Wai 262 Response: A Whole-of-Government Approach?

In 1991, six Māori claimant groups sought the Waitangi Tribunal's findings that the Crown had breached its Treaty of Waitangi guarantee to allow Māori to exercise tino rangatiratanga (the unqualified exercise of our chieftainship) over our mātauranga Māori (the body of knowledge originating from Māori ancestors, including the Māori worldview and cultural practices) and taonga (tangible and intangible treasures). In 2011, the Tribunal publicly released its full report on the claim. Since then, the New Zealand Government has been working out its response, internally at first and publicly since announcing Te Pae Tawhiti (a work programme to address the Crown's breaches) in 2019. Māori have repeatedly asked that the Government's response take a whole-of-government approach. This article demonstrates that the current response falls short of a whole-of-government approach and reiterates that a whole-of-government approach is required to appropriately address the scale of the impact of Wai 262 on governance in New Zealand. The article then provides guidance for the Government to learn from its own experience, as well as international experiences, with whole-of-government approaches, to develop a whole-of-government response that enables it to adequately respond to Wai 262. The article considers why a whole-of-government response is necessary, surveys the work the Government has done to make its response whole-of-government and identifies issues with the Government's approach, before using scholarship and case studies in Australia and Hong Kong to urge the New Zealand Government to reconsider its approach to whole-of-government responses generally. The article contributes to the literature by presenting findings from Official Information Act requests in 2018, 2020 and 2022 to seven Te Pae Tawhiti-engaged Government agencies and interrogating the concept of a whole-of-government response in the New Zealand context. The insights will help Māori and others to hold the Government accountable as the Treaty partners progress Te Pae Tawhiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]