Mike Butler: Maths expert fails He Puapua

In a new book titled He Puapua – Blueprint for breaking up New Zealand, mathematician John Robinson, tears apart the He Puapua plan for two separate governments, one by Maori for Maori, and the other, a “fully bicultural” administration for everyone else.

History written by a person who majored in maths and physics, and who has a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, brings analysis based on numbers and a focus on measurement.

The immediate focus of measurement in the He Puapua race-based reorganisation of New Zealand, for Dr Robinson, is that if we are to have a percent of the population governed by Maori, how do we determine who is a Maori and what actually is that percentage?

The current definition, which essentially says “a Maori is a Maori”, is nonsense, and the definition used up to 1972, that one had to have more than 50 percent Maori ancestry to qualify, has been discarded.

He exposes the gerrymander used in calculating the number of Maori seats (there should be five, not seven).

“The way in which the actual number who registered themselves and families as Maori in the Census, 625,600, has been doctored to produce a ‘Maori descent electoral population’ of 896,600, an increase of 43 percent,” he wrote.

This manipulation of figures is currently being used by councils setting up Maori wards to impose an inflated number of Maori roll councillors.

The presence of voting tribal appointees on councils is another matter. He draws attention to what he calls the “extraordinary power of the four percent in Kapiti”, where he lives.

Maori wards there, which he as a staunch egalitarian opposes, would mean that each Maori vote would have 35 percent greater value than a non-Maori vote.

But the Kapiti Coast District Council decided against Maori wards, preferring to retain their current partnership system between the council, who Robinson is entitled to vote for, and “mana whenua” appointees, who “represent” a select few.

“Mana whenua” is not all Maori in the district, Dr Robinson wrote. This group is made up of three tribes – Ngati Toa, Te Atiawa, and Ngati Raukawa – who are less than 30 percent of the 14 percent who are Maori.

And that is less than four percent of the total population in the area.

Robinson, who worked for some years on Maori statistics, said there are “so many different measures, so many different population estimates”.

In the 1980s and 1990s there were two main measures, both from Census counts, one being sole Maori (those who recorded one ethnicity only), and ethnic Maori (a total that included those who recorded many different ancestries).

These numbers differed considerably. In 1991 there were 323,317 sole Maori and 434,487 ethnic Maori.

He said that there is considerable uncertainty about data on Maori hospitalisations and death, classroom returns, as well as crime and justice statistics.

Chapter titles that include “Cultural intimidation”, “A racist New Zealand”, “Inventing indigenous New Zealanders”, “Tikanga in dual law”, “Unequal democratic rights”, and “Teaching fake history” shows that Dr Robinson pulls no punches.

“New Zealand is being torn apart, separated into an apartheid system of two race-based peoples in unequal partnership,” is the first line of Chapter 1.

He says that the process has been building for decades, driven by the introduction of the ideology of principles and partnership that may be used to justify any demand, forcing people to use Maori words, Maori sovereignty activists dominating council meetings, smearing critics as racist, the Government directing the media, and the introduction of hate-speech law to jail dissenters.

He thinks that this Government should be remembered as the Ardern-Mahuta Government because Minister Nanaia Mahuta of the Tainui tribe is the power behind the throne.

The only way out of the He Puapua two-government plan is to withdraw New Zealand from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Dr Robinson writes.

Read this book. Dr Robinson has not only undermined He Puapua. He has undermined the entire Maorification agenda.

He Puapua – Blueprint for breaking up New Zealand, John Robinson, Tross Publishing, 178 pages, illustrated, $35 (including postage) is available from www.trosspublishing.co.nz or from Paper Plus.