When Anglicans adopted a revolutionary new constitution in 1992 the media coverage at the time went hysterical. The decision led the 6pm news and the Paul Holmes Show that followed huffed and puffed with the help of guest and once devout Methodist David Lange. We’d taken this bicultural journey a step too far.

But Anglicans were only warming up. We invested in a team of educators to tour the country and unpack what the new partnership model, framed by constitution and Te Tiriti, would mean for a three tikanga church. Later, a speaking tour led by Professor Richard Sutton explained how the church model could be adopted for the whole nation. (The advice was sharply declined by Prime Minister Jenny Shipley in 1998 when the Hikoi of Hope marched into Parliament Grounds.)

Adopting a new constitution was the easier part, even though it took nearly 150 years to achieve it. Putting it into practice was harder. The promised resource sharing between tikanga was slow to arrive and 20 years later a new commission started asking why Māori had only a handful of stipendary clergy across its 38 rohe (ministry units)

The biggest resource for ministry support and training, the St John’s College Trust Board, distributes some $20 million each year. A three tikanga group called Te Kotahitanga was formed to advise the board on how to share the money.

Tikanga Pākehā offered to withhold its requests for ten years. No thank you, said Māori. They wanted a conversation that put building relationships ahead of rearranging assets. In 2012 a three tikanga commission began work to see how Māori could assume full guardianship of half the distribution.

And now finally, at the General Synod/Te Hinota Whanui, meeting last month in Tonga, a decision was made that promises to be as revolutionary as the constitution itself. Tikanga Māori alone are asked to establish a way of exercising guardianship over the whole distribution of the St John’s Trust.

Guardianship means tino rangatiratanga, the promise made in article two of Te Tiriti, the heated subject of claim and counter claim that will help shape the outcome of the coming election.

The Anglican General Synod has just endorsed it again, yet mainstream media this time ignored the decision, briefly focusing instead on a whale watching boat sinking with synod delegates aboard. And the TV show that replaced Paul Holmes talked about ASB Good Sorts instead. No one seemed interested in tino rangatiratanga.

For Tikanga Pākehā, the landmark synod decision gives us pause. The bicultural progress we thought we’d made since 1992 was not enough. Not by a country mile.

There are reasons for that. Mirroring the widening gap between richer and poorer across the country, our tikanga life has progressed in silo mode. Common Life Hui were cancelled before they got going, along with education, communication and media projects to deepen understanding of what are revolutionary changes. How many Pākehā congregations celebrate Te Pouhere Sunday each year?

In Archbishop Tamahere’s words, Māori and Pasefika “remain systematically marginalized within our shared life.’”

And most Pākehā Anglicans still struggle to understand the weight and heft of te tino rangatiratanga that Māori have never let go. Not now. Not in 1840. Why would they when they outnumbered Pākehā 400 times over?

Under our constitution we are especially well placed to understand tino rangatiratanga, even as the leaders of our coalition government play fast and loose with the words, using them to scaremonger Kiwis into thinking it means separatism, privilege, inequality, even take over.

What the Tonga Synod decision invites Anglicans to make is a journey of trust in Māori values associated with tino rangatiratanga, of kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga, being hospitable like a good host should, and looking out for each other and the environment in all our interconnectedness.

If that’s what tino rangatiratanga is about, where’s the problem? In Archbishop Philip Richardson’s words during one of the many debates leading to the Tonga decision, “Tino rangatiratanga will not disadvantage me, not one little bit. In fact the Treaty and the tino rangatiratanga it upholds gives me a place to stand, in a unique way, in this land, not simply as a colonist, or a colonist’s son.”

Another of our former archbishops, Sir David Moxon, often reminds us that accepting tino rangatiratanga is nothing new. “When Te Haahi Mihinare first arrived here , it was indeed Māori guardianship that provided for pākehā sustenance. The first missions involving pākehā were totally dependent on this. In fact settler mission personnel were offered partnership , protection , participation, equity and their own form of self determination by Māori long before the treaty offered them back . The early missions staffed by LMS and then CMS would not have survived without an arrangement not too different from the model just recently adopted in Tonga.”  

The new constitution in 1992 gave us the mandate to look after our separate tikanga houses, but produced limited success at looking after each other. The Tonga decision provides a reset of how to do that. All we have to do is trust each other enough to let it happen, just as the first Pākehā Anglicans did.

And when we do, the rest of the country, bombarded as it is by politicians who treat cogovernance, bicultural partnership and Te Tiriti itself as cut and paste, take or leave it issues, will be watching.