Democracy V’s Co-Governance
So we should be asking how the current coalition government has performed since taking over at the 2023 election, and asking what the other parties have got to offer for our future in the upcoming election battle.
Nationals Leader, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told the nation in his state of the nation speech that National is concentrating on fixing the basics and building the future.
My question for him is simply what part of the basics has he supposedly fixed and when are we likely to see the results of his building of our future.
His party promotes itself as building a society based on following our democratic principles and equal citizenship and equal opportunity yet so far we have not seen any evidence of this in the decision making by this National party led coalition government.
Stopping the tribal takeover is what National, ACT and New Zealand First promised to do when they agreed to prioritise “Ending race-based policies” in their Coalition Agreement.
There can be no mature discussion about our future as a country until everybody accepts that the Treaty provided for the government to have final authority, with all citizens - no matter their ancestry - having equal rights.
Prior to the 2023 election the current Coalition Government parties promised to reverse race-based laws and practices.
As we approach the end of their term in office, the big question being asked is whether enough is being done to derail the tribal juggernaut. Democracy is under threat from the claim of ‘partnership’ between the Crown and Iwi who signed the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi document.
The Prime Minister’s job is to protect our system of democracy & equality and to ensure that any threats to either are promptly and firmly opposed by, if necessary legislation, and by publicly speaking out against them.”
Given all of the above when we look at his claims of fixing the basics and building the future we don’t find much in the way of encouraging news to report.
Looking at the basic issues which affect every person in New Zealand the first is the costs of living and inflation rates.
People ask how much has the cost of living gone up in NZ?
(The cost of living is the amount of money you need for basic expenses like housing, food and health care in a specific place.)
The cost of living for the average New Zealand household increased 2.4 percent in the 12 months to the September 2025 quarter.
Meanwhile, inflation – as measured by the consumer’s price index (CPI) – was 3.0 percent in the 12 months to the September 2025 quarter, following a 2.7 percent increase in the 12 months to the June 2025 quarter.
For the average household, mortgage interest payments decreased 15.4 percent in the 12 months to September 2025.
For the average household, the cost of electricity increased 11.3 percent in the 12 months to September 2025.
For the average household, local authority rates increased 8.8 percent in the 12 months to September 2025.
For the average household, rent increased 2.6 percent in the 12 months to September 2025.
Retail NZ has reported that many shops had not seen the lift in sales in the fourth quarter that they had been hanging on for and cost pressures have continued to rise. "Two national businesses with 61 stores across the two businesses, have announced liquidations or closures in the first 10 days of this year and unless businesses had been able to negotiate things like rent reductions then there is likely to be more liquidations.
In light of the fact that the IRD, on the latest available figures, has a tax debt still to be collected that remains around the $9 billion dollar mark and no doubt the government would like to recover these funds to spend and are funding the IRD accordingly, it will be interesting to see the approach the IRD takes in relation to this debt.
January is traditionally a hard month for businesses as they close their doors in December for the holidays and have little income but still need to cover fixed costs, holiday leave and face IRD obligations such as November GST due 15 January, PAYE due on 20 January, October to December FBT due on 20 January, provisional tax due on 15 January and for the larger employers more PAYE due on 5th of February, this a lot of cash flow businesses need to find at a slower time of year, which increases the pressure.
In 2025, salary increases in New Zealand averaged between 2.6% and 2.9% compared to a 2.4% increase in the cost of living for the average household, with some lower-expenditure households facing up to 4% higher costs, according to Stats NZ
The 2.4 percent increase in the costs of living, measured by the household living-costs price indexes (HLPIs) follows a 2.6 percent increase in the 12 months to the June 2025 quarter. The most recent high was 8.2 percent recorded in the 12 months to the December 2022 quarter.
In relation to the increases in average salaries over the last few years it can be seen from the large increases in the costs of living over the same period, that the average household has effectively seen a large reduction in their disposable incomes.
This to me certainly doesn’t look like fixing the basics and whilst the coalition government have made some economic decisions that will benefit the economy in the long term, they are so far into the future that while they may be seen as building the future, they rely on many other variables to even come into force, and even if they do we will not see any return on these decisions for many years to come.
The costs of living are the thing most households are worried about. While inflation may have dropped slightly and interest rates stabilised, the cost of living is still hurting. Food, rent, insurance, rates, and electricity prices are still very high in relation to their incomes and many families are struggling just to keep the roof over their head and keep food on the table.
When it comes to the pre-election promises to end race‑based laws and practices the Coalition has failed dismally.
Instead of being eliminated, Labour’s He Puapua programme to replace democracy with tribal rule remains embedded within the country’s legislative and regulatory framework.
In light of National’s claims around building a society based on following our democratic principles, equal citizenship, equal opportunity and despite the clear mandate against racial division and co‑governance that was delivered to the Coalition at the election, not only are activist Treaty principle clauses continuing to shape policy advice and decision‑making, but official references to the original Treaty of Waitangi are being replaced with “Te Tiriti” – a radicalised version that embodies He Puapua through Treaty partnerships and co-governance.
The consequences can be seen in the Courts, where legislation is increasingly interpreted by activist Judges through the lens of Maori custom or tikanga in ways that exceed Parliament’s intent and undermine the Rule of Law.
Much of the government bureaucracy (both central and local) has demonstrated support for co-governance and outright resistance to any change, that without decisive action to remove divisive race‑based provisions from law and practice - and to reassert the primacy of Parliament - the drift towards tribal governance will continue. This represents an enormous threat to New Zealand democracy.
Co-governance was arguably the most polarising of all the policies stealthily adopted by Labour after its landslide victory in 2020. After the 2020 election the Labour government was forced to release the “He Puapua” report which was kept hidden until being leaked to the news media after the election was over.
Although the labour government denied it was going to implement the report’s recommendations, much of them had been enacted in some form or other before the Labour government suffered their ignominious defeat at the 2023 election.
The Labour Government passed much legislation through Parliament with the assumption that all people are not free and equal; that some are more equal than others not based on the matters before them, not based on any particular expertise they may have, but simply based on their ethnic background.
The fact of the matter was that by going down this pathway they started saying that, actually, some citizens are better qualified based on their demographic characteristics to address a matter than others and as a result we found our country was being divided on the basis of ethnic background; A place where some citizens were denied equal political rights on this basis of ethnic background.
Yet even with this knowledge and the mandate that they were given at the 2023 election, based on their promises to remove race‑based laws and practices, we have seen Prime Minister Luxon state that the issues of race are not serious and that he is in favour of co-governance.
The National, Act, NZ First coalition government under Luxon’s leadership has ignored their responsibility to their voting supporters at the time of the last election, by not carrying out their election promises to remove race‑based laws and practices.
Whilst they did repeal the Three Waters legislation and remove the Maori Health Authority, given the failure to actually address the underlying issue of race based legislation these changes are nothing more than tokenism as the circumstances that allowed these things to happen have just been swept under the rug not dealt with!
When analysing the progress that’s been made, what becomes obvious is that the Coalition has delivered on some legislative change, but its record is very much weaker on the issues and promises that matter most to everyday life: lifting real incomes, easing cost‑of‑living pressures, and turning around outcomes in health and education.
It must be stated that one extremely improved outcome has come about from the Minister of Education’s changes to the education and training legislation, which are already showing a very much improved level of results from the focus on the core numeracy and literacy skills.
The Coalition can claim they have made progress on improving the national economy given that the GDP figures are now showing signs of improvement, but this has not had any effect on improving the actual economic situation for households.
The Coalition government has just introduced two major pieces of legislation, the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, which together are intended to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA).
These Bills will set the rules for planning and environmental decision-making for decades. They will shape how our towns grow, how land is used, how infrastructure is delivered, and how our environment is protected.
Although most of us agreed that the RMA needed to be reformed, as the Bills are currently drafted, unequal treatment has been built into the new system through participation rights, consultation requirements, and decision-making influence that depend on more than on citizenship.
The Bills include a new Treaty clause that is more prescriptive than the current RMA. While this is said to be providing clarity, it actually has the effect of entrenching systems based on race. As drafted, this clause risks increasing legal uncertainty and encouraging further Treaty-based litigation.
The Bills also preserve Treaty settlement arrangements largely as they existed under the RMA. This means co-governance and joint management agreements embedded in settlements will continue unchanged, giving iwi enduring and additional influence over planning and consenting decisions.
Local authorities will be required to consult iwi authorities before any public notification of plans and to have regard to their advice. The same applies to national planning instruments. This gives iwi a significant advantage, allowing plans to be shaped to suit them before the wider public even sees them.
This clause again seems to create a two-tier system where rights and influence depend on ancestry. Equal citizenship matters in planning. Planning decisions should be based on environmental effects, community impact, and the public interest, not identity. Equal citizenship strengthens democratic accountability and social cohesion.
The calls from the so-called Maori caucus of the Labour party, for a system of “Race Based Co-governance”; effectively a return to tribalism is promising disruption and the potential of race war. New Zealand has never been so divided. The challenge of the 21st century is to oppose any talk of race based governance; support that as the Treaty stated “now we are one” and to move from division to unity with all persons being equal under the democratic system of one person one vote irrespective of colour creed or gender.
The minority of so-called elite Maori who have been attempting to seize control have been working mainly in silence in the background, on infiltrating our public service and indoctrinating it into their ideological beliefs around the colonisation of New Zealand.
To achieve their goal, they have replaced their real history of tribal warfare, slavery and cannibalism, with a narrative of victimhood and grievance in order to drive a radical campaign of disinformation against the Coalition Government.
It has become a tool used to side-line democracy and to force the total population to accept that there is some unchallengeable right for Maori through their use of “Te Reo & Tikanga”, to have a right of veto (or power) over all other races which call NZ home.
These claims around the so-called Partnership & Co-Governance were given a huge boost by the Labour government lead by Jacinda Ardern with the preparation of the “He Pua Pua” report.
We are told repeatedly by the so-called elite from Iwi that this is the only way forward to honour the Treaty. But in fact this is nothing more than moving from the democratic system of government we have had since the signing of the Treaty to a system of racial discrimination where equality in government has no place as it will be replaced by a person’s ethnicity.
There can be no mature discussion about our future as a country until everybody accepts that the Treaty provided for the government to have final authority, with all citizens - no matter their ancestry - having equal rights.
We must stop being afraid to say it. This is not just wrong. It is corrosive. A separatist political model based on racial ancestry belongs in 19th-century Apartheid South Africa, not 21st-century New Zealand.
The Prime Minister and the coalition government’s job is to protect our system of democracy & equality and to ensure that any threats to either are promptly and firmly opposed by, if necessary legislation, and by publicly speaking out against them.”
Whilst I am EXTREMELY critical of the coalition government and feel that they have failed to live up to their pre-election promises to remove all race‑based laws and practices, at the same time I can only say God help New Zealand if a Labour-led coalition Government were to get back into power.
What an absolute disaster it would be for our Country if this were to happen and they were to again intensely promote / pursue Maorification the way they did last time under Ardern and Hipkins.
It would almost certainly lead to the destruction of our democracy & its values, and would almost certainly bring about the permanent division and destruction of the unity of our society.
In December, Hipkins told his party’s conference: “Every promise that I put my name to at the next election will be a promise I know we can deliver on.” Yet one of his first major promises of the election campaign was for Labour to magic up 4.5 million extra GP appointments each year through “smarter digital tools and more efficient systems”.
The plan to offer three free GP visits annually for all New Zealanders would be financed by a 28 per cent capital gains tax on commercial and residential investment properties that wouldn’t come into operation until mid-2027 and is not retrospective.
Hipkins seems unaware of the irony of a Labour leader banking on the prices of already overvalued homes rising substantially to fund a surge in taxpayer-funded GP visits — including for the wealthy — that will undoubtedly overwhelm primary healthcare.
A Hipkins-led government will have to raise taxes (or borrow a lot more money) given his commitment to reinstate the pay equity programme abandoned by the Coalition government. The extra $12 billion in government expenditure will have to come from somewhere.
To gauge his position on Maori nationalism generally, it is worth noting Hipkins has said iwi didn’t cede sovereignty to the Crown in 1840 and has argued “there is nothing undemocratic about co-governance”.
According to statements made by Peeni Henare during the Tamaki Makaurau by-election — Hipkins has promised to reinstate the Māori Health Authority and resurrect the compulsory schools Aotearoa Histories curriculum, introduced during his five-year tenure as Education minister.
Henare also said Labour would provide $1 billion for Māori initiatives — as Ardern’s administration did in 2021.
The Greens have promised a suite of new wealth, inheritance and income taxes to raise some $88 billion in additional tax over four years. And while Te Pati Maori hasn’t indicated exactly how much extra revenue it would extract, it is dedicated to a wealth tax, higher company tax rate and a foreign companies tax.
Te Pati Maori candidate in September’s Tamaki Makaurau by-election, Oriini Kaipara, made a series of extravagant pledges and among them she said that she wanted “co-governance right across the board at a local, regional and national level”.
As I said previously; God help New Zealand if a Labour-led coalition Government were to get back into power.
But all is not doom and gloom; we can change the attitude and aims of the current coalition government without needing to change the government itself.
By the use of strategic voting we can support change without the need for overall change of government to a coalition of chaos led by Chippie with Labour the Greens and the Maori party.
The National party of today seems to believe in what are so-called 'progressive' policies that would once have been seen as left-wing policies.
These policies cover issues such as ideas about ethnicity that promote mythical ideologies and racial division of our nation; Issues that will destroy the idea of equality, one person, one vote; Issues about ethnicity that require unequal treatment based on an erroneous interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.
National was elected in 2023 with a mandate for change; Voters wanted race based legislation and practices removed; they wanted the bureaucracy to be changed back to a non-partisan secular viewpoint.
People feel let down; they voted for change and have only got more of the same, have seen the implementation of many of the very ideas that they voted to reject.
I don’t agree with everything that the minor coalition parties support, but at least they seem to be prepared to say no; to refuse to automatically accept claimed ideology and to believe that our historic national identity matters.
There is no risk in voting for one of the minor parties in the coalition in the upcoming election. Strengthening the minor parties in the coalition will not change the government but give the voters more control over what we get rather than just accepting what National put forward.
Strengthening the minor parties will help the voters get input into the formation of policy rather than just accepting the coalition’s directions.
By voting to strengthen the minor parties in the coalition the voters can create real change in the direction of our government’s policies and protect our democratic rights and equality at the ballot box.
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By Andy Loader, Poke the Bear