HEY, PSST…NEW ZEALAND LAW SOCIETY - YOU DON’T REPRESENT ME

The Law Society supposed to represent New Zealand lawyers and serve their interests does nothing of the sort

The New Zealand Law Society has enjoyed a fastish start to 2025. It has submitted on two pieces of proposed legislation, the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill and a discussion document on a proposed Regulatory Standards Bill. ACT Party leader David Seymour has promoted each.

This piece focuses on the Law Society’s crap submission on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. But, make no mistake, its submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill discussion document is also just anti-Seymour ideological claptrap.

Housekeeping

Neither submission begins well, each beginning “The New Zealand Law Society Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa (Law Society) welcomes the opportunity to…”. The Law Society appears not to know its own name, which - under the Society’s own legislation - is simply the New Zealand Law Society.

And the discerning citizen may wonder about why neither submission is signed by the notional head of the Law Society, “President” Frazer Barton. (The Law Society’s submission on the Treaty Principles Bill is signed by “Vice-President” Jesse Savage, with the submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill discussion document signed by another “Vice-President”, David Campbell. Four of the seven current Law Society board members are “Vice-Presidents”; it’s all strangely Corporate American.)

So, what’s happened to President Frazer Barton? The Law Society’s website describes him as “taking a leave of absence” and says Frazer simply “does not wish the ongoing public interest in his previous governance role at Presbyterian Support Otago to be a distraction”. Well, Frazer is gardening - or whatever - because of a particular finding contained in the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s Report into Abuse in Care.

With the Inquiry looming, Fraser, as a practising lawyer and chairperson of the Presbyterian Support Otago (2014-2018), advised Presbyterian Support Otago’s chief executive that she could legitimately arrange the destruction of all records of children and young people that it had “cared for”. And, fortified by Frazer’s comforting advice, the chief executive duly destroyed all such records. It was this deliberate, wholesale destruction of evidence that the Inquiry found made its investigation into abuse at Presbyterian Support Otago “particularly difficult”. Bad boy, Barton.

Submission on Treaty Principles Bill

The Law Society’s submission on the Treaty Principles Bill is about as far away as one can imagine from comprising considered, reasoned legal points on the Bill. It’s a polemical rant against proposed legislation that activist officers at the Law Society, for their own ideological reasons, simply hate.

You can read the submission for yourselves Principles-of-the-Treaty-of-Waitangi-Bill-07-01-25.pdf. But let’s examine some of the more extreme, illustrative and misguided pot shots that the Law Society aims at the Bill, mainly through the prism of the alleged Treaty of Waitangi “Partnership Principle”.

Partnership Piffle

The Law Society’s submission contains multiple references to the - invented and incoherent - “partnership” principle of the Treaty of Waitangi:

…the Bill…uses general language to equate the rights of ‘everyone’ with those of Treaty partners [what does that even mean?]

Courts of general and specialist jurisdictions have also developed a body of jurisprudence about the Treaty principles, which has tended to emphasise three interrelated and overlapping Treaty principles: partnership, active protection and redress.

The Law Society notes that the Treaty principle of partnership has always recognised that the Crown has the right to govern and make laws, but the ‘legitimacy’ of that right is qualified in recognition of the peaceful settlement of Aotearoa te Tiriti/the Treaty as an agreement between the Crown and Māori

The Law Society also observes that proposed principle 1 was not drafted in consultation with Māori, the Crown’s Treaty partner.

It uses general language to equate the rights of “everyone” with the rights of hapū and iwi, who are a Treaty partner to the Crown.

However, the process for making that change has simply involved the Crown introducing the Bill to the House without any prior consultation or engagement with Māori (the Crown’s Treaty partners), or any experts (such as constitutional experts and pūkenga), and ultimately leaving the decision of whether to enact the Bill in the hands of the general public (who would need significantly more information and time to be in a position to make a decision that significantly affects New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements, and which has both social and legal consequences).

Meaningful consultation with Māori is important in the context of these reforms because the current principles place an obligation on the Crown to consult its Treaty partner on constitutionally significant reform proposals.

Presenting Māori with a predetermined decision, or a ‘fait accompli’, would be inconsistent with the ‘spirit of the partnership which is at the heart of the principles of the Treaty’, and seen as a failure to act in good faith towards Māori.

By asking the public to determine Treaty matters through a referendum, the Crown risks imposing the will of a non-Māori majority on its minority Treaty partners (who are the ones who will be most affected by these proposed reforms)

What general comments can be make about this “Treaty partnership” fixation?

For starters, like the origins of many culty belief systems, the “Treaty Partnership” article of faith stems from a peripheral – almost throwaway - line from a person ill-equipped to pronounce authoritatively on the subject. The line came from judge Robin Cooke, in a 1987 Court of Appeal decision in New Zealand Māori Council v Attorney-General. The eccentric, activist judge stated that the Treaty of Waitangi created "an enduring relationship of a fiduciary nature akin to a partnership" between Māori and the Crown. Without no credentials as a historian, Cooke was unqualified to pronounce that the Treaty of Waitangi created anything even “akin” to a partnership. Unfortunately, just occasionally, off beam ideas malignantly metastasise.

Any Crown-Māori partnership would necessarily require a conception of “Māori” as a unity with a singular legal personality. Such a conception is of course a fantastical abstraction, one involving a significant degree of racial stereotyping, assuming as it does that there’s a group of people with varying degrees of Māori ancestry all of whom share some amorphous common belief system (the mystical “Māori word view”).

The Māori unity myth necessitates an insidious denial of the individuality, and the cultural straight jacketing, of people with Māori ancestry, together with ostracizing those individuals with Māori ancestry who do not fit the strict doctrinal mould. It’s what allows Wokesters and Te Tiritists to refuse to acknowledge David Seymour’s pride in his Ngāpuhi heritage and to stead label him a Not-a-Real- Māori, Nazi Racist. Central to the Law Society’s submission is the fair question “Who is Māori”, but in Woketearoa simply asking that valid question is racist.

Because the notion of a Crown-Māori partnership would necessarily require a separate race-based Māori unity, appeals for the realization of a Crown-Māori partnership are necessarily separatist, involving radical constitutional revolution. Superficially benign appeals to a “Crown-Māori” partnership are, in essence, a polite way of calling for the reconstitution of New Zealand along strict racial lines, or the even more outlandish notion of “decolonisation”.

And this thinking is not confined to the margins. In her 2021 speech The Rule of Law: Guiding Principle or Catchphrase? current Supreme Court Judge Susan Glazebrook stridently announced:

So, what does all this say about Aotearoa and the rule of law? I would suggest that, until we complete the process of decolonisation, the rule of law can only be considered a work in progress.

In her speech, she fawningly references fellow Supreme Court Judge Joe Williams, in the following terms:

See Williams, above…for a discussion of decolonisation. It has been suggested that at a fundamental level, decolonisation involves the taking back by indigenous people of power and control

The indigenising of legal education and our universities will have a major part to play in decolonisation: see generally Joe Williams “Decolonising the law in Aotearoa: Can we start with the law schools?

Glazebrook, Williams and their ilk are fanatics who mean it when they say they want to destroy New Zealand’s current constitutional arrangements. It’s a bit like when Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’s going to invade Ukraine. You ignore these types at your peril.

So, what can we do about the likes of insurrectionist judges Glazebrook and Williams? Unfortunately, not much. Glazebrook will reach the mandatory retirement age for New Zealand judges (70) in February 2026. But Williams is much younger and there’s every indication that all our other Supreme Court judges are fellow Te Tiritists.

Until quite recently, Glazebrook and Williams would have been guilty of the crime of sedition, which included:

Bringing into hatred or contempt, or exciting disaffection against, the Government of New Zealand, or the administration of justice

Exciting such hostility or ill will between different classes of persons as may endanger public safety

But New Zealand’s Parliament removed sedition as a crime on 1 January 2008.

The Law Society’s submission against the Treaty Principles Bill puts much store on the “uncertainty” that the Bill, if enacted, would inject into matters relating to the Treaty of Waitangi. Which is all richly ironic and hypocritical given that there is no sphere of New Zealand’s constitutional and legislative arrangements that is more fraught with uncertainty that the alleged “Treaty Principles”. And that’s exactly how the elite judiciary, Waitangi Tribunal and other travelers on the Race Gravy Train want it to remain.

The Law Society’s submissions against the Treaty Principles Bill are heavy on an alleged lack of consultation with “Māori”. But consultation with who, or which Māori, exactly? Presumably not David Seymour, or Winston Peters, or Shane Jones, or even the recently deceased Māori King Tūheitia who in his last speech at the Turangawaewae Marae said “There’s no principles, the Treaty is written. That’s it.”

Perhaps the Law Society wishes to see Joe Williams anointed as Aotearoa’s sole oracle and authority on Things Māori. But we know, don’t we…any purported consultation would be with the Aotearoa’s legion of well remunerated race hustlers, grifters and racketeers; many of whom – like Karen Feint KC - organiser of the Kings Counsels’ letter to the Government which pompously culminated with “We call upon the Prime Minister and the coalition government to act responsibly now and abandon the [Treaty Principles] Bill” - have not one scrap of Māori heritage.

The reality, of course, is that the Law Society doesn’t want any consultation at all on a Treaty Principles Bill that – let us remind ourselves – is going nowhere because Luxaflex, the blind (one-term, if that) Prime Minister, has pledged that his National Party will not support the Bill beyond its first reading in Parliament.

The Law Society reveals its true anti-democratic zealotry in the last sentence of its submission:

Given the constitutional significance of such an exercise, it should also involve consultation with constitutional experts, pūkenga and the broader public to understand their views, and include an assessment of the costs and benefits of such an exercise informed by engagement with affected groups. The Law Society has not seen any persuasive argument that such an exercise is necessary or constitutionally appropriate at this time. [Emphasis added]

What the Law Society Sophistrists, Waitangi Tribunal, Supreme Court and other Te Tiritists are really saying is…We’ve invented all these amorphous, ahistorical, undemocratic Treaty Principles, we’re mightily proud of them, they pay well and the prospect of the New Zealand Parliament defining them is abhorrent to us. So what?

Under its legislation, the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, “The representative functions of the New Zealand Law Society are to represent its members and to serve their interests”. I wonder what proportion of the Law Society’s members think their Society is truly representing them, and serving their interests, with its extreme political biases. In reality, a coterie of Wokesters and Critical Race Theorists have hijacked the New Zealand Law Society and are using it to prosecute their own ideological bents.

The Law Society is therefore being driven well outside of its proper lane. A sovereign New Zealand Parliament can, by passing legislation, legitimately change…anything. In a true Parliamentary democracy, nothing is sacred. There’ll of course always be good legislation and bad legislation. But the notion, espoused by New Zealand’s very own national Law Society, that it’s illegitimate for Parliament to even consider passing some laws is antidemocratic drivel.