Beyond Westminster? 2025 Edition

05/12/2025

Since 2000, I have been testing a hypothesis that our traditional Westminster-derived model is under strain. My instincts have long been that we are beyond Westminster. To evaluate that hypothesis, I use Rhodes, Wanna and Wellar’s framework, which emphasises five key elements: parliamentary sovereignty, strong cabinet government, ministerial responsibility, party government, and institutionalised opposition. Each year, as annual reports are tabled and officials appear before Select Committees, I systematically assess progress against each of these elements.

This year, I am adding a sixth. In my 2024 assessment, I flagged an intention to consider whether Te Tiriti o Waitangi should be formally integrated into this evaluation framework. I have sat with that question, and your emailed suggestions, and concluded that continuing to assess our system against a pure Westminster benchmark, without acknowledging Te Tiriti’s constitutional implications, produces a fundamentally distorted picture.

For much of its history, the settler state maintained the illusion of a unitary system by simply ignoring or actively overriding its Te Tiriti partner’s authority. The “Westminster model” could only appear to function by wilfully disregarding the pluralistic reality established in 1840. This year, more than any in recent memory, the question of which constitutional settlement we inhabit has been forced into the open. Therefore, it is now included.

My Six-Year Picture

Looking back across the period from 2020 to 2025, certain patterns emerge with uncomfortable clarity.

Parliamentary sovereignty has maintained a consistently strong performance throughout. The machinery continues to function. This should not surprise us: the executive is drawn from the legislature; the fundamental relationship between these branches remains robust even through changes in government.

The opposition’s effectiveness has improved notably. After difficult years following their 2023 defeat, Labour appears to have found its footing. Polling through 2025 has shown a competitive race, with Labour occasionally leading and Chris Hipkins maintaining preferred prime minister status: unusual for an opposition leader mid-term. The announcement of substantive policy positions, including a capital gains tax, suggests an opposition preparing itself as a credible alternative government. The Greens have maintained their polling advantage and have performed well in the House. Te Pāti Māori are a disappointment: their Tiriti positions are as incoherent as some of their social policy abstractions. But their implosion is no real loss, as the power resides with Iwi me Hapū, and the emergence of leaders who can activate whānau me whanui, as and when required, is exciting. I also observe that the Greens are more coherent and precise on Te Tiriti and Whānau Ora outcomes than Te Pāti Māori, so the space is not lost.

The concentration of political power in the Cabinet has faced ongoing challenges. The 2024 Treaty Principles Bill episode, in which collective state resources were marshalled behind legislation that the Cabinet itself did not support, established a troubling precedent. This pattern has continued through 2025, with coalition partners publicly diverging on significant policy matters while the machinery of government attempts to serve multiple masters. The silos and seeming lack of collective responsibility are actually the handbrake on the extensive structural reform programme the Government is undertaking.

Ministerial accountability to Parliament remains persistently problematic. The resignation of Andrew Bayly in February 2025, following a staff complaint, the first ministerial resignation of the Luxon government, revealed familiar accountability gaps. Incomplete responses to parliamentary questions continue. Performance information reported to Parliament still raises quality concerns. The heavy use of urgency to advance the government’s legislative agenda has drawn criticism from constitutional experts.

The constitutional bureaucracy continues its concerning trajectory. The Public Service Amendment Bill, introduced in July 2025, proposes removing references to supporting future governments, pursuing the long-term public interest, and facilitating active citizenship from the purpose statement of the Public Service Act. Requirements for diversity and inclusion pay equity are to be stripped. A third round of baseline cuts has been ordered. The Public Service Association has described the public service as “cut to the bone.” The evidence suggests serious and ongoing challenges to maintaining an independent, non-partisan public service: a fundamental pillar that appears to be under sustained assault. The centralising tendencies of the government, while hollowing out the state-run policy advisory shops, seem at odds with one another. This is a problem because a few non-state actors, who seem to be driving the various policy advisory systems at the moment, actually understand what the different delivery systems can actually deliver.

And then there is Te Tiriti.

The Tiriti Relationship: A New Element

This year, I am rating the Te Tiriti relationship for the first time. It is red.

The Treaty Principles Bill, though ultimately defeated at its second reading in April 2025 by a vote of 112-11, consumed enormous constitutional energy. The Waitangi Tribunal found it would constitute “the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty/te Tiriti in modern times” if enacted. Forty-two King’s Counsel wrote to the Prime Minister urging its abandonment. The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti brought an estimated 42,000 people to Parliament in November 2024: one of the largest protests in Aotearoa’s history, remarkable for the breadth of its support across tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti alike.

The Bill’s defeat does not end the story. The Regulatory Standards Act, passed in November 2025 despite 98.7% of public submissions opposing it, has been identified by the Waitangi Tribunal as breaching Treaty principles of partnership and active protection. The systematic removal of co-production and collaboration arrangements continues. Te Aka Whai Ora has been disestablished. Iwi Māori Partnership Boards are being reshaped. Treaty settlements are still not being implemented. Constraints on the use of Tīpuna Reo in official contexts have started. School curriculum reforms that increased teaching of the Te Tiriti and Māori history have been rolled back. Officials are refusing to publish policy in Tīpuna Māori. The pakeha-fication of the policy advisory, regulatory and delivery systems continues at pace.

What we are witnessing is not, as sometimes characterised, a return to authentic Westminster governance after a period of constitutional experimentation. It is a reassertion of the settler state’s long-standing refusal to acknowledge the pluralistic foundation upon which it was supposedly built. The myth of the Westminster model did not describe our constitutional reality: it obscured it. And the current programme of reform represents an attempt to restore that obscuring function to pretend Indigenous people don’t exist.

Let me be clear about my own position. I do not think kāwanatanga has any proper role in rangatiratanga, and I am pleased to see corrections where the state had overreached. The state has few positive answers for Te Ao Māori; this much has been repeatedly demonstrated. But if the state has no desire to serve Māori communities, in their context, the honest constitutional response would be to enable Iwi and Hapū to carve out their share of the revenue take and deliver services to their own, and as they have always done, to their neighbours in need. Instead, what we are witnessing is the withdrawal of service without the enabling of self-determination: arbitrary decision-making by politicians over communities they have never met, will never visit, including some who never consented to their authority, and an increasing number who question the role of the state, at all. That is not a constitutional principle. It is simply the reassertion of settler-state control. I know many find that challenging to hear, and think it is radical. It’s merely the logical conclusion of the current settings and has historical precedence.

2025 Element-by-Element Assessment

Parliamentary Sovereignty remains effective. The legislative programme has been implemented, though heavy reliance on urgency continues to draw criticism. Coalition management processes in the House have functioned adequately. Though one suspects the officials supporting this work need a break. Cross-portfolio coordination remains lumpy, with a focus on siloed delivery rather than the complex, intersecting challenges that define modern governance. Rating: GREEN

The Opposition has improved markedly. Labour has developed coherent alternative policy positions. Select committee participation operates as a coordinated block. Polling suggests a competitive race heading into 2026. The shadow cabinet presents a more professional operation than in 2023, though there is a real question about whether Labour has refreshed itself and its thinking. Rating: GREEN

Cabinet Cohesion shows strain. Coalition partner disagreements play out publicly. The passage of ACT’s Regulatory Standards Act despite opposition from critics across the political spectrum demonstrates the complex power-sharing dynamics at play. Multiple centres of authority persist. The multiplicity is causing incoherence. That incoherence is being noticed offshore and is causing delivery problems. There is too much on the table, and dependencies are unmanaged. Rating: ORANGE

Ministerial Accountability remains problematic. The patterns observed in previous years continue: incomplete responses to parliamentary questions, slow turnaround on written questions, quality issues in performance reporting, and complex accountability relationships that obscure rather than clarify responsibility. Rating: ORANGE

The Constitutional Bureaucracy remains in critical condition. The Public Service Amendment Bill represents a significant reorientation of the public service’s constitutional role, explicitly prioritising service to “the government of the day” over longer-term public interest considerations. A third round of cuts has been ordered. Policy capability continues to diminish. Strategic capacity raises serious questions. But, some strong appointments are being made in the second tier across the system. Rating: ORANGE/RED

The Te Tiriti relationship is in crisis. The Treaty Principles Bill, the Regulatory Standards Act, the dismantling of co-production arrangements, and the systematic programme of rolling back Te Tiriti-informed policy and institutional arrangements represent the most sustained assault on the constitutional settlement developed since the 1970s. The Hīkoi demonstrated the depth of opposition and the breadth of support for the Te Tiriti partnership across Aotearoa, the pushback from schools against the proposal to remove Te Tiriti obligations, and the increased demand for Te Reo Māori language classes, suggesting the Government is losing ground in its culture war. Rating: RED

The Constitutional Question

The Westminster system in Aotearoa presents a complex picture of resilience and vulnerability in 2025. Our core democratic foundations continue to function. Parliamentary sovereignty operates effectively. The opposition has found its footing.

But beneath this surface stability, fundamental questions demand attention. The concerning state of public service independence threatens the principle of a neutral, professional bureaucracy. Coalition management has become increasingly complex, testing the limits of our governmental frameworks. Our accountability mechanisms show persistent strain.

Most significantly, the constitutional relationship between the Crown and Iwi me Hapū, the pluralist foundation that has always distinguished Aotearoa from the Westminster archetype, is under direct challenge. The current government’s programme represents an attempt to restore the fiction of unitary sovereignty: to collapse the ongoing constitutional conversation into a single historical moment whose meaning can be fixed and controlled.

Whether this programme succeeds, through legislation, through institutional redesign, through the slow accretion of changed practice, or whether it is reversed by a future government, by legal challenge, or by the sustained opposition of those who marched to Parliament, remains uncertain. But the constitutional stakes could not be clearer. We are being asked to choose what kind of state Aotearoa New Zealand wishes to be.

And if you have worked in, or studied, post-colonial states, you will know that this question is coming down the pipeline regardless of what any particular government wishes. It will only amplify, year on year, as we approach 2040: a mere fifteen years from now.

That date will mark two centuries since Te Tiriti was signed, and it will force a reckoning: an assessment of the experiment that is Aotearoa New Zealand, and an answer to the question that experiment poses. Was it worth it? Did the promise of 1840 produce something that justified the price paid for it? The decisions being made now: in select committees, in cabinet rooms, in the quiet redesign of public institutions, will shape the answer we are able to give.

I welcome your thoughts.

Nau mai haere mai Hine Raumati. He iti tangata e tupu, he iti toki e iti tonu.