_{Image: Layne Waerea, Free arguments: [Under construction], 2018. Courtesy of Hans Tommy.}

Principles of the Treaty of Waiting Bill 2025, Public Submissions:
Saturday, 03 May 2025
12:30 – 1:30pm

Auckland University of Technology
Level 1, WM Building
40 St Paul Street

Layne Waerea (Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Kahungunu, Pākehā) carries out performance-based interventions in public spaces. These interventions seek to question, challenge and even exploit social and legal ambiguities in the public sphere. As a former lawyer, Waerea uses these experiences to inform her performance interventions, with a particular focus on how Te Tiriti o Waitangi must continue to play a critical role in the developing the cultural fabric of Aotearoa New Zealand.

A case in point is her Principles of the Treaty of Waiting Bill 2025, which consists of a thinly veiled response of the controversial Treaty Principles Bill currently before parliament. Her ‘bill’ is presented in a state where it is likewise up for public submission, and her forthcoming event will provide opportunity for public feedback on her proposal in order to provide greater clarity and guidelines for the activity of waiting in public spaces. This event is timed to coincide with the New Zealand’s final determination of the Treaty Principles Bill, which could dramatically change how the Treaty is understood and applied by our future governments.

While firmly tongue in cheek, Waerea’s command of legal jargon inherent to such legislative documents exposes the ways that such legalities are frequently layered in cynicism and intrinsic biases. It only recognises the Crown’s agency in determining law without any genuine attempt to honour the co-governance model inherent to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And to add insult to injury, Waerea’s bill is ‘co-authored’ by OpenAI, exposing an additional pernicious means by which highly destructive bills will continue to be swiftly drafted and put before parliament regardless of how wrong headed and divisive they may be.

_{Layne Waerea (Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Kahungunu, Pākehā) completed a PhD at AUT University in 2016, titled Free social injunctions: Art interventions as agency in the production of socio-legal subjectivities not yet imagined or realised. Past exhibitions and projects include Free Promises for the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, co-commissioned by
Te Tuhi and the Busan Biennale Organising Committee (2024); Bonus Play, a CIRCUIT and Auckland Council moving image commission as part of the Auckland Arts Festival (2024); and Forecast, as part of Huarere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear, Te Tuhi Gallery, Auckland (2023). In 2018 Waerea staged Free arguments: [Under construction], an open-ended public process that gave agency to the tension inherent in disagreement and suggestions for change. She is also the current president of the Chasing Fog Club (Est. 2014)}