The mounted petition and 19 statutes
Ngāti Kahungunu riders brought 52,672 signatures to Parliament against removing or redefining Te Tiriti o Waitangi references in law. RNZ said the convoy left Waimārama and that about 30 horses reached Wellington. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith accepted that the review comes from NZ First's coalition agreement with National and covers 19 statutes.[1]
Goldsmith called the rewrite a tidy-up that would not 'change the world': Parliament had used verbs such as 'give effect to', 'honour' and 'regard' for thirty years, and the bill would make the wording clearer. Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, who is to present the petition, said 52,672 signatures showed a majority the government had ignored during the Treaty Principles Bill. Both accounts look at the same object — the Te Tiriti sentence sitting in 19 statutes — and disagree on whether the clerk's pen is merely aligning verbs or thinning a founding bargain.[1]
The election calendar that opened this week
What tensed the line this week is not a sudden ageing of the Te Tiriti text. 1News reported iwi chairman Bayden Barber pointing to the coming election and arguing the government meant to weaken Te Tiriti clauses. Goldsmith said the riders could have telephoned and that first reading, then select committee, would come this week. Because a coalition pledge has been dropped into the narrow window before Parliament rises, the petition and the bill arrived on the same Tuesday.[1]
First reading will show whether the bargain is still open
Goldsmith's tidy-up claim holds if the bill reaches select committee after first reading and the committee does not collapse Te Tiriti references in the 19 statutes into a single weaker verb. Barber's election warning weakens if the bill stalls in committee or slips past the vote. The measure is not how many horses arrived; it is which verb still names Te Tiriti in those 19 statutes.[1]