NZCPR Newsletter: A Test of Strength

New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has had a dream start. Uncontested for the leadership, he was then thrust into centre stage by the dreadful weather events that caused havoc and a tragic loss of life in Auckland.

While Labour MPs will be encouraged by their subsequent jump in the polls, the real test of strength for new PM will be whether he stands up to his Maori Caucus and puts a hold on their co-governance reforms - especially Three Waters.

Three Waters was built on a tapestry of lies and deception by Nanaia Mahuta and Jacinda Ardern, as they attempted to disguise the real purpose of the reforms - to give the tribal elite control of water, through a Maori-controlled regulator, Maori-controlled regional Water Entity boards, and Maori control at local catchment level.

Nor is it just freshwater, wastewater, and stormwater - without official approval, Minister Mahuta included geothermal and coastal water in the legislation as well.

But the latest deception can be found in the Water Services Legislation Bill, that is now in front of a Select Committee (submissions close 12 February – see HERE), which shows that the risks and liabilities of the huge debts expected to be taken on by the four Water Services Entities, will not be passed onto the Crown by Labour - as expected - but will be forced onto ratepayers!

Without any discussion in any of the background documents accompanying the new bill, if the receivers are called in over a Water Entity defaulting on its debt obligations, under Clause 137A, ratepayers would be liable:  “A charge under this section must be assessed as a uniform charge in the dollar on the rateable value of property in the service area”.

While Minister Mahuta mentioned the massive borrowings that underpin her Three Waters scheme in her first reading speech on the Bill: “Detailed analysis indicates that $120 billion to $185 billion is required to fund our water network over the next 30 years”, she failed to mention that she was forcing ratepayers to carry the risk.

As the Mayor of Waitomo John Robertson explains, “Given the massive amount of debt that each of the four water services entities will take on, there has been a question as to what security would be offered to lenders. The Bill proposes that lenders will secure their debt through a property rating mechanism. Should a water entity get into financial difficulty and a receiver be appointed, the receiver would be able to bill local authority ratepayers a uniform charge to recover the entity’s debt. By shifting the risk to property owners in this way, the Crown avoids the need to offer a guarantee to lenders.”

Under Labour’s Three Waters, New Zealand ratepayers are the big losers: not only are the council water service assets and infrastructure they funded being confiscated, they will have no influence over the Water Service Entities, yet will be forced to carry the liability for their debt!

Touted by Minister Mahuta as being more affordable than council water services, Three Waters has all the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme, where debt is used to subsidise water charges, under an assumption that it never needs to be repaid.

Back in 2021, independent assessors questioned the financial viability of Three Waters, which was based on borrowing at an interest rate of 3.5 percent. With rising interest rates and ratepayers forced to carry the cost of failure, Prime Minister Hipkins has a responsibility to re-assess the scheme. 

He needs to halt the reforms – or at the very least transfer the cost of failure from ratepayers onto the Crown. 

But cancelling Three Waters is just the start – he needs to go much further if he is to distance himself from Jacinda Ardern’s toxic ‘co-governance’ agenda.

The health reforms show only too clearly the dangerous outcomes of her race-based approach.

Our 30-year-old decentralised Health Boards were abolished during the pandemic, so Labour could pass control of health over to Maori. As a result, patients are no longer being prioritised on the basis of clinical need, but on race.

This roll out of apartheid has huge implications for the future of health care in New Zealand.

According to the “New Zealand Health Plan 2022”, health is being transformed by “Embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi across the health sector”, to “better serve all New Zealand’s people and communities”.

The new system, which empowers iwi leaders to be a part of the decision-making process, “embeds support for the Iwi Maori Partnership Boards, grows Maori leadership and develops services informed by matauranga Maori. It also embeds actions to create a culturally safe workforce and ensure accountability across the system for equity of access and outcome for Maori.”

Already the changes are significant.

A notice from Auckland University’s medical school shows of the 287 places on offer in 2023, an increasing number are reserved for Maori and Pacific Island students - up from 70 last year to 103, while “general entry” places are being reduced - from around 120 down to 94. And while A grade levels are necessary for ‘general entry’ candidates, C grades appear sufficient for the Maori and Pacific students. Merit is now secondary to race!

Pharmac funding is being covertly redirected into treatments that prioritise Maori.

Official communications to the medical profession are now being issued in Maori, with an English translation.

Reports are emerging of doctors in hospitals being required to take a “cultural advisor” with them to ensure they are properly prioritising Maori patients.

There are plans for health funding, that would normally be directed to front-line care, being ploughed into a ballooning bureaucracy through an army of “wayfinders”, “storytellers”, and “evaluators” - to better ensure Maori health needs are met.

And to cap it all, an orchestrated campaign is calling for the Maori Health Authority to have full control over all areas of health so they can deliver “better outcomes” for Maori.

In other words our health system has been taken over by separatists prioritising health care to the 16 percent of New Zealanders who call themselves Maori. How long will it be before they demand 50 percent of the health budget, with the balance left to cover the 84 percent of everyone else.

Is this really the New Zealand we voted for in 2020, when we gave Labour the responsibility of governing alone?

Chris Hipkins must now decide if he wants an Apartheid health system as his legacy. 

Demands are also being made for control of the conservation estate by the tribal elite, who perpetuate the myth that they are “guardians” who can manage the environment better than anyone else.

But the co-management of the former world-leading Urewera National Park by Tuhoe would suggest otherwise, with the public banned from entry, Department of Conservation huts burnt down, and pest control and maintenance in tatters.

According to a recent report by RadioNZ, a plan is being worked on to introduce the ‘cultural harvesting’ of native birds on conservation land.

A right already exists to ‘harvest’ sooty shearwaters - a migratory bird that is protected in most other parts of the world - with around 400,000 of the chicks slaughtered every year. 

But now, the so-called great conservationists apparently want the right to catch and kill protected birds!

Under Jacinda Ardern’s legacy, the spread of co-governance has become endemic.  For organisations that receive government funding - including charities and even sports bodies - the requirement to ‘honour the Treaty’ has led to the establishment of co-governance boards and the adoption of racist practices that discriminate against non-Maori.

This has become obvious in the last few days following a decision by Sports Northland - an organisation that is jointly funded by local and central government that has just adopted co-governance - to block a community meeting to discuss co-governance from their conference facilities. The matter has now been referred to the Human Rights Commission.

Is this what Willy Jackson had in mind when he said we have nothing to fear from co-governance?

This week’s Guest Commentator is research scientist and historian Dr John Robinson, who has been closely monitoring the situation and now warns in his article “Living under tribal rule”, that as a result of the forces unleashed by the Ardern Labour Government, New Zealand may already have passed a point of no return:

“A fragmented society is being constructed, destroying democracy and re-introducing the conditions for inequality and conflict. It is as if the government is itself initiating civil war, by setting down the conditions for tribal conflict among Maori tribes and against the remainder of New Zealanders, in a repeat of the many nineteenth century wars…

“Actions once recognised as treason are now assisted by a compliant government in a dwindling, and soon to disappear, democracy.”

Looking at the whole co-governance mess that the Ardern administration has inflicted onto the country, it is clear that the Maori Caucus holds far too much power within Labour.

This, of course, is a direct result of the failure by successive governments to abolish the Maori seats.

Of the 15 Maori MPs in Labour, six were elected through the Maori seats. Altogether Maori MPs make up 23 percent of Labour’s 65-strong Parliamentary team, and 25 percent of Cabinet. As a result, radical Maori, are now over-represented at the highest levels of government and, when acting as a block to further their separatist agenda, they are having a disproportionate and dangerous influence on the running of the country.

It’s for precisely this reason that the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System warned that the Maori seats needed to be abolished if New Zealand adopted MMP. They believed that fair representation would be achieved through the party list selection process, and they predicted that if the Maori seats were retained, they would distort the democratic representation of the country and create race-based discrimination.

This has now happened. Those pushing for an unprecedented transfer of government power to corporate iwi are now in the driving seat.

As a result, New Zealand stands at a crossroads facing a future of totalitarian tribal rule if things are left as is, or a democratic future based on the equal rights of all citizens - if political parties are prepared to step up and do what it takes.

To defend democracy and the Rule of Law, the Maori seats and the Maori electoral roll must be abolished.

National’s leader Christopher Luxon is on record as saying the existence of the Maori seats “doesn't make a lot of sense”. He needs to go further and make their abolition a bottom-line policy for his party once again.

ACT has stated in the past that they want the Maori seats abolished – they too need to reinforce their commitment.

As for New Zealand First, they campaigned on a pledge of holding a referendum on the Maori seats back in 2017 - but failed to deliver when in government.

Whether Winston Peters can win back the trust of voters with a renewed promise to abolish the Maori seats remains to be seen.

Given the disaster of Three Waters, the Apartheid health system, and all other racist developments, New Zealand needs to end race-based representation altogether.

This country needs to follow the lead of a growing number of Western nations, including Sweden, Holland, Belgium, France, Austria, and Germany, which, when faced with a growing racial divide, removed all references to “race” from their Statute books.

Turning New Zealand into a “colourblind society”, where are all Kiwis are equal under the law, is surely the only way to build a strong and united future – a team of 5 million equals, under one flag.

This toxic situation, where democracy is being replaced with ‘apartheid’, that Chris Hipkins inherited from his predecessor must be unwound if New Zealand is to have any chance of a decent future.

Whether our new PM is up to the task remains to be seen.

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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:

*Do you agree with Labour that ratepayers should be forced to underwrite the debt of the Three Water Entities?

Dr Muriel Newman established the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. The NZCPR website is HERE. We also run this Breaking Views Blog and our NZCPR Facebook Group HERE.