Fail at what you may ask?
The answer is – Fail to follow up on your promises from the last election!
Prior to the last election in 2023, Sir John Key spoke about the coalition government and the National Party’s chances in the polls.
He also spoke about tensions around issues such as Act’s Treaty Principles Bill, the removal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act and National’s move to overrule a court decision on the Marine and Coastal Area Act, saying many of these were not of National’s making such as Act’s Treaty Principles Bill which Prime Minister Luxon has ruled out supporting beyond the first reading, but it was something the government had to deal with.
He was right in that statement but those comments in effect left a lot unsaid.
He got it right when he said that we are all New Zealanders but in fact he got it badly wrong when he said that everybody wants to live in a place where we can respect one another, get along well and foster a better New Zealand.
Given the ongoing agitation for separatism from Maori based on a wrongful interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi and supported by calls for co-governance based solely on ethnicity, we will never see a better New Zealand where we all respect one another and get along well. Not without change.
It was this exact reason that was one of the main drivers for change at the election in 2023 which created the current situation where we have a coalition government made up of three different political parties.
National are currently, the same as they were when he made his speech, almost flat-lining in the political polls and it is my belief that until they decide to actually do what they promised and return New Zealand to a democratically ruled country rather than one where ethnicity is the guiding factor, they are rapidly heading for another defeat at the next election.
There was much talk about the Treaty Principles Bill that Act promised to deliver as part of their election manifesto in 2023 but our current Prime Minister Christopher Luxon ruled out supporting it beyond the first reading in parliament.
It’s a great pity that instead of just a blanket opposition to this proposed Bill he couldn’t find the time and ability to try to offer some positive suggestions to attack some of the large problems left behind by the previous Labour government.
We spent much time and effort arguing about a proposed Bill, with the situation being inflamed by a small body of so-called tribal elite iwi members (supported by the Main Stream Media) who are, in my opinion, driven more by the need to keep their snouts in the public trough than they are by actually helping others.
Maybe, they should take into account that old saying: You cannot subsidize stupidity and expect common sense as the outcome.
The electorate voted for change and currently they are not getting that change. In fact if we look at the current government’s actions we can see that instead of change we are actually getting more of the same race based legislation that the electorate voted against in 2023.
We see in the Fast Track Bill that this government is in fact including more requirements based on ethnicity rather than less (as evidenced by the guaranteed appointments on the evaluation panels solely based on ethnicity).
“Iwi” are mentioned many times in the Bill and the proposed four-person evaluation panels are designed to include one person nominated by the relevant local authority and one person nominated by the relevant iwi.
This design for the evaluation panels will result in giving Maori an equivalent voice to the local authorities. Given that Maori make up only approximately 13% of the voting population of New Zealand (according to the latest NZ census) this gives them a much greater influence over the outcomes from any fast track applications above other ethnicities in New Zealand.
The proposal to have a mandatory position on the evaluation panels, solely based on ethnicity is nothing more than apartheid dressed up in a different disguise.
Their justification for introducing this into the Bill is that there is some type of partnership requirement under the Treaty of Waitangi that requires a system of co-governance to be implemented.
The problem with that acceptance is simply that there is no mention anywhere in the Treaty documents of a partnership or of any co-governance requirements.
Given the level of opposition to the previous Labour governments race based policies and legislative changes it is obvious that the current coalition government has no mandate for inclusion in this Bill of mandatory appointments based on ethnicity.
The Prime Minister has stated that he is happy to see co-governance removed from central government controls but that he is also happy to see it retained at the local government level which means that in effect it has not gone away, it is in actual fact, only going to get worse.
According to a report from the New Zealand Taxpayers Union, the Government is set to keep co-governance of fresh water: rivers, lakes, and rules for agricultural run-off, making them subject to 'te Mana o te Wai' statements.
The Taxpayers’ Union at that time stated that they had been informed by a very reliable source within the Government that the reason the new Government had not repealed the unworkable fresh water National Policy Statement was because ministers had been advised that changing the race-based (and impossibly high) water standards could not be done without iwi consent.
These are the water quality standards that are so high that, according to expert advice to the last Government, it is not even certain rivers inside the national parks would meet them! Prior to the election, the parties now in Government committed to abolishing the standards (which also contain the race-based provisions).
The Standards require regional councils to create plans that promote “te Mana o Te Wai” (literally meaning, ‘the Mana of the water’).
NZ requirements under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 (NPS-FM) mandate that all freshwater management must give effect to Te Mana o te Wai, prioritizing the health of water bodies, then human health needs, before other uses. Councils must work with tāngata whenua to define local, long-term visions and, by 2026, implement plans that include stricter, compulsory, and new attributes for ecosystem health.
It's not even a disguised version of co-governance. Local council plans must allow tangata whenua to be "actively involved in decision-making processes relating to Maori freshwater values" as defined by relevant tangata whenua. Regional councils must also "work with tangata whenua to investigate the use of mechanisms ... such as transfers or delegations of power [and] joint management agreements."
These requirements put Local governments in an impossible position.
The social and economic wellbeing of communities who collect and use the water must come second to whatever a local iwi says upholds te Mana o Te Wai.
These obligations, introduced by the last Government, remain in place. That means regional councils up and down the country are spending millions of ratepayers' money to create these new policies that implement te Mana o Te Wai.
The election gave a very clear democratic mandate that these anti-democratic water provisions would be gone within the first 100 days. But officials told Ministers "you can't do that".
Ministry for the Environment officials told Ministers that Cabinet and Parliament cannot act unilaterally because iwi have property interests in water.
Te Mana o Te Wai Statements; what are they?
They are statements which allow Iwi a role in formulating water management policy throughout New Zealand. They are statements which the nation’s more than 1200 iwi and hapū can issue at will, and the councils which control the day-to-day management of water assets, must obey them.
In fact, anything an iwi or hapū decides is consistent with their view of matauranga Maori or tikanga (customs) qualifies as a basis for making a binding order concerning a freshwater body in their territory.
Non-Maori, who make up 84 per cent of the nation’s population, are denied the right to issue Te Mana o Te Wai statements no matter what their own views may be on water management, or indeed the spiritual beliefs they may hold about it.
There are no defined criteria as to what the statements may contain and as such they give the Iwi total power over and control of water throughout New Zealand.
Just a few months after the 2023 election, the new Government Ministers were effectively being overruled by officials who were still asserting an apparent Treaty obligation that fresh water must be co-governed. It was obvious then; the same as it is now, based on commentary that many Ministries in Wellington believe this and are using those beliefs to refuse to acknowledge the Coalition Government's democratic mandate from the 2023 election.
Then we come to the Treaty Principles Bill which was promoted by the Act Party, and the Prime Minister did not support past its first reading in parliament.
There is no mention anywhere in the Treaty of Waitangi, of “Principles”.
Parliament made the decision to include in the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act legislation, the word ‘principles’.
In that legislation, ‘principles’ referred directly to the meaning, value, and purpose of the Articles in the Treaty of Waitangi. The word ‘principles’ was tied to the Articles. It had no referent outside those Articles.
Parliament did not provide a meaning of the term “Principles” in that Act, and such vacancy of meaning, opened up opportunities for those with vested interests to insert their own meaning.
In inventing and consolidating their version of “Principles”, advocates for a partnership-based co-governance structure have used traditional ideology to provide an almost spiritually authorised quality to their interpretation of the term.
The inclusion of the term “Principles” into legislation without knowing or describing what it meant was an unprecedented failure on the part of our political representatives of that time.
The initial authority for inclusion was not given by the people. Until this occurs, or if the people refuse to authorise the inclusion, the Principles do not have the authority claimed for them. They should be removed. In the end, legitimacy is decided by the people if democracy is to work.
The coalition government was voted into power by the electorate on the basis that the voters wanted a change in direction from the race based decision making that had been the basis of the Labour government’s regulatory changes and it would do well to remember that fact.
New Zealand had the oldest democratic government in the world after passing the universal suffrage legislation in 1893, giving the right to vote to all citizens regardless of colour creed or gender and the electorate will not condone any implementation of race based legislation no matter what justification is promoted for such.
Act had as a major part of their election manifesto promised to have a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi Principles.
A Curia poll held in October 2023 showed 45 per cent support for holding a referendum yet there was little commentary in favour of this proposal. In fact, a lot of it was hysterically opposed such as Labour MP Willie Jackson’s warning in early November of “war”.
“I’m just giving a warning. I work amongst our people; I’m amongst people who will go to war for this — war against Seymour and his mates. I’m saying to you what Māori have been saying to me.”
New Zealand needs a discussion about Treaty principles and people should have a say on them alongside the courts, the Waitangi Tribunal and public servants with the aim to give all people “equal rights and duties”.
The fact that there is no partnership requirements contained in the Treaty still does not mean that we shouldn’t work together in a co-management role as has happened in the past. And in actual fact work together in good faith to achieve the same desired results for all.
What it does mean is that we should jealously protect our democratic systems of governance for the equal benefit of all New Zealand citizens from the approximately 190 different ethnic groups that make up our population.
Taking the above into account and given the recent history of New Zealand (post the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi legislation) and the ill-informed interpretations of the Treaty document, it is definitely past time we held a referendum to identify the meaning of the term “Principles” as it applies to the Treaty of Waitangi legislation.
Yes it may hurt some of the riders on the Treaty gravy train but it would at least give all New Zealand citizens the opportunity to calmly and reasonably discuss the interpretation of the Treaty and any attendant principles that we may wish to have with the Treaty.
Those who have done well out of the invention of Treaty Principles will object to the holding of a binding referendum and most likely use the loud voices and threatening tactics that have proved effective in the past to try to justify their opposition.
I do not think that our current Prime Minister is reading the attitude of the nation’s voters correctly, and in fact if the coalition government led by national don’t start to make their promised changes in the race based legislative mess left behind by the last Labour government, then I believe that national will not see any rise in support and in fact will start to see a very serious decrease in the levels of support from the electorate.
They may have a plan and they may be focussed on executing that plan but if the plan is not the one that the electorate wants, execution of it will only lead to more misery for the coalition and defeat at the upcoming election.
In my honest opinion after many years of watching politicians everywhere grab more power while dividing people with fear, race, and ideology; you can’t trust the political class or the media that protects them. They are often, deceitful (sometimes even corrupt) and thrive on control, division, and obedience, with results only being seen as important if they support the politicians stance on any particular issue.
This isn’t just happening somewhere else in the world, it’s happening here in NZ too. Our politicians are the same as others around the world and to a large degree I believe they are controlled by the same ruling class globalists and puppet masters who have their own hidden agendas.
Life in New Zealand has changed quite drastically over the last fifty odd years and pretending otherwise won’t fix it.
We see the population, families and friends more divided, more defensive, more willing to justify things they once would’ve questioned; arguing over ethnicity and ideology while real problems stack up around us: rising costs, broken systems, failing infrastructure, crime, and communities left behind.
Hard work is punished. Risk-taking is regulated to death. Success is resented. Dependency is rewarded.
We could do a lot worse than to follow the example of Donald Trump. He didn’t conform to what the ruling classes in the USA government system.
He walked into the last election and made it clear that he stands up for family and his country.
He talked about his views on:
There was no virtue signalling just real issues affecting real people; it resounded with the population and he won in a landslide victory.
Immediately on taking office he started to implement the things that he had promised to do on his campaign trail and the USA is now seeing the results of those decisions coming to fruition.
Inflation has dropped, costs of living have reduced, taxes have been reduced, employment has risen illegal immigration has stopped, and foreign investment has risen.
In comparison our coalition government led by Christopher Luxon has done very little of what they promised on the campaign trail with many of the most important issues still to be dealt with.
Yes they did stop the Three Waters Bill, they have taken steps to rearrange the economy, they did cancel the race based Maori Health Authority but there are many more serious problems to be dealt with, which they seem to ignore.
The jury is still out on whether their actions in regard to the economy have had the desired results even though they have managed to lower the rate of inflation from the previous government’s record highs.
The main issue for the coalition is that none of their actions in relation to the economy are currently really being seen in the pockets of the workers who are still struggling to put a roof over their heads and food on the table.
On top of that we see almost every time there is an announcement from government that we are facing more taxes (sorry I should call them levies) such as the latest suggested infrastructure funding through tolls, LNG levy etc.
Their latest replacement legislation for the Resource Management Act, the National Environment Bill and the Planning Bill still provide for co-governance and also contain provisions to allow for setting of taxes relating to fresh water.
Federated Farmers says a water tax by stealth is buried in the Government’s proposed RMA replacement legislation, warning the bills create an enabling framework for pricing-based allocation of scarce natural resources that could, in practice, land as a levy on water users.
Federated Farmers argued that even if the Government had no present intention to tax water, the legislation would give ministers “sweeping powers to tax water as a tool for managing demand”.
It said the bills allowed ministers to “auction, tender, and manage demand for natural resources like freshwater through a competitive pricing process”, and to introduce “natural resource levies” to fund purposes including restoration and managing demand.
At the centre of that claim is the Natural Environment Bill’s market-based allocation (MBA) framework, which would allocate natural resources where demand exceeds supply using a competitive pricing process, rather than relying on first-come, first-served permitting.
But charging for access challenges longstanding expectations among existing users about how freshwater is allocated.
While the framework is presented in terms of “natural resources” rather than water specifically, freshwater allocation is the most likely flashpoint because scarcity is most visible in fully or over-allocated catchments.
In my opinion the only good news result that this coalition government can point to that comes with hard evidence to prove its success, is the change to the education system around the literacy and numeracy requirements in primary education with initial results showing dramatic improvements in learning outcomes.
Overall looks like failure to me!
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By Andy Loader, Poke the Bear