The long series of broken promises and confusing announcements have been well traversed and there are no doubt more to come.
Southerners are rightly fighting back with all the resources they can bring to bear.
But this example of poor governance is not an isolated example as yesterday’s editorial said. This is bad faith governance and it is now a firm feature of this coalition government.
I have been writing for a while about how this bad faith is affecting Māori and Treaty issues.
There is a new example that should also raise alarm bells for everyone, Māori or not.
The Marine and Coastal Areas (Maca) amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament just a week ago.
It overturns National’s own policy in the current Maca (Takutai Moana) Act, which was at the time a huge win for John Key’s National government.
You will remember the original Foreshore and Seabed Act from 2004 which overturned a Court of Appeal judgement, the Ngāti Apa case.
The Court found that Māori could take a claim for customary title to the Māori Land Court for adjudication.
The Foreshore Act removed that right to access the courts to determine property rights.
That legislation, under Helen Clark, led to one of the biggest protests from Maōri ever seen in New Zealand.
When National came into power a few years later, they repealed the Foreshore Act because it was so harmful and enacted the Maca Act in its place.
This new Bill is even more extreme than Labour’s original Foreshore and Seabed Act.
It overturns key findings in five High Court judgements and one Court of Appeal judgement.
These judgements are listed in the Bill and the Bill takes away the property rights that the Court, after hearing all the evidence, agreed were legitimate.
Three of these judgements were decided just this year — the ink is barely dry for the claimants who had their property rights confirmed in those cases, but now removed by the government.
There is no compensation provided for the taking of their property rights by use of legislation.
Submissions on this Bill are open for just 20 days and close on October 15.
The government is even refusing to enable people whose property rights are being extinguished to have enough time to have a say about that.
We may not agree with the government’s policy programmes and we may differ in our support for one government or another, but we all have, and certainly should have, minimum expectations as citizens that every government will make decisions with transparency and follow good democratic process.
We do not tend to set these expectations too high. We know that campaign promises are designed to entice us to vote and offer no guarantees. Not many of us hold much stock in campaign promises for that reason.
But once in government, we do expect it to do its business, for us all, in good faith and in accordance with the rule of law.
We expect it to uphold the decisions of the court. On the rare occasions where it removes property rights, we expect it not to do so retrospectively nor without compensation.
We expect it to honour its commitments. We expect it to demonstrate that its decisions are lawful and based on legitimate, unbiased advice.
We expect that it will be transparent with that advice so we can assess it ourselves and, whether we agree or not, understand the logic of its decision-making.
These are not radical or unreasonable expectations of our political leadership.
They are part of the agreement we have with that leadership for operating in a modern, liberal democracy, as ministers are so fond of saying.
The obligations of those democratic principles do not fall only on the citizens.
Every sitting day, the Parliament opens at 2pm with a prayer.
It reads: "Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed upon us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen."
Religious or not, the ministers seek assistance to govern wisely for everyone. They really need it.
■Metiria Stanton-Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
