Insistence on a separate Maori government has built up over the decades since the formation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975. The Tribunal has over time constructed and publicised a complete rewriting of history – the “retrospective recrimination” and “counterfactual history” of the Tribunal, quoting the words of historian Bill Oliver. This fundamental reversal of the message and meaning of the Treaty has been aided by a captive media and the crippling of free speech.
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 and that’s exactly how it has turned out.
Maori make up 12.3% of the population that is of voting age yet there are currently 33 MPs of Maori descent across all six parties in Parliament.
In his 1985 book Shadows Over New Zealand, the former Communist Geoff McDonald revealed how the Maori Sovereignty movement was using Marxist strategies to gain power:
They believe that the key to destabilising New Zealand is to show how badly the Maori is treated. When enough lies are told and often enough people begin to believe they are actually truths.
The truth is that there is no real oppression of Maori within New Zealand and if the history is researched it is easily proven that since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori have generally seen a vast improvement in their personal circumstances.
Prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi the rule of tikanga was followed and loyalty was for those in the hapu or iwi; all others were of no importance and could be robbed of land, killed, and eaten. War bred war, as frequently a group would escape a stronger tribe and move to attack another. Fighting was strengthened by the demand for revenge, utu, and the call to defend the mana of relations and ancestors.
The current calls for a system of “Race Based Co-governance”; effectively a return to tribalism is a terrible mistake, 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 Waitangi Tribunal was set up 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 focused 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.
The Tribunal was originally about redress in relation to the actions of our first European settlers but has now ended up as a vehicle which is used to try to claim as much financial reward as possible and to give absolute power to a very small section of our population.
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.
We now have what is a very small number of self-appointed so-called elite Iwi who are trying by any and every means at their disposal, to assert some sort of moral superiority over the rest of the NZ population and to try to gain power of control.
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 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.
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.
Over decades since the signing of the Treaty, the so called Maori elite have gained positions of power and influence through division and deceit. The Waitangi Tribunal has morphed into an almost permanent commission of inquiry into contemporary breaches of the Treaty with jurisdiction extended to include already-settled historic claims and anything else that can be quantified, giving rise to what has become a multi-billion dollar Treaty gravy train.
It was also during this period of time that the claim that Maori are a Treaty ‘partner’ with the Crown gained traction, with special Maori consultation rights and privileges included in the new Resource Management Act; Although there was no mention anywhere in the Treaty that related to partnership.
What we have now is a system of ideological indoctrination which is cloaked in cultural empathy, enforced by social shame, and hidden behind a virtue signalling sea of Maori culture with our public servants scrambling to prove their cultural credentials and enforcing a cultural ideology across every aspect of national life rather than concentrating on delivering basic services.
The so-called elite have used Maori culture and Te Ao Maori (the Maori world view) to assert their claims for some type of right under the Treaty of Waitangi, to be given the right of co-governance, when in actual fact there is no basis in truth for this assertion.
You’re not allowed to question it. You’re not allowed to ask for clarity. If you do, you’re dismissed as backward, racist, colonial; a problem to be fixed or, preferably, ignored.
In the nineties, when MMP was introduced, instead of the Maori Seats being abolished - as recommended by the Royal Commission on the Electoral System to prevent an over-representation of Maori in Parliament - they were retained. As predicted, with 27 percent of MPs now of Maori descent, the reserved seats have become discriminatory, denying non-Maori New Zealanders fair representation in Parliament.
Attempts to racialise New Zealand through implementation of co-governance, has provoked significant public complaint. Government has a duty to uphold the Rule of Law and protect the democratic rights of all New Zealanders.
And yet, here we are: using race-based politics and reinvented Treaty theology to alter the democratic systems which we have always stood on. It’s not a brave attempt to implement some erroneous interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, it’s not being bicultural; IT’S BLINDINGLY STUPID.
The Treaty of Waitangi, whatever your view on it, was never intended to be a constitutional framework for 21st-century co-governance. It was a political compromise scribbled down to stop people from shooting each other.
But somewhere between the Waitangi Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and an endless supply of cultural consultants, we’ve managed to turn that Treaty into a magical entitlement factory—churning out “rights” THAT IS RAPIDLY MAKING US THE BANANA REPUBLIC OF THE PACIFIC.
New Zealand is fast becoming a textbook case in how to get it wrong; how to destroy a democratic system of government and eliminate any semblance of equality for all citizens.
Iwi’s multi-billion-dollar tribal business corporations have been granted a special exemption from the crucial ‘public interest’ test in charity law so they could achieve charitable trust status and avoid paying tax.
After gaining a simple majority result in the 2020 election, the Ardern Government through the use of their majority allowed the co-governance activists within the State sector to begin implementing Labour’s He Puapua agenda for tribal rule onto our nation.
In the He Puapua report which was prepared under the Labour Government there was a section titled “Vision 2040” that set out the intention of having two separate, racially defined, government structures; New Zealand being broken apart, with no pretence of inclusivity or equality.
The Maori Party (which claims falsely, to represent the Maori population of NZ) and the self-appointed so-called tribal elite of Iwi are pushing to go back and reinstate a system of race based governance as seen in that He Puapua document.
Maori make up 12.3% of the population that is of voting age yet the Maori Party only managed to gain 2.8% of the vote in the last election.
The 2019 He Puapua report to Government (based on a report to the Iwi Chairs Forum, Matike Mai) became known to the public in 2021.
The implementation of some of the He Puapua recommendations has already begun to create two systems based on racial division. Maori language and culture has begun dominating public affairs with key institutions ‘captured’, including the public service and wider State sector, the courts, the mainstream media, and many private organisations.
New Zealanders have only recently become increasingly aware that a tribal takeover is underway.
The Maori Party are the worst enemy of our democracy with their daily activities promoting treason, rebellion, division, separatism and lying hate-filled propaganda and indoctrination.
They claim to be the indigenous people of NZ but Maori are NOT indigenous to New Zealand they arrived by boat like everyone else;
The Co-leader of Te Pati Maori Rawiri Waititi has said : “Caucasian (white people) as a species are doomed to extinction as a new Aotearoa is on the rise.”
If anyone tries to make a stand against their racist agenda they respond with threats.
Power has definitely gone to their heads; to the point where they actually imagine they are elitist and have made the outrageous claim that Maori are, quote . . . . A genetically superior race!
It was partly as a result of this situation that 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 second year 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.”
We are now seeing the consequences of decades of allowing vested interest groups committed to subverting democracy and seizing power for their own enrichment, to infiltrate all levels of government in New Zealand both central and local.
Insistence on a separate Maori government has built up over the decades since the formation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975. The Tribunal has over time constructed and publicised a complete rewriting of history – the “retrospective recrimination” and “counterfactual history” of the Tribunal, quoting the words of historian Bill Oliver. This fundamental reversal of the message and meaning of the Treaty has been aided by a captive media and the crippling of free speech.
After approximately fifty years of working to weave racial privilege deep into the New Zealand’s legislative framework, Iwi leaders are not only fighting any attempts to remove that privilege but to also extend it as far and as fast as possible before the Coalition Government can enact legislation to reverse race-based laws and practices.
The former US President Barack Obama once warned:
“Ethnic-based tribal politics has to stop. It is rooted in the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one’s family, tribe, or circle with little regard for the public good. It stifles innovation and fractures the fabric of the society. Instead of opening businesses and engaging in commerce, people come to rely on patronage and payback as a means of advancing. Instead of unifying the country to move forward on solving problems, it divides neighbour from neighbour.”
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.
The right for communities to have a say on the establishment of Maori wards in local government, has been restored through the referenda that is being conducted in conjunction with the local body elections in October.
Ratepayers will be able to vote to ensure that already established race based wards are abolished in October’s referenda and that any future elections will not have race based wards in them.
The Government, through their Local Government Reform Bill - which is open for submissions until August 27 - is refocussing councils on the basics by removing their need to take into account the social, environmental, economic and cultural wellbeing of their community.
Since recent Court judgements and legal opinions have clarified that local government is not the Crown and has no duties as a signatory to the Treaty, there is no requirement, for councils to accommodate Maori demands for ‘Treaty partnership’ agreements. It is hoped candidates advocating that such privileges are revoked, so local authorities can once again prioritise the best interests of their community, will gain a majority on new councils.
Although the Coalition is progressing resource management reform, the fact that “Recognising and providing for Maori rights and interests” is contained within their draft National Policy Statement on Infrastructure raises concerns that tribal groups will still be able to hold projects and the country to ransom.
Tribal engagement has become the biggest roadblock to progress in New Zealand.
And it doesn’t stop there; we’ve seen public health campaigns and education & science institutions redefining the very concept of knowledge to include Maori spiritual ideology. We’ve seen schoolchildren, most of whom aren’t Maori, and many whose families have different religious beliefs, forced to participate in spiritual ideology (karakia) multiple times a day as if they’re attending a religious school, not a secular public school.
We now have the situation where our educational system is being re-engineered to further the aims of the grievance industry through revision of the history curriculum and the teaching of that revised history in relation to Maori settlement of NZ.
Colonisation is being blamed for the lack of achievement in the educational system by Maori and there have been claims made that we need to decolonise the education system in New Zealand to allow Maori to have an equal chance of achievement with other races.
I say that in my honest opinion this claim is far from correct.
My reason for saying this is supported by looking at the example of the Maori full immersion schools and their rates of success.
They are achieving great results.
Are these a result of decolonising the education system? NO!
The results are due to the support from people working within those systems and from within the families of the students. The results come from hard work by all involved.
Yes they may be ably assisted by the full immersion systems but at the end of it all the main reason for their success is down to the commitment and effort of all those involved and they should be commended for those efforts.
The opposite is seen when we look at the lack of achievement from those in the normal state school systems, and we see that most of the students failing miserably in those systems are lacking in support from their own families.
Maorification of the bureaucratic processes has created a huge waste of taxpayer’s money without doing anything to ensure the provision of effective public services. And that’s a real problem.
We’ve got to the situation where before every meeting and with every government policy we are expected to enforce allegiance to a cultural identity which has almost become a fight for the right of control, where people don’t see the threat that this poses to our national identity and our system of democratic government.
By elevating Maori spiritual Ideology to sacred, unchallengeable status, above science, above secularism, above democratic consensus might make it feel good for those public servants to sing and speak in te reo, but it does nothing to ensure the provision of effective public services to either Maori nor non-Maori.
The Maorification of our public service bureaucracy is not about creating a shared heritage and a unifying shared modern culture, it’s solely about domination of the national direction, and with it comes a cultural outlook that most of us never consented to and get punished if we try to resist.
If we try to push back, we’re dismissed, branded as bigots, called colonisers and in many cases accused of being white supremacists, no matter our actual ethnicity, background, or intent.
The cost of race-based payoffs is now millions – if not billions - of dollars. If the Coalition is serious about growing our economy, they must free the country from this cultural insanity. All race-based consultation should be removed, including from fast-track legislation, National Policy Statements, and the RMA replacements.
After fifty years of being allowed to virtually have their own way, tribal groups have become powerful and dangerous. They see themselves as de-facto rulers, and if things don’t go their way, they do not hesitate to bully and intimidate, demand and threaten, and with very deep pockets, resort to legal action through a ‘captured’ court system, until opponents cave in.
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.
In their first 100 days of government the Coalition made some obvious changes such as abolishing tribal control of water and health by repealing Three Waters and the Maori Health Authority, but they have yet to fulfil their other election promises in relation to ending race based policies.
By removing all references to “race” and “Maori” from our legislation (excluding specific Treaty settlement legislation), New Zealand would join over half of all OECD countries that have adopted a similar “colour-blind” approach.
As the Justice Minister recently re-iterated, “The Crown is sovereign. The Crown is simply the representation of the democratic will of the people of New Zealand.”
Exercising their sovereign power and restoring democracy by eliminating race-based policies and ending the tribal takeover is what New Zealanders now need the Coalition to do.
Race based governance has never succeeded anywhere and it would not be any different here in New Zealand if it was implemented.
By discriminating against people on the basis of race, gender or sexuality, it dangerously undermines New Zealanders’ right to equality before the law.
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.
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 South Africa, not 21st-century New Zealand.
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.
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By Andy Loader, Poke the Bear