Rawiri Waititi, the leader of Te Pāti Māori announced last week that they are going to establish their own Parliament to assert Maori sovereignty which they claim was affirmed and protected in the Treaty of Waitangi.
Their parliament will be according to them;
They say that their declaration is for all people to sign no matter what age culture or ethnicity you belong to.
To allow them to achieve this they are also demanding 20% of New Zealand’s tax revenue to bankroll them.
“HOW CRAZY CAN THEY TRULY BE TO BELIEVE THIS RUBBISH?”
Let’s look at a few facts that give the true background to this issue.
1. They claim to speak on behalf of Maori yet they only managed to get approximately 2% of the votes cast in the last general election even though 17.8% of the population is the latest figure for those who identify as Maori in New Zealand currently.
The only people they represent and speak for are the people that voted for them, 2% of the total population!
2. The Treaty of Waitangi only had three articles as shown in the copy of the Littlewood draft below and article one clearly shows that sovereignty was ceded to the Crown under the Treaty:
Article one: “The chiefs of the confederation of united tribes, and the other chiefs who have not joined the confederation, cede to the Queen of England forever the entire sovereignty of their country.”
Article two: “The Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and the tribes and to all the people of New Zealand, the possession of their lands, dwellings and all their property. But the chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes and the other chiefs grant to the Queen, the exclusive rights of purchasing such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to sell at such prices as may be agreed upon between them and the person appointed by the Queen to purchase from them.”
Article three: “In return for the cession of their sovereignty to the Queen, the people of New Zealand shall be protected by the Queen of England and the rights and privileges of British subjects will be granted to them.”
Their claim around affirmation and protection of sovereignty is wrong in fact!
3. They claim that it will be part of transforming Aotearoa into a nation which respects tino rangatiratanga of tangata whenua, and creates a safe home for all peoples.
Firstly there is no nation of Aotearoa but I presume that they mean New Zealand.
Secondly the whole of their proposal seems to me to be nothing more than an attempt to recreate the existing situation but with the Maori party in charge as the colonisers and the rest of us under their direction. Considering the way that they have been prattling on about the harm done by colonisation under the Crown it seems that it is only harmful to Maori but OK when it is them doing the colonising.
4. They make many claims about how colonisation has been so bad for Maori.
But they fail to mention any of the facts behind what has happened as a result of colonisation. Maori life expectancy prior to the Treaty was approximately 30years and is now out to 75years. Prior to asking the Crown for a treaty the Maori inter-tribal wars saw approximately 40,000 Maori deaths, slavery and cannibalism was a normal part of their way of life. Colonisation put an end to the inter-tribal Maori warfare and to the practices of slavery and cannibalism. These outcomes don’t seem so bad to me.
5. They are claiming that they should be given 20% of the tax revenue to allow them to bankroll this proposal.
So they want to rob 98% of the population of their democratic rights and also want that 98% to pay for the privilege of being robbed. How dumb are they?
Kiri Tamihere – Waititi the wife of party leader Rawiri Waititi and daughter of John Tamihere, President of Te Pāti Māori, recently posted on social media an expletive laden rant urging Maori to overthrow the government.
She said:
“They’re (the government) doing everything and they’ve got the f****** power to get rid of us. And while you’re thinking about that, you might as well also start thinking about how we are going to take our country back too. We’re continuing to subscribe to a model that was designed to assimilate, to continue to colonise, and to keep us as second class citizens in our own country. By design, we are not unified. Right? Just imagine, just take one f****** minute of your day to imagine if we were all on the same page. Can you imagine the might and power we would have? We could overthrow any government. We could do whatever the f*** we wanted.”
Her rant wasn’t just a step too far, in my opinion I believe that it was an incitement to overthrow the government and as such should be declared as illegal.
Whilst we all have the right to express dissatisfaction or what we believe to be wrongdoing, in this case I believe that her comments have gone from criticising the government to actually promoting the overthrow of the government. Particularly, given the support that many of her followers gave to her comments inciting the overthrow of the current government.
In addition to the rant from Kiri Tamihere-Rawiri, Te Pāti Māori is also facing a number of other serious allegations related to the recent general election and the use of privileged information to gain votes in that election.
The allegations have come from whistle-blowers who worked at Manurewa Marae and the Ministry of Social Development.
They say that Manurewa Marae staff (of which Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp was CEO prior to the election) photocopied census forms after they were contracted by Whānau Ora to collect them. They also entered personal information into a database for Waipareira Trust. This information was then used by Te Pāti Māori to solicit votes at the election.
There have been further allegations made that the same type of data misuse occurred when the same organisations were contracted to work on the COVID-19 vaccine drive.
This whole issue of setting up a Maori led parliament is nothing more than a minority of radicals under the banner of Te Pāti Māori, trying to advance a race-based power grab whilst refusing to recognise the authority of our democratically elected current Government.
Under the previous Labour government, many race-based policies and laws were embedded and now that the Coalition Government has ruled out further race-based policies and begun reversing some of those introduced by the Labour Government; the radicals are switching tactics to spread their messages of division and racism.
Te Pāti Māori now routinely refers to New Zealand's laws and Parliament as Pākehā laws and Pākehā Parliament.
New Zealand has one Government and it is democratically elected. No matter what ideas Te Pāti Māori has about the chiefs not ceding sovereignty at Waitangi in 1840, the Government's authority has been cemented by every subsequent general election since then, and in our body of legislation.
The acclaimed Maori Leader; Sir Apirana Ngata- M.A. LLB. LIT.D in his book, the "Treaty of Waitangi" concludes with the words:
"The Treaty made the one law for the Maori and Pakeha. If you think these things are wrong and bad then blame our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful".
The claim that the Treaty of Waitangi created a partnership between the Crown and Maori is not supported by any of the documentation of the Treaty although this latter-day reinterpretation of the Treaty is simply stated as a fact, without any acknowledgement that the assertion is hotly contested, and is flatly contradicted by many of the speeches recorded by Colenso in writing at the time (on 5 February 1840) and flatly contradicted also by speeches made by numerous chiefs at Kohimarama in 1860.
The idea of a constitutional partnership or co-governance never featured in the original Treaty documents, nor could they, for the Treaty is perfectly clear, in both the Maori and English texts. Governance was given to the Crown alone, and in exchange, the tribal leaders and the ordinary people of New Zealand were assured continuing ownership of their property and were guaranteed protection and equal status with the British settlers under British law.
The current proposals between Maori and all other races in New Zealand is nothing more than a system of Apartheid with governance being controlled on the basis of race alone.
If we are to truly go down the path of Maori self-governing with the other races being combined then this should also apply to funding and assets with Maori getting a share of the current assets in proportion to their numbers and then supporting themselves on the income generated from their numbers.
But I suspect that this is very far from their minds when they talk about co-governance. I believe that they are in reality talking about having their cake and eating it too (i.e. getting funding from the whole of the population and then spending that on Maori).
As I said at the beginning, this article is about the setting up of a separate Maori parliament but the reality of the proposal is an Apartheid system of governance with an inequitable funding regime.
If we are truly talking about the reality of what is being claimed then we should look at giving Maori their fair share of all of the infrastructure & assets and the allowing them to take full control of their people with a separate system of governance based on their numbers (i.e. 2%).
They would then become self-funded the same as the rest of the population.
This is the only fair way to go about splitting the control, but of course this type of proposal would be roundly condemned by those who are making the most noise because in reality they know full well that if this were to be the way the country was to go then they would run out of funds before the first hurdle was even approached let alone gotten over.
The current claim for a Maori parliament is actually that there is a want for control, with or without any form of equitable treatment, but that non-maori should just shut up and keep funding Maori dreams on this basis.
The reality is that if Maori were to truly be given the control they desire and then be required to fund their dreams on the basis of their numbers it would very soon be realised that they would not be able to do so and the numbers wanting to be considered as Maori would I believe, seriously decline.
The so-called Maori elite that have been pushing hard for co-governance over the last couple of years will rapidly find that the gravy train stopped and they have been left at the station.
No society where people have different political rights based on ethnicity has ever succeeded.
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By Andy Loader, Poke the Bear
Understanding NZ hasn’t had a legit ‘govt’ as such since June 1967, and even way further back when the papers of settlement had been agreed upon and yet back then highjacked helping to bring us to where we all are today, nothing but nothing is going to change until mankind as a whole including ourselves in this country remember fully who we all are and why we’ve back to Earth here again!
Kia ora