Cam Slater: Ardern Govt Pushing Co-Governance Whether You like It or Not

So far the Government has rammed through co-governance or racial separatism in Health and Water reticulation. Now they are making very loud noises about rolling it out to Education and Justice. The Government, through the racist mouthpiece that is Willie Jackson, is effectively saying that one law for all, the very hallmark of democracy, is to be trashed and destroyed and in its place will be an Aotearoan Apartheid system, where 15% of the population will control 50% of the state sector. Worse still, they are doing it whether you like it or not.

It has been suggested in consultation feedback published by the Government that the Maori Health Authority model could be applied to education and justice.

Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson on Friday released the feedback from the first phase of targeted engagement with Maori on developing a plan to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

The previous National-led Government signed UNDRIP in 2010 and committed to developing a Declaration Plan. New Zealand is one of 148 countries that support UNDRIP.

It’s not to be confused with He Puapua, a controversial think-piece document commissioned by the Government in 2019 that set out a potential roadmap to co-governance between the Crown and Maori by 2040.

Opposition parties National and ACT have long warned that implementing ideas from He Puapua could lead to a divided society.

Former National leader Judith Collins accused the Government of “separatism by stealth” for introducing a Maori Health Authority, one of the recommendations in He Puapua. Both National and ACT have pledged to scrap it.

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You can see why people may confuse what the Government is doing as looking almost exactly like that suggested in He Puapua, because they are eerily similar in design and intent. That is the abrogation of democracy and the rise of race-based policies based on who happens to be your ancestor.

This isn’t so much a slippery slope, but more a descent into tribalism, separatism, and racism; all the things right-thinking people decry. Yet this Government is intent on creating a much more divisive society, one based entirely on race.

If you wanted to write a guidebook on how to destabilise a nation, create division, and ultimately a civil war then this Government seems to be well on the way to completing their master’s thesis on it.

But you really can’t look to Christopher Luxon for any sensible approach. He has ruled out a referendum on the issue of co-governance.

National leader Christopher Luxon has ruled out a referendum, but is opposed to the Government’s centralised co-governance arrangements, like the new Maori Health Authority and Three Waters.

“I have concerns about co-governance as it moves from management of local natural resources into the delivery of public services,” Luxon said last month.

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Christopher Luxon seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that he is in control of whether or not there is a referendum. I’ve got news for him and it is all bad. I’d bet good money that a referendum on this issue is almost certain whether he or his coalition partner, the Labour Party, like it or not.

The whole premise of UNDRIP is that there are indigenous peoples in New Zealand. Maoridom’s own oral history tells us that is a lie. Maori emigrated to New Zealand, blown by the wind to settle in this country. They were neither first nor indigenous.

In fact, Maori were the first colonisers.

Labour seems hell-bent on destroying not only democracy but also the egalitarian ethos that built this country. They are the most divisive Government in our history, surpassing even Robert Muldoon’s Government.

Co-governance must be strongly and vociferously opposed at every level. If that means a referendum then so be it.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE