The 21st century saw a shift in the way the tribunal worked. As it made progress towards completing the district inquiries, it turned its attention to kaupapa (thematic) and contemporary claims. Alongside the changing work programme came changes in how inquiries were conducted.
New approach
In 2000, the 25th anniversary of the Waitangi Tribunal, its new chair, Judge Joe Williams (Ngāti Pūkenga, Te Arawa), introduced a ‘New Approach’ to further reduce the time taken to hear claims. Whether any claimants’ issues were accepted by the Crown was clarified in advance, so hearings could focus on matters on which the parties disagreed. The primary purpose of the tribunal’s work was ‘to get the claimants, and the Crown, from grievance to settlement as quickly and fairly as possible’, said Williams.1 The first New Approach inquiry was in the Tūranganui-a-Kiwa (Gisborne) district. The report of this inquiry was released in 2004.
Rise up
As a law student in the 1980s, Joe Williams was singer and lead guitarist for the reggae band Aotearoa. The band had a hit in 1985 with the single ‘Maranga ake ai’, a call to Māori youth to rise up and take pride in their identity. Williams continued to perform occasionally when chair of the Waitangi Tribunal and later a High Court judge.
End of historical claims
In 2006 the Labour government passed the Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act, which set a deadline for making historical claims (defined as issues which occurred before 21 September 1992) to the tribunal. From 2 September 2008 the tribunal could only register new claims that raised contemporary issues.
This change angered many Māori and led to a flood of claims. More than 1,800 claims were lodged with the tribunal in the four weeks leading up to the deadline, eclipsing the almost 1,500 claims registered over the previous three decades of the tribunal’s existence.
Kaupapa inquiries
Much of the tribunal’s work in its early decades focused on hearing and reporting on historical claims in the district inquiries. This created a backlog of other claims waiting to be heard, many of them contemporary. As the tribunal came closer to completing the remaining district inquiries, its attention shifted to these other claims.
Among them were claims which raised nationally significant issues affecting all Māori in similar ways. These claims were grouped along thematic lines as part of the tribunal’s Kaupapa (thematic) inquiry programme, which began in 2015. The 13 inquiries making up the programme in 2025 covered a wide range of topics, including health, housing, education, military veterans, national resources and environmental management, and the justice system.
A tikanga-centred process
In 2010, the tribunal introduced ngā kōrero tuku iho hui for the Te Rohe Pōtae/King Country district inquiry. These hui provided claimants the opportunity to present their oral traditions about tribal identity, relationships with the land, historical events and the tikanga behind them to the tribunal. Ngā kōrero tuku iho hui were subsequently adopted in other district inquiries.
Kaupapa inquiries have made further innovations to assist the tribunal in hearing and reporting on claims. Wānanga are used to bring the parties to the claim together to clarify their respective tikanga and agree on what tikanga and other principles should underpin an inquiry. Tūāpapa hearings were used at the start of the Mana Wāhine kaupapa inquiry to gain knowledge of relevant tikanga and pre-colonial understandings of wāhine Māori, against which Crown breaches of the treaty could be examined. Several kaupapa inquiries have also commissioned pou in law and tikanga to help the tribunal understand how to run a tikanga-aligned inquiry process.
These innovations marked a shift in the tribunal’s approach to inquiries to one that better aligned with tikanga principles. They sought to make the tribunal process less formal and legalistic and to introduce elements akin to those seen on marae. This was a further step along the path taken when the tribunal first adopted a bicultural process in the 1980s.
Changing perceptions of the tribunal
The tribunal continued to attract significant public debate about its role and work in the 21st century. In the early 2000s historians debated the tribunal’s approach to historical practice. Some – notably Bill Oliver – argued that the history produced by the tribunal was presentist, applying standards of the present when determining whether past Crown actions had breached the treaty.
Although many saw the benefit of reporting on historical claims and the need to provide redress for treaty breaches, the slow progress in hearing and reporting on such claims continued to be a source of frustration. Some on the political right argued that the tribunal claims process had created a ‘gravy train’ for lawyers and a select Māori elite, enriching them while failing to provide any real redress for Māori. National Party leader Don Brash complained in his controversial 2004 ‘Ōrewa’ speech about a growing treaty ‘grievance industry’ and called for the tribunal to be wound up once historical claims were settled.
Others thought the tribunal was growing progressively more radical in its findings and recommendations, as well as stepping beyond its remit, especially as its attention shifted from historical inquiries to contemporary claims. Still others thought it wasn’t making good use of its limited powers or going far enough in its recommendations, a continuation of criticisms from its early years that the tribunal was a ‘toothless taniwha’. Academic Margaret Mutu commented that the evidence of treaty breaches in its reports gave the tribunal the appearance of being on the side of Māori, but that despite this evidence being irrefutable, the tribunal still tended to err on the side of the Crown.
Such commentary reflected a balancing act on the part of the tribunal as it sought to recommend suitable redress for treaty breaches without drawing negative attention from politicians and the public. Since 1988, when the tribunal gained binding powers to recommend the return of certain types of land to claimants, government ministers have periodically threatened to reduce the powers of the tribunal or even abolish it.
Landmark claims and reports
Foreshore and Seabed policy (2004): In early 2004, the tribunal held an urgent inquiry into a highly controversial policy proposal by the Labour government to vest ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown. The policy was developed after the Court of Appeal ruled that the Māori Land Court had jurisdiction to determine whether Māori had customary rights to the foreshore and seabed. Despite the tribunal finding that the policy breached the treaty and recommending that the government engage with Māori to negotiate a solution, legislation granting the Crown ownership over the foreshore and seabed came into force later that year, prompting the formation of the Māori Party (later Te Pāti Māori).
Wai 262 (2011): Known informally as the ‘flora and fauna’ or ‘intellectual property’ claim, the Wai 262 claim was originally lodged in 1991 by six claimants on behalf of their respective iwi. The tribunal commenced hearings in 1997 and released a final report, Ko Aotearoa tēnei, in 2011. This was the tribunal’s first whole-of-government inquiry and, in essence, examined the issue of who controls mātauranga Māori. Significantly, the tribunal concluded that the treaty envisaged a partnership between Māori and the Crown, wherein the Crown was entitled to govern but Māori would retain tino rangatiranga over their taonga, and recommended a raft of changes to laws, policies and practices to reflect this.
Te Paparahi o te Raki stage one (2014): The first part of the tribunal’s report into claims in Northland was unique in that it examined events leading up to 1840, specifically the meaning and effect of the treaty. Claimants maintained that their tūpuna (tīpuna) had never ceded sovereignty when they signed the treaty. The tribunal agreed, concluding that the rangatira who signed the treaty instead entered into a power-sharing agreement, in which rangatira would retain full authority over their own people and affairs while the Crown would exercise authority over British settlers.
Hauora (2019): As part of the Health Services and Outcomes kaupapa inquiry, the tribunal released the Hauora report, which examined claims that the legislative and policy framework of the primary healthcare system had failed to achieve Māori health equity. One of the report’s recommendations led to the establishment in 2022 of Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority, a standalone entity tasked with ensuring the health system met the needs of Māori. The short-lived authority was disestablished in 2024 by the new National-led government.
Mangatū remedies (2021): Following an urgent inquiry, the tribunal exercised its rarely used binding powers to require the return of land making up the Mangatū State Forest to Māori ownership. The recommendation followed the release of the tribunal’s 2004 report into historical claims over the Tūranganui-a-Kiwa (Poverty Bay) district. In that report, the tribunal found that the Crown had breached the treaty when acquiring land that became part of the Mangatū State Forest from its Māori owners in 1961. It did not make any specific recommendations for redress in that report. A series of judicial reviews ultimately compelled the tribunal to make a definitive decision about issuing binding recommendations