Co-Governance – Apartheid by another name!

We are constantly being told that the Treaty of Waitangi created a partnership between the Crown and Maori and to fulfill this we need to adopt a system of Co-Governance with Maori.

The idea being that Maori will have fifty percent of control and all other races will have the other fifty percent.

This whole idea of Co-Governance is nothing more than a racist attempt to gain control based on an erroneous interpretation of the Treaty.

Apartheid by another name!

Co-governance is not about the Treaty it is solely about control and getting the monetary benefits that go with having control. It’s about a small percentage of the population (approximately 17%) getting fifty percent of control based on their ethnicity and the others (approximately 83%) getting the rest.

We are told repeatedly by the Maori political party (Te Party Maori) and other so-called tribal 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.

This push for Co-Governance has got nothing to do with honouring the Treaty; it is all about gaining control and getting snouts in the trough of public funding.

We have given Iwi billions of dollars in Treaty settlements as reparations for past actions of our ancestors and whilst I have no complaint about the payments I truly believe that it is time the gravy train that is known as the Waitangi Tribunal was ended.

When the Maori signed the Treaty in 1840 they ceded sovereignty to the Crown. This is now disputed by the small band of radicals that are pushing for Co-Governance but the facts are that their own people have many times stated that sovereignty was ceded by the signing of the Treaty.

There has been some debate over the years about what, exactly; Maori believed they were signing in 1840 and whether Maori did cede sovereignty to the British Crown when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi or, as is now contended by some, did they not?

Sir Apirana Ngata prepared an English translation of the Treaty in 1922 that argued that the Chiefs had “cede (d) absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the Government of all their lands”.

The standard translation used by the Waitangi tribunal in the early 1990’s had been made by Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu. Here is his full translation of the Treaty:

“The first: The chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs who have not joined that Confederation give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government over their land.

“The second: The Queen of England agrees to protect the Chiefs, the Subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures. But on the other hand the Chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs will sell land to the Queen at a price agreed by the person owning it and by the person buying it (the latter being) appointed by the Queen as her purchase agent.

“The third: For this agreed arrangement therefore concerning the Government of the Queen, the Queen of England will protect all the ordinary people of New Zealand (i.e. the Maori) and will give them the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England.”

Sir Hugh and the Tribunal in this time were in no doubt that the chiefs had ceded sovereignty to the Queen.

The so-called elite Maori have recently tried to dispute this, but after 170 plus years of acceptance this would seem to be a futile attempt to change history, or even deliberate trouble-making, in trying after all these years to upset what has been accepted by both Maori and others for so long.

If ever there was a declaration that we are one people and that Maori have the same rights and duties of citizenship, surely it is Sir Hugh’s translation of the Treaty’s third clause?

It should be remembered that right from the beginning there was a problem defining who was a Maori and the government determined from early times, that a Maori was someone who was a half caste or more.

That was important in defining whether someone was eligible to enrol on the Maori Roll for electoral purposes, or was obliged to enrol on the General roll. The problem was that fewer and fewer people had sufficient Maori blood to be eligible to enrol on the Maori rolls.

In the Maori Purposes Act 1974, the definition of a Maori was altered to that shown below:

“Maori means a person of the Maori race of New Zealand; and includes any descendant of such a person”.

This was a controversial decision by the Kirk Labour Government and over the years it has enabled many people who are almost entirely of Pakeha ancestry to claim to be Maori if they wish to. One suspects that neither the Crown nor the Maori signatories of the Treaty in 1840 would have anticipated or accepted such an extension of the Treaty’s provisions.

 Some efforts have been made to argue that some kind of “partnership" exists between the Crown and Maori, but no one has tried so far as I know to determine whether either of the signatories had in mind a “partnership" between the Crown and someone who is, say, one sixty- fourth Maori, as many New Zealanders are today.

In any event, Sir Hugh’s translation of Article 3 surely rules out any special relationship/privilege for Maori or for their modern descendants over non-Maori. And since there was no such thing as a properly functioning democracy either in England or in New Zealand in 1840, the question of “political rights” wasn’t an issue at the time. Are some people just trying to re-write the Treaty to suit their current agendas?

We’ve now got “Maori seats,” “Maori wards,” “iwi consultation panels,” etc. and in many areas you can’t take any actions until they have been checked and signed off by the local Iwi to ensure it will not offend some spiritual value that they may hold.

We also have many local bodies signing off on co-governance agreements as if they are making some magical step towards implementing Treaty requirements when in actual fact all they are really achieving is to introduce a race based bureaucracy which is nothing more than turning democracy into Apartheid under the name of Co-Governance.

If like me you wish to argue against this happening the first thing that happens is that you are immediately labelled as a racist supporter of colonization which has been the cause of all things bad for Maori in New Zealand since the inception of the Treaty.

We have operated under a system of democracy which has been based on the principle that all persons are equal in the eyes of the law and entitled to equality in the political and governmental processes but now we have this section of the population which to divide the country based on ethnicity.

If we are to have unity/equality it won’t be through Co-Governance. Co-governance doesn’t unite us—it divides, inflames, and festers. We don’t need more committees and cultural vetoes; all we need is one law for all.

Against a backdrop of this high-profile push for co-governance, it is easy to overlook the positive statistics.

For example, 64 percent of Maori are employed as compared to the employment rate for all New Zealanders, of 68.4%. In excess of 400,000 Maori have jobs, provide products and services and pay tax and 97 percent of Maori aged 15 or older are not in prison or serving a community sentence or order. Over 99 percent of Maori are not gang members.

Yes there is a small number of the Maori population which create a huge number of problems by way of their personal choices in relation to their way of living and their attitude to the law of the land, and this affects the Maori population in general by influencing public opinion.

But it must be stated that the fact that although this small number are very much over represented in the criminal statistics and in the prison populations, this is not as a result of racism but a result of their own poor lifestyle choices.

When we study the claims of institutionalised racism within New Zealand, we find that in most cases the answer lies with the personal choices of those involved and the effects resulting from those personal choices.

This is backed up by the statistics that show that the vast majority of Maori are employed in jobs that provide products and services, pay tax, are not in prison or serving a community sentence or order, and are not gang members.

No matter that the Treaty Grievance industry members may claim otherwise. Again they mostly make these claims so as to prolong their ability to benefit from the gravy train that has developed around the Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal.

How have we allowed a relatively small group of people to continually make ill-considered and incendiary comments, around the issue of Co-Governance with many of them receiving public funding, and support?

We have allowed a climate to develop where these extreme views have almost become accepted by sheer repetition and the absence of counter-arguments.

It has become almost impossible to challenge those views as you are immediately branded as a racist and the mainstream media will not print any opposing views.

In allowing these extreme views to become accepted through our failure to strongly oppose them, we have failed to defend our hard-earned freedoms and our democratic values; allowed dangerous ideas to permeate our cultural and educational institutions; and enshrined lies where there was once truth.

It is time we stopped accepting that there is any basis that political power should be based on ethnicity or that ethnicity is any type of qualification for Leadership of our country. The future of New Zealand doesn’t belong to tribes—it belongs to all of us, equally; we all matter the same.

We should be united in our support for democracy and ensure that those who make extreme and divisive comments are held to account.

The reality is that holding the view that Maori ceded sovereignty is unacceptable to many in the media, academia, and the public sector with the holder likely to be shouted down and hounded for expressing such a view.

On Aug. 28, 1963, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in which he said those oft repeated words:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

He was speaking about the coloured people of America’s segregation based on race and he also said:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”

New Zealand has had a democratic system of government that is the oldest in the world, going back to the emancipation of women under the suffragette movement when they were granted the inalienable right to vote regardless of colour or gender in 1893.

On 19 September 1893, Governor Lord Glasgow signed a new Electoral Act into law, and New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to enshrine in law the right for women to vote in parliamentary elections.

Yet here we are currently, with the Maori Party, and the self-appointed so-called tribal elite of Iwi trying to go back and reinstate a system of race based governance

But 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.

Race based governance has never succeeded anywhere and it would not be any different here in New Zealand if it was implemented.

We can have co-governance without democracy.

We can have democracy without co-governance.

But we cannot have democracy and co-governance.

Democracy will only prevail if we oppose any moves towards legislated race based co-governance policies. We need to oppose co-governance for Democracy to prevail.