Labour deputy leader Kelvin Davis says if ACT leader David Seymour wants to have a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi, he should first understand the treaty.
"He hasn't engaged with any Treaty experts. He's Ngāpuhi and he hasn't turned up to a single Waitangi tribunal engagement," Davis told Te Ao Tapatahi today.
Davis said National and Labour had enacted co-governance "and the world hasn’t fallen in”.
Davis also discussed how the by-Māori, for-Māori strategy worked for rangatahi, saying “if we had more parents sending their children off to kaupapa Māori education, knowing that kaupapa Maori education achieves more for our Māori children than in mainstream schools, then we would be In a lot better situation".
“We only have 9% of tamariki Māori in kura kaupapa or Māori medium learning at the moment and I want to increase that to 30% by 2040. That’s currently 20,000 Māori students increased to 60,000."
As Corrections Minister, Davis talked about the two suicides in jails in the past six months. He said that the pandemic had been extremely hard on prisons but did say, “Every death in custody is investigated”.