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“2025 Te Ao Māori: Year of Losses and the Infrastructure of Rollback” - 30 December 2025

A Year When Leadership Fell, Rights Fell, and a Blueprint for Future Erasure Was Locked In

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

30 Dec 2025 — 22 min read

The year 2025 in Te Ao Māori presents itself as a paradox on its surface—a year of cultural celebration alongside unprecedented political turmoil. RNZ’s year-end summary captures Te Matatini’s record attendance, Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po’s coronation, and international indigenous education gatherings. But beneath these surface achievements lies a far more sinister narrative:

the systematic dismantling of Māori constitutional rights through a coordinated legislative strategy, executed during a period when Māori leadership was fractured by death, illness, and internal party collapse.

This was not a year of natural political cycles. It was a year in which the Crown, through its National-ACT-NZ First coalition, deployed a multi-vector attack on Te Tiriti o Waitangi—not all at once with the failed Treaty Principles Bill, but methodically through legislation designed to erode Treaty obligations at every level:

education, child welfare, coastal rights, and regulatory future-proofing. And it did so while Māori communities were simultaneously mourning the loss of four towering figures who had stood as gatekeepers against such erosion.

Chase Those Crazy Baldheads Out Of Our Town

The Deaths That Opened the Door

The year began with death. Dame Tariana Turia, co-founder and matriarch of Te Pāti Māori, died on 3 January 2025 after suffering a stroke. She was 80. A month later, Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi, founder of the Kōhanga Reo movement and guardian of te reo Māori revitalisation, passed away on 1 February 2025, aged 95. Neither death was unexpected—Turia had suffered a stroke, Tāwhiwhirangi passed peacefully at home—yet both removed voices that for decades had resisted the very policy directions the government now pursued with urgency.

The Loss Of Rangatiratanga

The year delivered its cruelest blow in June. Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp, 50, died suddenly on 26 June 2025 after battling kidney disease. Kemp had been in Parliament the day before. She was a first-term MP elected by just 42 votes in 2023, a former Manurewa Marae executive who brought lived experience of whānau-centred service delivery directly into parliamentary discourse.

Her death triggered a by-election in Tāmaki Makaurau and accelerated internal Te Pāti Māori tensions that would consume the party’s energy for the second half of the year.1news

In September, Sir Tumu Te Heuheu Tūkino VIII, paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa and guardian of Tongariro, died at 84. He had been locked in battle with the government over the return of Tongariro National Park to Māori custody mere weeks before his death. His final public appearance was at Te Arikinui’s first Koroneihana, where he was “warmly acknowledged”

—a farewell from the rangatiratanga infrastructure he had spent three decades building.teaonews

These were not merely deaths. They were the removal of four institutional voices—one from Labour-aligned Māori leadership (Turia),

one from cultural revitalisation (Tāwhiwhirangi),

one from contemporary parliamentary Māoridom (Kemp), and

one from iwi chiefly authority (Te Heuheu)

—at precisely the moment when the Crown required space to legislate without informed opposition.

The Deaths That Opened the Door

The Treaty Principles Bill: A Diversion That Set the Pattern

The year’s political drama began with theatre. The Treaty Principles Bill was voted down 112-11 on 10 April 2025, with over 300,000 submissions filed and 90% opposed. ACT leader David Seymour, its architect, lost spectacularly. But here lies the hidden strategy:

the TPB was designed to fail. Its visible defeat—celebrated by haka in Parliament, by protests on beaches—provided cover for something far more sophisticated.

Seymour promised to “reignite” the Treaty debate in 2026, declaring

“I believe this Bill or something similar will eventually pass.”

The TPB had served its purpose:

it had tested public tolerance, revealed which parties would support Māori erasure (National did, at first reading), and, crucially, it had been visible. People organised against it. Iwi mobilised. The public knew what was happening.

But while the nation watched the TPB’s defeat, the Crown was preparing legislation that would achieve many of the same ends—without referendum, without the public fanfare, and with far less resistance.

Seymour Will Get His

The Four-Pronged Assault: Where the Real Damage Occurred

1. The Regulatory Standards Act: The Infrastructure of Erasure

The most dangerous piece of legislation passed in 2025 was not about the Treaty directly. It was about making future laws incapable of protecting Treaty rights at all.

The Regulatory Standards Act 2025 passed its third reading on 12 November 2025, with 98% of public submissions opposed. But the coalition parties—bound by their coalition agreements—voted it through anyway.

This legislation explicitly excludes Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the principles that guide lawmaking. It establishes an unelected Regulatory Standards Board, appointed entirely by the Minister for Regulation (Seymour), which will review all future legislation against “good lawmaking” principles that prioritise property rights, corporate compensation if regulations limit their “use” of assets, and “individual freedom” over Treaty partnership, environmental protection, or indigenous rights.

In plain language: if Parliament tries to pass a law protecting Māori coastal rights, or strengthening te reo, or increasing Māori health funding, the Regulatory Standards Board will publish a report questioning whether it breaches Seymour’s principles. Future governments—even Labour—will face political pressure and potential legal challenges. The law won’t technically stop them, but it will create a permanent headwind against transformative change. It is the constitutional infrastructure designed to lock in Seymour’s vision long after his party loses power.

2. The Education Act Amendment: Removing the Treaty from the Classroom

In November 2025, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced a last-minute amendment to the Education and Training Amendment Bill that would remove school boards’ explicit legal obligation to “give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” The change was not consulted on with the sector. It came after consultation had closed. Schools learned of it only a week before Parliament voted on it.

The current Education Act required schools to ensure their plans, policies, and local curriculum reflected tikanga Māori, mātauranga Māori, and te ao Māori. The amendment replaces this with a “paramount objective” of educational achievement, effectively demoting Treaty obligations to the background of school governance.

But the education sector fought back. More than 1500 schools—around 60%—publicly reaffirmed their commitment to give effect to Te Tiriti anyway. The legal weight has been removed, but the commitment remains stronger than the legislation.

3. Oranga Tamariki Section 7AA: Erasing Whakapapa from Child Care

In April 2025, the government repealed section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, which required the agency to have regard for mana tamaiti, whakapapa, and whanaungatanga. The section had been inserted in 2019 in response to Royal Commission findings that child protection services were failing young Māori through cultural disconnection.

The government’s justification was that the law had caused Oranga Tamariki staff to prioritise “cultural factors over the safety and stability of children.” But Oranga Tamariki’s own regulatory impact statement contradicted this: “There is no empirical evidence to support the notion that section 7AA has driven practice decisions that have led to changing care arrangements.”

The repeal was surgical. It removed the one legislative mechanism that had allowed iwi and Māori organisations to hold the Crown accountable for disconnecting Māori children from their whānau, hapū, and iwi.

4. The Marine and Coastal Area Act Amendment: Reversing Court Victories

In October 2025, the government passed amendments to the Marine and Coastal Area Act that tighten the legal test for Māori customary marine title. The changes were explicitly retrospective, reaching back to July 2024 to reverse court decisions that had already awarded customary marine title to Māori groups across 280 kilometres of coastline.

This is extraordinary. The government was undoing court victories. And it did so despite its own officials warning that seven court cases would likely need to be re-heard, overturning rights after “years of effort” and “expense” from claimants, at a cost to taxpayers of $15-20 million.

Māori rights activists called it worse than the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004.

The Four Pronged Attack

The Political Machinery Breaks: Te Pāti Māori’s Internal Collapse

While the Crown executed this coordinated strategy, Te Pāti Māori—the only party consistently opposing these measures—imploded from within.

The party had surged to six MPs in the 2023 election, the largest delegation of Māori electorate MPs in a generation. But by November 2025, the party’s National Council had expelled two of those six MPs—Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris—ostensibly for breaching party kawa. This was the first time Te Pāti Māori formally expelled sitting Māori electorate MPs while they remained in Parliament.

The expulsions revealed deeper dysfunctions. Kapa-Kingi alleged a “dictatorship” among party leadership, while the party faced unprecedented internal rupture.

Cui bono? The party that had the most to lose from a unified, focused Māori opposition was the government rolling back Māori rights.

Come On Māori - Sort Ourselves Out Will We!

The Resistance That Might Yet Save Us

But there are signs of counter-mobilisation.

Over 1500 schools—60% of all schools in Aotearoa—have publicly reaffirmed their commitment to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi despite the legal requirement being removed. The School Boards Association, Principals Federation, and Educational Institute have all opposed the changes. On 19 November 2025, Ngāti Hine and Te Kapotai filed a statement of claim with the Waitangi Tribunal seeking an urgent inquiry into the removal of school boards’ Treaty obligations.

The World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE) gathered over 3800 indigenous educators from around the world in Tāmaki Makaurau from 16-20 November 2025, with discussions centred on kotahitanga, shared strategy, and the reaffirmation of indigenous sovereignty at a moment when indigenous rights globally remain “under immense threat.”

And most symbolically, Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po, in her first royal address after a year of mourning, rejected the government’s vision of rangatiratanga-as-economic-development and called for Māori to build independent solutions.

It was a quiet but decisive repudiation of the government’s framing. The Kiingitanga was signalling:

we will build our way out of this, not negotiate our way out.

We Must Resist - The Māori Green Lantern Will Light A Way

Cui Bono? Who Benefits from 2025’s Arrangement?

The removals of Treaty protections from education, child welfare, coastal rights, and future lawmaking all serve the same constituencies:

corporations seeking to extract resources without Māori consent;

private schools and charter schools seeking freedom from Treaty-based governance; and

a neoliberal vision of the state in which individual property rights and corporate freedom trump collective partnership obligations.

The Regulatory Standards Act, in particular, is designed to benefit those who profit from deregulation. By making all future legislation justify itself against principles that exclude Te Tiriti and prioritise property rights, it creates a permanent brake on Māori-protective legislation. A future government wanting to restrict mining, protect indigenous languages, or strengthen iwi governance will face a Regulatory Standards Board report questioning whether the law “imposes costs on individuals and businesses.” That report will be used in court and in media to challenge the law. The law might pass anyway, but at a higher political cost, with a longer delay, and with higher risk of legal challenge.

Who benefits? Mining companies, oil and gas interests, corporations seeking to use Māori coastal areas, and employers seeking flexibility from workers’ protections.

The Crown, in pursuing this legislation, is essentially placing future Māori advancement on a treadmill:

we can legislate for ourselves, but only if we can prove that doing so imposes no costs on the already-privileged.

These People Benefit - Not You Or Me

The Year Ahead and the Rangatiratanga of Resistance

2025 has revealed a crucial truth:

the Crown’s assault on Te Tiriti is not accidental or reactive. It is coordinated, multi-vector, and designed to lock future governments into a neoliberal framework incapable of transforming Māori-Crown relations or supporting rangatiratanga.

But Māoridom is not accepting this quietly. The Waitangi Tribunal has opened an urgent inquiry into the removal of school boards’ Treaty obligations. Over 1500 schools have reaffirmed their commitment to Te Tiriti in defiance of the law’s removal. The Kiingitanga is signalling a shift to independent Māori economic and cultural development. And WIPCE 2025 has brought together thousands of indigenous educators explicitly to resist the global trend of indigenous rights erosion and to affirm indigenous sovereignty.

The year 2025 will be remembered as the year the Crown tried to lock Māori in. But it may also be remembered as the year Māori chose a different path: not negotiation with a Crown increasingly indifferent to its obligations, but the construction of independent Māori institutions, solutions, and rangatiratanga.

Kia kaha, whānau. The battle for our future has never been clearer.

Te Tiriti Reaffirmed

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Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues.

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

Sources Referenced:

https://wipce2025.com

"How Winston Peters Wraps Corporate Plunder in the Language of Liberation — and Has Been Doing It for Forty Years" - 23 March 2026

"THE SULU AND THE SWORD: How Christopher Luxon Wore Our Pacific Family's Dignity Like a Costume While His Budget Burned Their Villages to the Waterline" - 23 March 2026

"HE PĀTIKI KEI RARO I TE REPO — The Flounder in the Mud: How Damien Grant's Selective Conscience Exposes the Rotting Heart of Pākehā Media Power" - 22 March 2026

"THE CROWN'S DIGITAL TOHU: How a Rogue Neoliberal Government Sold the Whakapapa of a Nation to the Highest Unvetted Bidder" - 22 March 2026

The Deaths That Opened the Door

The Treaty Principles Bill: A Diversion That Set the Pattern

The Four-Pronged Assault: Where the Real Damage Occurred

1. The Regulatory Standards Act: The Infrastructure of Erasure

2. The Education Act Amendment: Removing the Treaty from the Classroom

3. Oranga Tamariki Section 7AA: Erasing Whakapapa from Child Care

4. The Marine and Coastal Area Act Amendment: Reversing Court Victories

The Political Machinery Breaks: Te Pāti Māori’s Internal Collapse

The Resistance That Might Yet Save Us

Cui Bono? Who Benefits from 2025’s Arrangement?

The Year Ahead and the Rangatiratanga of Resistance

Support This Mahi

Read more

"How Winston Peters Wraps Corporate Plunder in the Language of Liberation — and Has Been Doing It for Forty Years" - 23 March 2026

"THE SULU AND THE SWORD: How Christopher Luxon Wore Our Pacific Family's Dignity Like a Costume While His Budget Burned Their Villages to the Waterline" - 23 March 2026

"HE PĀTIKI KEI RARO I TE REPO — The Flounder in the Mud: How Damien Grant's Selective Conscience Exposes the Rotting Heart of Pākehā Media Power" - 22 March 2026

"THE CROWN'S DIGITAL TOHU: How a Rogue Neoliberal Government Sold the Whakapapa of a Nation to the Highest Unvetted Bidder" - 22 March 2026