Around 35,000 thousand demonstrators descended on the capital of New Zealand this week, many of them adorned in traditional native dress amid a fluttering sea of red, white and black ‘Maori sovereignty’ flags. They were there to decry a bill looking to redefine New Zealand’s founding treaty.

The Treaty Principles Bill, introduced earlier this month by one of the National party-led government’s junior coalition partners, has virtually no chance of becoming law.