Te Tiriti o Waitangi binds us together as people from all backgrounds who call this beautiful place home. It offers us a powerful blueprint for how we can live together in peace, respect and mutual benefit.

But thanks to the Coalition Government’s relentless attacks on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and policies that enable Māori to thrive - 2025 was a year of protecting the gains we have already made, instead of moving positively into the future together.

In April, after a historic show of support for Te Tiriti, the Treaty Principles Bill was voted down at its second reading in Parliament. Over 300,000 submissions were received on the Bill, breaking records and showing that Te Tiriti o Waitangi has grown more public support than ever.

The Treaty Principles Bill was defeated by hundreds of thousands of people - a wider movement that grew in strength over 2025. From the veteran activists to the emerging leaders, from the 400+ church leaders to the 230+ community organisations, from the marae to the sports teams: the fightback inspired people from every background imaginable to stand together for Te Tiriti. You can read about our team’s campaign efforts here.

It wasn’t long before the next attack was on our doorstep. The Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) was another pathway for ACT’s David Seymour to sneak in anti-Te Tiriti legislation, this time without plans for a referendum. ActionStation played a supporting role in turning out submissions, while leading experts- Tina Ngata, Tania Waikato, Jane Kelsey and Melanie Nelson - drove a strong pushback to a Bill which was an overly bureaucratic Trojan horse. The purpose of the Bill is to give more power to corporations, erase Te Tiriti o Waitangi from lawmaking and threaten environmental protections.

Despite 98% of submitters opposing the Bill, the Coalition Government passed the ‘cockroach’ of a law in November. But the Bill may be finally squashed post-2026, with Labour promising to repeal it if elected, as well as Winston Peters taking an unprincipled change of position.

While this was happening, our ActionStation team were busy preparing for the next anti-Te Tiriti onslaught: local body elections.

Māori have always been significantly underrepresented on local and regional councils, meaning their voices weren’t often at the table for decisions affecting their whānau and the wider community. Discriminatory referendums were one of the reasons why, so we teamed up with local communities in 2020 to get rid of them so councils were free to establish their own Māori ward seats. Māori representation increased by 1500% as a result.

Yet the Coalition Government reversed this law and forced councils to get rid of their own Māori wards or face a divisive compulsory referendum on the issue. Under the guise of ‘strengthening local democracy’, the government set the scene for the majority voters to remove representation from a minority group.

So once again, we joined forces with local communities to keep as many Māori wards as possible.

Together we:

• Brought together and seeded 20 groups, to run locally-led campaigns to keep Māori wards in 37 different areas.
• Supported 15 year old Jack Karetai-Barrett to ride over 900kms to deliver a letter to PM Christopher Luxon in support of Māori wards (he refused to receive it).
• Launched Decide Together, Thrive Together, a national campaign to educate and encourage new supporters to vote to keep Māori wards.
• Crowdfunded to get billboards up in key geographical areas.
• Provided research, support and inspiration to get out the vote in local elections, resulting in countless events including info panels, doorknocking sessions, market stalls, youth raves, community days and dance parties.
• Delivered tens of thousands of leaflets educating communities about Māori wards.
• Teamed up with Toitū Te Tiriti to run a national day of voting action: Hīkoi ki te Pōti.
• Worked creatively with people across the whole country from every walk of life to teach them about Te Tiriti.
• Created a positive, inclusive campaign that focused on aroha and community in the face of racism and division.

The final election results showed that 24 Māori ward seats were voted down, and 18 were kept. While this was devastating in the areas that lost their Māori representation, the bigger picture told an interesting story.

In a national tally, the majority of voters supported Māori wards, by 74,000 extra votes. In the regions that had previous referendums, there has been a 13% - 31% increase in support for Māori wards. Just ten years ago, it was common for up to 80% of a region to stand against Māori wards, yet the highest opposition this year was only 63%.

And despite the Coalition Government's effort to decrease Māori representation, more Māori elected members were voted in than ever before (160, compared to 145 in 2022).

This tells us two things:

1. Behind the headlines, the public support for Te Tiriti o Waitangi has increased over the past decade.
   
2. That even when governments use the weight of their power against us, when we take action together, we can come out even stronger than before.

We leave the year feeling grateful for every person who stood up for Te Tiriti in 2025, and we look forward to taking the vision of Together for Te Tiriti into 2026.

Kassie, Rangimarie, Anastasia and the ActionStation team