Prompted by a surging Māori protest movement, for the past 50 years the courts of New Zealand, lawmakers and the Waitangi Tribunal -– a permanent body set up to adjudicate treaty matters -– have navigated the differences in the treaty’s versions and tried to redress breaches by constructing the meaning of the treaty's principles in their decisions.

The bill, introduced by the Act political party, which is part of the country's ruling coalition, argues that New Zealand should reinterpret and legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi,