SYDNEY, April 10, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A Maori folk song rang through New Zealand's parliament on Thursday after lawmakers voted to defeat a bill that many feared would erode Indigenous rights.

The contentious "Treaty Principles Bill" sought to redefine the principles of New Zealand's founding document, signed between Maori chiefs and British representatives in 1840.

Many critics saw it as an attempt to wind back the special rights given to the country's 900,000-strong Maori population.

Parliament voted down the bill on Thursday, with 112 opposed and only 11 in favour.

Moments after the final result was read, people in the chamber burst into a Maori folk song celebrating nationhood and unity.

More than 35,000 demonstrators poured into the capital Wellington last year to rail against the bill in one of the country's biggest protests on record.

Government minister David Seymour, who leads a minor party in New Zealand's governing coalition, was the architect of the bill.

It sought to curtail "special rights" afforded to Maori, according to Seymour, who is an arch-critic of affirmative action.

The bill said Maori have been granted political and legal rights and privileges not afforded to non-Indigenous New Zealanders, due to the way the country's founding treaty has been interpreted.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 to bring peace between 540 Maori chiefs and colonising British forces.

Its principles today underpin efforts to foster partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous New Zealanders, and protect the interests of the Maori community.

Maori today remain far more likely to die early, live in poverty or wind up in prison.

Earlier this year, a government committee received more than 300,000 public submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill -- the highest number ever recorded -- of which 90 percent rejected it.