The new chair of the Waitangi National Trust says she wants to rethink how politics intersects with the treaty grounds. Jenny Shipley believes Waitangi Day has become “too political” and wants to rethink the relationship between politics and New Zealand’s most symbolically important national site. The newly appointed chair of the Waitangi National Trust has suggested political debate could return to Te Tii Marae at the lower Treaty Grounds, where it was traditionally centred, and has asked whether politicians should feature at all in national commemorations on the upper Treaty Grounds.