The New Zealand government has breached the Treaty of Waitangi through policies that have negatively impacted on the rights of Māori people, a new legal report alleges.

The report from the Aotearoa Centre for Indigenous Peoples, based on the Law of Te Wai Ariki Māori ancestors, has outlined a number of Te Tiriti (treaty) breaches made by current conservative coalition government amid its existing term of office.

The Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa, a membership of Māori legal practitioners, judges, legal academics, parliamentarians, policy analysts and researchers that are aligned within the New Zealand Law Society in conjunction with the People's Action Plan Against Racism group is set next month to present a submission to the United Nations' committee on the elimination of racial discrimination on the matter.

The submission will argue the policies of the government formed from the Nationals, ACT New Zealand and New Zealand First parties remove certain protections against Māori, stating "the government is actively and profoundly aggravating New Zealand's constitutionally racist foundation in a way we have not seen for at least half a century".

The report claims the government is ignoring the impact of land confiscation and decades of systemic injustice and discrimination towards Māori - actions that breach the rights of Māori people of Aotearoa.

Te Wai Ariki Law co-director Professor Claire Charters, a Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngā Puhi, and Tainui tribes' descendant, said: "What they're doing now is creating and exacerbating existing inequality...I definitely think that all these pieces of legislation are especially racially discriminatory."

"It's no surprise when you have policy, particularly from ACT and also New Zealand First that is about, amongst other things, not recognising the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and reinterpreting what Te Tiriti o Waitangi means, so that it is saying what it does not say," she said.

This opposition to the Wellington parliament's actions follows the passing of the controversial Marine and Coastal Area legislation on October 21 that toughens the test for Māori cultural groups to claim customary title.

The centre-right coalition government that includes New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, a Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Hone and Ngāpuhi man, pitched the law change as restoring the legislation to its original intent rather than diminishing Māori rights.

Racially discriminatory laws highlighted in the report have included the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 and the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2025.

An emerging list of rights-breaching bills and legislation were also identified by the report affecting equality, political rights, equal rights in employment, housing, training, and also health and education.

The recent breach of the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Act has inadvertently brought out a shock Māori voter turnout with a more than 40 per cent increase in the most recent Gisborne referendum to retain its Māori wards.

Enrolment rose to 5139 Māori voters in Poverty Bay's largest city of 38,000 - that includes people under the legal voting age of 18 years - after 3657 Indigenous of the iwi people registered for the 2022 local government elections.

But that figure from the 2022 poll was also an increase of 33.7 per cent of voter turnout from three years earlier.

UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Albert K Barume, issued a letter to government ministers expressing a list of concerns, including the new Regulatory Standards Bill that was introduced by ACT New Zealand leader David Seymour in June, which dramatically changes how legislation is drafted against ethnically minority representation.

"The whole constitutional structure, whereby the parliament legislature can ignore Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a treaty breach," Professor Charters said.

Prof. Charters added the disestablishment of the short-lived Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority of the previous Labor-led government, was additionally another "form" of a treaty breach.

"When you take away a mechanism that is designed, at least in part, to improve those statistics so that we at least come up to the same standard as our fellow citizens, then I would say creates an inequality or exacerbates an existing inequality," she said.

It came down to "structural racism" where a community was disadvantaged by unfair electoral systems, Prof. Charters added.

The professor was appointed Rongomau Taketake (Indigenous rights governance partner) at the New Zealand Human Rights Commission for one term from March 2023.

She has previously stated on the record "there needs to be some reform of New Zealand's constitution".

"On the collective level, the Māori are Indigenous peoples and should also have some sort of authority about how we are regulated or they are regulated," she said.

"Just like the Crown has its own system, or the settler state has its own kind of system.

"Currently, we live under a different peoples and states' system and without any recognition of our own tikanga or our own law or our own governance. So that, at a kind of collective level, also creates inequality."

The Te Wai Ariki is concerned about the current government's "exacerbation of racial discrimination towards Māori" through unconstitutional and mass legislation changes.

Recommendations from the Aotearoa Centre for Indigenous Peoples stated in the report a call for "constitutional transformation, and not incremental reform".

It also warns that "without transformation, parliament remains unchecked and continues to pass laws in breach of Indigenous peoples' rights".

Such constitutional transformation in recognition of Māori status, as the founding constitutional documents of its nation, would also result in greater compliance with recommendations from UN human rights treaty bodies, its special procedures and other international mechanisms designed to monitor Aotearoa-New Zealand's human rights record, the report states.

"There has to be some strong check on parliament, on the Crown, so that it can't do that on its political whim of the day," Prof Charters said.