Throughout the term of the Labour government and particularly since the 2023 election campaign began, The Post and fellow Stuff papers have pushed hard for the Left to prevail yesterday. The political writers, some columnists and most cartoonists have shown a strong bias towards Chris Hipkins and hjs allies. This has been obvious in–
- Their blatant sympathy towards Labour polices
- denigrating National’s leaders and policies
- casting doubt on National’s tax policy without analysis
- making snide remarks about Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party
- featuring full page advertisements from Labour, including Chris Hipkins dominating the cover of The Post two days in a row.
The sad business of race-baiting
This was the title of a feature “Insight” article on the Tuesday before the final day of voting. The author Phillip Matthews was not identified in the usual way, and his writing was a mish-mash of bias half-truths, incorrect history and highly selective argument without evidence.
His basic message was that the Centre-Right parties, especially ACT and New Zealand First, have been critical of Maori “having a seat at the table” in the post-election government. Not once did he use the words democracy or equity, however, racist does feature. Equality features only once when he suggests bizarrely that Maori don’t have political equality.
No-one supports attacking people on the basis of their ethnicity – Jews, Muslims, Samoans, Tongans or part-Maori — however, Matthews is at pains to find examples of part-Maori being targeted in the election campaign. He never mentions that the Maori elites, educationalists and journalist are, like political leaders David Seymour and Winston Peters, predominantly descended from colonists with some Polynesian blood.
Like the rest of us they are all New Zealanders of mixed ancestry.
Matthews’ evidence
There will be always be a small minority of bigots who attack people’s ancestry. Matthews picks out New Zealand First Rangitata candidate Rob Ballantyne, for his “racist” comments, and some attacks on Hana-Rawhiti – Maipi-Clarke, a Te Pati Maori candidate. She claims that these have happened “… because I’m young, I’m female and I’m Maori”.
Te Pati Maori president John Tamihere argues without evidence, that Maipi-Clarke was threatened because “… National and ACT’s race-baiting has empowered and emboldened a dangerous type of human being who is hell-bent on silencing Maori by targeting who they think is our most vulnerable.” If he is right this is utterly unacceptable, but how many people is he talking about?
Confused about ACT’s Treaty referendum proposal and the country’s history
There were no principles in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi but many politicians and groups keep talking about them. ACT wants legislation to create three “Principles of the Treaty”
This was the title of a feature “Insight” article on the Tuesday before the final day of voting. The author Phillip Matthews was not identified in the usual way, and his writing was a mish-mash of bias half-truths, incorrect history and highly selective argument without evidence.
His basic message was that the Centre-Right parties, especially ACT and New Zealand First, have been critical of Maori “having a seat at the table” in the post-election government. Not once did he use the words democracy or equity, however, racist does feature. Equality features only once when he suggests bizarrely that Maori don’t have political equality.
No-one supports attacking people on the basis of their ethnicity – Jews, Muslims, Samoans, Tongans or part-Maori — however, Matthews is at pains to find examples of part-Maori being targeted in the election campaign. He never mentions that the Maori elites, educationalists and journalist are, like political leaders David Seymour and Winston Peters, predominantly descended from colonists with some Polynesian blood.
Like the rest of us they are all New Zealanders of mixed ancestry.
Matthews’ evidence
There will be always be a small minority of bigots who attack people’s ancestry. Matthews picks out New Zealand First Rangitata candidate Rob Ballantyne, for his “racist” comments, and some attacks on Hana-Rawhiti – Maipi-Clarke, a Te Pati Maori candidate. She claims that these have happened “… because I’m young, I’m female and I’m Maori”.
Te Pati Maori president John Tamihere argues without evidence, that Maipi-Clarke was threatened because “… National and ACT’s race-baiting has empowered and emboldened a dangerous type of human being who is hell-bent on silencing Maori by targeting who they think is our most vulnerable.” If he is right this is utterly unacceptable, but how many people is he talking about?
Confused about ACT’s Treaty referendum proposal and the country’s history
There were no principles in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi but many politicians and groups keep talking about them. ACT wants legislation to create three “Principles of the Treaty”
- All citizens of New Zealand have the same political rights and duties
- All political authority comes from the people by democratic means including universal suffrage, regular and free elections with a secret ballot
- New Zealand is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy where discrimination based on ethnicity is illegal.
Matthews criticized the ACT proposals for making no mention of Maori or the Crown or hapu or iwi. But Article 1 includes “All citizens of New Zealand” – no-one is excluded, and equality and democracy are the bottom lines. Any problem with that?
As far as Matthews is concerned, what Hipkins said about our history is right and Luxon is wrong. For example he quotes Luxon from 2022 saying that “Maori ceded sovereignty when the Treaty was signed.” The National leader is right – that was done in Article 1. But Matthews claims that view is “controversial “not supported by the Waitangi Tribunal”. The simple truth is that the Tribunal is wrong and doesn’t even use the only valid Treaty, signed in 1840, in its judgements.
Two separate groups in the one country
Unfortunately despite all the citizens of the country being New Zealanders using the same services, facilities and amenities, Matthews sees the undemocratic divisiveness that now exists between “Maori” and the vast majority of other people continuing. He says, “These Maori political authorities will continue to fight to be able to self-determine for the people they represent in much the same way any large extended family will fight for the interests of their people”.
He goes on to say that’s opposition to Maori having a seat at the table is sad “where for the first time in 200 years Maori are being able to deliver services and deliver progress to their people and the Crown hasn’t done that”. Again he sees Maori as being separate and makes no reference to the huge amount of special provisions, legislation, services and rights made by successive governments for over more than 50 years.
Matthews is another Legacy Media writer who wants the present separatism to not only continue but be extended. He’s going to have to wait at least another 3 years before a Labour, Green, Maori Party Coalition Government would do that.
Roger Childs is a retired teacher who taught History, Social Studies and Geography for 40 years. This article was first publishded HERE
9 comments:
So, Matthews wants to segregate New Zealand based on some ancestral lineage that has already been significantly diluted and will become evermore so with the passage of time and bases this all on some corrupt finding of the Waitangi Tribunal. What a mischievous fool he is.
Fortunately, Christmas is coming and maybe a family member might gift him Dr Suess' "The Sneetches"? With the aid of its colourful cartoons, perhaps it will get through to his warped, deluded, simple mind that venturing down such a path of segregation will result in something far worse than a zero-sum game?
We are, or should be, 'one people' for very good reason. In that regard, we used to mock the intellect of the Australians. Sadly, what Muldoon once quipped appears now quite wrong.
In signing Te Tiriti, all Maori – including the chiefs – became not ‘partners’ but EQUAL SUBJECTS of the Crown in a nation state the white settlers would henceforth create where none had existed before.
EQUAL SUBJECTS means INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS OF CITIZENSHIP – nothing more and nothing less.
Te Tirit cannot possibly be construed as a guarantee of perpetual group rights to brown supremacist part-Maori (with an ever-declining Maori blood quantum).
It is ludicrous and intellectually incoherent to propose that the cession of sovereignty in Article I, restated in Article III, would be countermanded by a reservation of chiefly authority in Article II.
“Sovereignty” means “the supreme power or authority.”
It is thus Constitutionally impossible for a sovereign to be in ‘partnership’ with a subject or group of subjects.
On 6 February 1840, one party [the Crown] absorbed and digested the parties of the other side [the chiefs and those whom they represented].
This rendered Te Tiriti from the moment it was signed analogous to a used table napkin after a meal, and other than as a historical artefact, about as relevant.
Feel free to tell us all:
(1) how the huas could enjoy all the rights of the English (Article III) without becoming subjects of the Crown; and
(2) how the huas could enjoy all the rights of the English (Article III) if still subject to tribal-style rule by their chief(s) (Article II as claimed by the delusional).
NO PARTNERSHIP
1. Before Te Tiriti was signed there was no collective Māori or nation state.
2. Prior to 6 February 1840, what is now NZ consisted of two main landmasses and some offshore islands inhabited by around 600 ‘dispersed and petty tribes’ in a constant state of war with each other.
3. The Ngapuhi huas were in mortal fear of the French after French warships bombarded a pa site, killing hundreds, following the vile massacre and cannibalism of Marion du Fresne and his crew.
3. The huas were in mortal fear of one another after two decades of Musket Wars started by Ngapuhi had more than halved their population.
4.The wiser and more farsighted chiefs knew that only by becoming subjects of the Crown under a single sovereignty and system of laws could they be protected from each other and from annexation-minded foreign powers.
If you believe otherwise you have four challenges to meet.
Betcha can’t even do one.
1. Point to the Māori words for ‘partnership,’ ‘principles,’ and ‘co-governance’ in Te Tiriti.
You can’t, because they never existed.
2. Put up a link to a primary source document containing the words of even a single chief who when Te Tiriti was debated who thought he was being asked to agree to a ‘partnership’ or ‘co-governance’ arrangement.
You can’t, because no chief held or expressed that understanding.
3. Explain why, for 147 years between 1840 and the NZ Māori Council Court of Appeal case in which five activist judges invented ‘partnership’ and ‘principles’ out of thin air, NOBODY was claiming Te Tiriti was a ‘partnership’ or ‘co-governance’ arrangement.
Probably because it wasn’t.
4. Explain why, if Te Tiriti was intended to be an open-ended ‘co-governance’ arrangement, it is expressed in terms that confine its meaning and intent to the permanent surrender of whatever sovereignty subsisted in the chiefs at the time.
An open-ended co-governance arrangement would surely have been worded in the following manner at Article II:
“the Queen of England HER HEIRS AND SUCCESSORS [emphasis added to additional wording] and “the chiefs THEIR HEIRS AND SUCCESSORS [emphasis added to additional wording]…”
5. Even if Te Tiriti was intended to be an open-ended ‘co-governance’ arrangement—I’ve already shown it was not—any Treaty has a lifespan, and the passage of time will invariably render it redundant.
A clear example might be where one party to an agreement had effectively ceased to exist.
For instance, imported bloodlines have so diluted the original Māori race to the extent that it now only exists as a cultural concept.
As far back as the 1970s, the Labour Government passed the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974.
Most ‘Māori’ by that time had more of the blood of the coloniser than of the colonised.
This meant the existing legal definition of ‘Maori” by blood quantum no longer applied to most New Zealanders: “A person of the Maori race of New Zealand or a half-caste descendant thereof.”
The notion of ‘Māori’ as a ‘race apart’ for political purposes could only be sustained by altering the legal definition of ‘Māori.’
After panicked complaints from its Maori MPs that soon nobody would be able to prove eligibility for the Maori Electoral Roll, Labour struck out the blood quantum definition of ‘Māori,’ replacing it with: “A person of the Maori race of New Zealand or any descendant thereof.”
If you genuinely believe the meaning and intent of Te Tiriti was to confer separate, different, or superior group entitlements in perpetuity upon brown supremacist part-Māori—with an ever-declining Māori blood quantum— you’re delusional.
Go boil your head to clear your thoughts.
One ponder from which ethnic background Mr. Matthews heralds?
It is hard to tell from a photo but to pen such intentionally ignorant writing one becomes suspicious, does one not?
Media and politicians have been complicit in pushing separatist and preferential treatment. They gobble up and pysh statements from the left without checking if they have any underpinning. TV1 and 3 are agenda driven organisation's living off govt advertising and hand outs. I hope this stops. Last night this bias was evident too with little attention to the smaller parties that will make up govt.
Interestingly the Albanese government and activists commandeered the media in a similar way for the Voice vote. The extraordinary assumption in both the NZ situation and the Australian situation is that if you don’t agree with the proposition you are Wrong, Racist, Divisive, Hateful, Ignorant, Culturally insensitive…and so the list goes on.
Well now the masses have spoken.
NZ voters have sent an extraordinarily strong message to the politicians. It is imperative that Luxon, Seymour and Peters ( whether or not formally part of the government) take action now. The sooner they make the tough changes the sooner they can get on with helping NZ mend and the more positive it will be in three years time.
Consider: you don’t wait until the anaesthetic has worn off to pull the tooth out.
Why does anyone with half a brain bother to read Stuff?
Encouraging comments! To those of us who have been accused of racism by simply wanting the truth there is a reply. The proponents of the lies associated with the Treaty are committing SPLITISM : the wish to split the country into two factions, Maori versus the rest of us.
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