māori — but we sent you there nevertheless, and that work is not done. Find a way.”

‘Feel the pain’
Waititi had spoken earlier, thanking Eru Kapa-Kingi for what he had said.

“I can hear the anger and I can feel the pain. And the courage to stand before the people and say what you had to say,” he said.

He said the party wanted to meet with Ngāpuhi but had been “scattered” when invited to a hui in November, and indicated an eagerness to meet.

“We are still eager to gather with you but we must make the proper arrangements before we can,” he said.

“It’s alright to have problems. But we must experience those problems in our own house. If those problems go outside, the horse will bolt.”

He said the current government was “nibbling like a sandfly” at the Treaty, and there was “only one enemy before us, and it is not ourselves”.

But that fell short of what Mariameno Kapa-Kingi had hoped for, telling reporters she initially thought an apology was coming.

She said she was disappointed Waititi did not fully address their stoush in his speeches, and she was committed to standing in Te Tai Tokerau — presumably, regardless of her party affiliation.

“I’m not going anywhere until our people tell me otherwise. I’ve got much to do.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/speeches-celebrations-and-heckling-what-happened-at-waitangi/