After reading an article published on the “Breaking Views” website, related to the He Puapua report and analysis of Waatea News reporting on the related outcomes from that report, the article convinced me to return to one that I wrote back in 2023 which detailed the Labour Government and Willie Jacksons reasons for not worrying about the introduction of the He Puapua report.
But in actual fact my opinion at that time and also now in light of the evidence that has come out in the public domain since then, was and still is; that we should be very wary of giving any credence to the recommendations made in that report.
In other words I firmly believe that we should be extremely worried about the outcomes if we implemented the recommendations from “He Puapua”.
The former Maori Development Minister; Willie Jackson, who was described as an influential “power broker” in a NZ Herald article, was telling New Zealanders back in 2023 that we have nothing to fear from the He Puapua report and its recommendations for co-governance.
He Puapua, if fully implemented, would give a 50-50 co-governance role to Maori.
He stated; “This is a unique partnership and Maori get the extras in terms of Maori seats and management and governance because of their unique position as the Treaty partner. It is nothing for New Zealanders to be scared of…”
I believe that the truth of the matter is the total opposite from that statement; i.e. Now is the time for us all to be very afraid of where this policy around the “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” is taking New Zealand.
Maori make up 12.3% of the population that is of voting age yet they now have 33 government MP’s and three Senior Ministers in the government cabinet (Rt Hon Winston Peters; Hon Shane Jones and Hon Tama Potaka).
The 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System report: Towards a Better Democracy recommended;
They warned that if New Zealand adopted MMP without removing the reserved Maori seats, Maori would be over-represented in Parliament and would have a disproportionate and dangerous influence on the running of the country.
This situation has now come to pass and with the current support for He Puapua which recommends Maori be given a co-governance role in line with the Treaty of Waitangi partnership agreement; it will result in a formal system of Apartheid where we have a Tribal Elite having a right of veto over the rest of the population by race no matter what percentage of their heritage is Maori.
The problem is that there is no partnership agreement in the Treaty of Waitangi documents and as has been stated many times by experts both European and Maori there cannot legally be such an agreement between the Crown and its subjects.
Jacinda Ardern and her Labour government took every opportunity to conceal the He Puapua Report for 12 months prior to the 2020 general election - including keeping it secret from the Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First political party, even though they were coalition partners in the current government at that time.
Government critics said that He Puapua was functioning as an undeclared separatist agenda.
He Puapua wasn’t publicly announced, but a number of its recommendations had been implemented by the Labour Government without sharing any such plan with New Zealanders.
The implementation of the He Puapua recommendations by stealth was in effect creating two systems based on racial division which was nothing short of disastrous for New Zealand and its population. These attempts to racialise New Zealand provoked significant public complaints.
Government has a duty to uphold the Rule of Law and protect the democratic rights of all New Zealanders but the implementation of parts of the He Puapua report raised vital issues about what inferences the Crown was allowing and/or encouraging Maori to draw from its recommendations.
One of the main recommendations to come from the He Puapua report was that there should be a 50/50 co-governance regime in place by 2040, the bicentennial anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
But such a failure to uphold the equal application of the laws and the long-established principle of “one law for all” can only be seen as proof that the Labour Government intended to change profoundly the constitutional arrangements of the New Zealand state.
The so-called treaty partnership came from a 1987 decision in the Appeal Court related to the Lands case. This concept of a partnership between Maori and the Crown has been used by governments since, even though it is an erroneous interpretation of the court’s decision.
Retired Judge and former Canterbury University Law Lecturer Anthony Willy has given the following explanation:
“On any careful reading of the Maori Council case the Court did not decide as has become commonly supposed that Maori and the Crown were in partnership with each other, a partnership created by the Treaty, merely that the Crown and Maori owe each other duties which are akin to those owed by partners to a commercial transaction. In the result Maori and the Crown are not partners in any sense of the word. Indeed, it is constitutionally impossible for the Crown to enter into a partnership with any of its subjects. The true position is that the Crown is sovereign but owes duties of justice and good faith to the Maori descendants of those who signed the treaty.”
In other words, “There is not, and never has been a constitutional partnership between the Crown and Maori people. The judgment in the Maori Council case has been misinterpreted. The point which all of their Honours were making in that case was that the Crown has ongoing duties to act justly and in good faith towards Maori people...”
In an interview, Anthony Willy went further, calling those extremists pushing for Maori supremacy “greedy rent seekers”. It was a remarkable comment, because it was not so long ago that no one dared to refer to Maori radicals so plainly. Those inhibitions have fallen away dramatically since the He Puapua agenda for Maori supremacy has become plain to see.
David Round, another former Canterbury University Law Lecturer, has also given an explanation of the ‘partnership’ interpretation as shown below:
“The idea of ‘partnership’ only appeared in 1987, when five judges of the Court of Appeal, called upon to interpret the brand-new concept of ‘Treaty principles’, which Parliament had just inserted in the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986, spoke in several places of partners and partnership. It is absolutely clear, however, that the judges did not intend the words to have the weight of the politically-charged and even seditious meaning which is now loaded onto it. A ‘partnership’ between Maori and the Crown is constitutionally-impossible nonsense. It would have to mean that Maori are not the Queen’s subjects (as the Treaty says they are) but the Queen’s equals, and therefore not subject to her government.”
Round also spoke about the consequences of such an interpretation:
“This partnership is a fundamental subversion of democracy. Maori are claiming now that their involvement in decision making should not be on the basis of one person one vote, but instead they are demanding in their proposals for ‘co-governance 50:50 representation.
That is the reality of the situation New Zealand now faces.
The co-governance agenda that the Labour government and Willie Jackson were promoting as ‘nothing to be scared of’, represents totalitarian control by an unaccountable race-based tribal elite.
He Puapua set out a strategy for embedding Tribal Rule through a Co-Governance arrangement across all spheres of New Zealand governance and the article from Waatea News was designed to help promote these institutional arrangements.
The structure of that article was to take ordinary policy changes which affect every citizen of NZ and then cast them as being an attack on Maori rights. The article asserts that ordinary policy changes were a betrayal of or an unprecedented attack on Maori rights.
The article seems to overall promote the right of co-governance for Maori, under the Treaty of Waitangi, as superior to any kind of democratic electoral mandate from all citizens of NZ.
This form of co-governance based on ethnic identity is nothing more than the implementation of a system of Apartheid. If anyone questions this system then they are loudly condemned as being racist.
“He Puapua” in action is nothing more than an attempt to embed co-governance and gain protected funding, mandated consultation, and insulation from future democratic change.
Taxpayer support is treated as a given ethnicity based right, not a contested public choice and any shouted down as racism that is hostile to Maori.
The type of narrative portrayed in this article is not connected to the reality of the situation but is one of using every means available to achieve some form of lasting authority with the expectation that it should come with funding provided by all taxpayers.
The drive for a race based co-governance role for Maori based on some erroneous interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi has been growing support since the Waitangi Tribunal was set up, in 1975, to hear claims related to issues around the Treaty of Waitangi and also the actions of the early European settlers to NZ.
What began as a well-meaning effort to settle all such claims and offer an apology to those affected has since that time developed into nothing more than an industry that is focussed on claimants’ getting every last cent they are able to extract from the Crown (read taxpayers of NZ) for any and everything they can possibly dream up to make a claim in relation to.
That’s why taxpayer funding is spoken of as a right rather than a choice; why scrutiny is reframed as hostility or racism; why disagreement is treated as bad faith; and why democratic review is cast as betrayal. These are not random complaints. They are pressure points.
Questioning He Puapua should not be seen as hostile or racist, but as part of our normal democratic process available to all citizens of NZ. Disagreement or scrutiny should not be seen as racism, just as a constitutional change such as He Puapua should not be introduced under the cover of secrecy as was attempted by the Labour Government in 2020.
The response to such an attack on our democratic rights should never be silence or deference, but exposure: insistence on process, evidence, accountability, and democratic authority.
So given all of the above we should be very fearful about the threat He Puapua poses to our society - and demand a halt to all attempts to replace our democracy with tribal rule.
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By Andy Loader, Poke the Bear