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Monday, August 28, 2023

Muriel Newman: Nothing to Fear


In a week when Russia invaded the Ukraine, and when the protesters in Wellington scored a major victory with the removal of vaccine mandates for children, the Government has embarked on a charm offensive to quell the growing public opposition to its racist He Puapua agenda.

He Puapua is, of course, Labour’s ‘masterplan’ to replace democracy with co-governance and tribal rule.

The New Zealand Herald’s two-page feature by senior political journalist Audrey Young identified Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson as an influential “power broker”.

What’s clear from the article is that Willie Jackson – and his Maori Caucus colleagues – are elevating the interests of Maori above those of all other New Zealanders.

Five of that fifteen-strong Maori Caucus are Cabinet Ministers: Kelvin Davis, Nanaia Mahuta, Willie Jackson, Kiri Allan, and Peeni Henare.

Two have Ministerial responsibilities outside of Cabinet: Meka Whaitiri and Rino Tirikatene.

And there are eight others: Adrian Rurawhe, Arena Williams, Paul Eagle, Willow-Jean Prime, Jo Luxton, Shanan Halbert, Louisa Wall List, and Tamati Coffey.

While the proportion of Maori of voting age is 12.3 percent, they now make up 23 percent of Labour’s 65-strong Parliamentary team, and 25 percent of Cabinet.

It’s just as the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System warned – 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.

Willie Jackson says New Zealanders have nothing to fear from He Puapua and tribal co-governance: “This is a unique partnership and Maori get the extras in terms of Maori seats and management and governance because of their unique position as the Treaty partner. This is Maori standing on their own. It is nothing for New Zealanders to be scared of…”

But when Willie Jackson says we have nothing to fear, we most certainly do have something to fear.

That he’s making such comments now is noteworthy because to date the Prime Minister and Labour have done their best to avoid discussing their tribal rule agenda, concealing He Puapua for 12 months prior to the 2020 general election – including keeping it secret from the Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and from the public.

Jacinda Ardern understood only too well, that revealing her agenda for Maori supremacy before the election would cost votes.

As a result, she failed to tell New Zealanders that if they voted for her, she would immediately remove the democratic right of communities to prevent the introduction of local body Maori wards.

Nor did she inform them that if they voted for her, she would abolish our long-established and successful District Health Boards and replace them with an apartheid system controlled by the tribal elite that will determine health care on the basis of race instead of clinical urgency.

Jacinda Ardern did not explain to voters, that once elected she would introduce ‘Three Waters’ reforms to confiscate more than $100 billion of water infrastructure and services from the country’s local councils, and pass control to the tribal elite under a co-governance arrangement that gives them the power of veto.

Even now, with the reforms well underway, the Prime Minister has still not told us whether Kiwis will be forced to pay a royalty to iwi every time the tap is turned on.

Jacinda Ardern failed to reveal that if elected, five percent of the Government’s $42 billion annual procurement budget would be allocated to Maori businesses, or that they would receive 20 percent of the new multi-million dollar commercial broadcast spectrum allocation free of charge – along with $75 million in taxpayer funding to establish a new Maori spectrum authority to control future policy decision-making.

Why did she not tell us that she was considering giving the Conservation Estate to Maori business development corporations – or was she concerned that we might find out how Tuhoe’s co-governance of our former world class Urewera National Park has worked out. In short co-governance has proved a disaster – gates locked, cabins ransacked, and walkways in disrepair. Is that what’s being planned for conservation throughout the country?

How can Jacinda Ardern and her Labour colleagues claim to have a legitimate mandate to make these fundamental changes to our democracy when they concealed their intention from voters at the election?

At one time the mainstream media would have investigated these issues, but since Jacinda Ardern set up her $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund with strings attached – namely that recipients must promote the Treaty ‘partnership’ deception that underpins He Puapua – most media have backed away.

Even the Herald article glosses over the Treaty ‘partnership’ issue when it says, “the concept of partnership… was set out in the landmark Lands Case in the Court of Appeal in 1987 and has guided every government since…”

This implies the Court of Appeal endorsed the Treaty as a ‘partnership’ between Maori and the Crown, but that is not the case – as retired Judge and former Canterbury University Law Lecturer Anthony Willy explains:

“On any careful reading of the Maori Council case the Court did not decide as has become commonly supposed that Maori and the Crown were in partnership with each other, a partnership created by the Treaty, merely that the Crown and Maori owe each other duties which are akin to those owed by partners to a commercial transaction. In the result Maori and the Crown are not partners in any sense of the word. Indeed, it is constitutionally impossible for the Crown to enter into a partnership with any of its subjects. The true position is that the Crown is sovereign but owes duties of justice and good faith to the Maori descendants of those who signed the treaty.”

In other words, “There is not, and never has been a constitutional partnership between the Crown and Maori people. The judgment in the Maori Council case has been misinterpreted. The point which all of their Honours were making in that case was that the Crown has ongoing duties to act justly and in good faith towards Maori people…”

In a recent interview with Leighton Smith, discussing his NZCPR Guest Commentary “Marxism It Could Not Happen Here – Could It?”, Anthony Willy went further, calling those extremists pushing for Maori supremacy “greedy rent seekers”. It was a remarkable comment, because it was not so long ago that no one dared to refer to Maori radicals so plainly. Those inhibitions have fallen away dramatically since the He Puapua agenda for Maori supremacy has become plain to see.

David Round, another former Canterbury University Law Lecturer, has also set the record straight about the ‘partnership’ deception:

“The idea of ‘partnership’ only appeared in 1987, when five judges of the Court of Appeal, called upon to interpret the brand-new concept of ‘Treaty principles’, which Parliament had just inserted in the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986, spoke in several places of partners and partnership. It is absolutely clear, however, that the judges did not intend the words to have the weight of the politically-charged and even seditious meaning which is now loaded onto it. A ‘partnership’ between Maori and the Crown is constitutionally-impossible nonsense. It would have to mean that Maori are not the Queen’s subjects (as the Treaty says they are) but the Queen’s equals, and therefore not subject to her government.”

He warns about the consequences:

“This partnership is a fundamental subversion of democracy. Maori are claiming now that their involvement in decision making should not be on the basis of one person one vote, but instead on 50:50 representation. They all seem to be united in expecting representation well in excess of what their proportion of the population would entitle them to. That is what they are demanding in their new proposals for ‘co-governance’ ~ equal numbers to all other interests combined. That is what they will be seeking everywhere; and once they have got this 50:50 representation, then they will form an unassailable voting bloc. Then we will be forever at their mercy.”

And that is the sinister reality of the situation New Zealand now faces.

The co-governance agenda that Willie Jackson is promoting as ‘nothing to be scared of’, represents totalitarian control by unaccountable private race-based business development corporations.

Labour has no mandate to introduce these extremist measures to undermine our democracy, and we should collectively be demanding a halt to what will inevitably become a race-based disaster.

David Round is also extremely concerned to see the tribal elite pushing for control of local government. As this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, he has provided a withering assessment of the opportunistic attempt by one of the country’s most powerful iwi business development corporations to gain a permanent power base on a Regional Council – where they would no doubt sacrifice the ‘public good’ to protect their widespread investments:

“I daresay that, even if you live in Canterbury, you have never heard of the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngai Tahu Representation) Bill, currently before Parliament and just about to be considered by the Maori Affairs Select Committee… This is, after all, a bill which proposes to reduce democratic representation on a regional council by adding unelected members appointed by a large and influential hard-headed business corporation. The value of the votes of ordinary citizens is thereby reduced, and more power is handed over to the corporation.”

David explains that the council promoting the bill – at the behest of Ngai Tahu – decided that consultation with the wider public was unnecessary: “The Council has done the bare minimum of public notification it thought it could get away with, and we all know the reason why. The Council knew perfectly well that if they did ask the public the public would say no. So they did not ask the public. This is nothing but treachery.”

David warns, “This bill does not completely abolish democratic representation on the Council ~ although once the principle is established that Ngai Tahu are entitled to special appointed seats, there is no reason why they should not demand more seats in future. Why stop at two seats? Why not half the total number, if the Treaty is a ‘partnership’? But this bill certainly weakens democratic representation. In future, Canterbury citizens would be paying their rates ~ ‘taxation’ ~ not to a democratically elected council, but to one significantly influenced by a private racially defined business and development corporation. This is an utterly unacceptable situation. Why should we be taxed to serve Ngai Tahu?”

And that’s the reality of the tribal rule agenda that Jacinda Ardern and her Maori Caucus are imposing onto the country. The benefits will flow to an iwi elite that wants to turn its back on mainstream New Zealand – and on our mainstream institutions – but wants mainstream New Zealand to fund it.

Surely, they can’t have it both ways.

Given the gravity of this developing situation and the lack of scrutiny of the Government’s actions, earlier this month we suggested it was time that the MPs behind these racist measures became more accountable to the public. We provided their email addresses HERE and encouraged readers to share their concerns.

We know that a flood of messages were sent – maybe it was those that flushed out Willie Jackson and his nothing to fear comments.

With the mainstream media unwilling to report in a balanced manner, and – as former National Party Minister Barry Brill explains HERE – National’s new leader failing to grasp the gravity of the situation, choosing to meet with iwi leaders and ask what he can do to help, instead of opposing their separatist agenda, it is now more important than ever for each and every one of us to do whatever we can to spread our concerns.

Collectively, we need warn New Zealanders about the threat He Puapua poses to our society – and demand a halt to all attempts to replace our democracy with tribal rule.

Dr Muriel Newman is a former Member of Parliament who now runs the public policy think tank the New Zealand Centre for Political Research. This article was originally published HERE, 27 February 2022

1 comment:

Robert Arthur said...

Maari get away with blatant assertions of "nothing to fear", arrangements a success etc (as the Tupuna Maunga Authority) because the msm is too lazy, not sufficently skilled, too cowed, too subsidided, too wary of the maori economy, too afraid of cancellation, to dare question .