Barrie Davis: Stuff, the Media Council and the HRC

In the lead-up to the election, Stuff went quiet on the issue of Maori co-governance but after voting closed 14 October Stuff published a number of articles against the incoming government’s co-governance pre-election statements. Why? Did Stuff and the NZ Media Council participate to distort our election? 

 On 13 October, after the polls had shown that the Labour government was in trouble, the Herald published “Election 2023: Chris Hipkins addresses the elephant in the election - by Māori for Māori solutions”. 

The article begins, “Labour leader Chris Hipkins waited until the final few days of his election campaign to address the race-baiting politics of National, Act and New Zealand First” and then quotes PM Hipkins as saying “I’m not going to stay silent during the election campaign in which there are political parties deliberately trying to drive a wedge between New Zealanders on the basis of race”. 

But Mr Hipkins confused the cause and the effect: it was the courts reinterpreting the Treaty as a partnership that divided New Zealanders on the basis of race. The present stoush in Parliament is a result of that. To ignore it prior to the election is similar to hiding the He Puapua report prior to the last election. 

Stuff also published an article before the election, “The sad business of race-baiting” by Philip Matthews, 10 October 2023. It was published just four days before the close of voting which left no time for public debate. It is the subject of a recent complaint by me to Stuff and the NZ Media Council (see copies below) which is centered on the following excerpt from the article: 

What happened? How and why did race become such an issue in New Zealand? 

This was supposed to be an election about the cost of living, but rather than the two major parties arguing about the economy, the real ideological warfare has been raging over views of the Treaty of Waitangi. It has been between minor parties, with ACT and NZ First on one side and Te Pāti Māori and the Greens on the other. 

I take three points from that excerpt: first, we the voters decide what an election is about, not Stuff; second, Stuff knew before the election that Treaty issues are important to us; and third, Stuff published that the Treaty issues have polarized the nation. 

After the election, however, Stuff published a flurry of pro-Labour / anti-National and pro-Maori / anti-European rhetoric, including “Where now for race relations?” 16 October, by K Gurunathan, which he admits was written well before the election. That was followed by “Making sense of the Gospel of Winston,” 19 October, by Morgan Godfery and “‘Worse than worst-case scenario,” 21 October, by Andrea Vance. Then on 22 October, “Anatomy of a hot potato: David Seymour and his Treaty referendum policy” by Eugene Bingham and “ACT’s treaty referendum a poisoned chalice for new Government” by Editor Tracy Watkins, both of which quoted David Seymour saying that the need for his Treaty referendum “does need to be discussed and debated”. Compare Stuff’s negative piece in “Winston and the waiting game” by Luke Malpass, 28 October with “NZ First leader Winston Peters suggests quick Government formation after special votes counted” in the Herald. Stuff then followed 29 October with sour grapes in “PM Luxon’s 100 days of action could turn into 100 days of frustration” by Labour government advisor Vernon Small. 

We were denied our election Treaty debate until after the election when it could not influence our vote. After voting closed, Stuff appears to be trying to influence coalition negotiations against a Treaty referendum. 

There was a further The Post article, “ACT’s Treaty referendum: a bad idea, and even worse timing,” by K Guruanathan, 30 October, published shortly before the final election results were announced, and after which the coalition partners’ negotiations would take a firm footing. Guruanathan mischievously tried to compare ACT’s call for a Treaty referendum with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He further wrote, “Green Party leader James Shaw warned there could be wide scale disruption leading to violence”, and “Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere added that if Māori were backed into a corner it would spark a civil disobedience movement that would shut down the country’s major cities”. 

These radical pro-Maori New Zealand leaders are threatening insurrection in an attempt to influence the agreement made by the coalition partners. They are also inciting violence by implying that it is an acceptable response to a Treaty referendum. Gurunathan also implied that Stuff’s editorship endorsed these claims when he followed Tamihere’s threat with, “As The Post’s editor, Tracy Watkins, noted recently, Seymour’s bottom-line position on a Treaty referendum is a poisoned chalice.” Although the people had already spoken, by publishing Guruanathan’s piece, The Post facilitated influencing the next coalition government against a Treaty referendum with sedition. 

We should have had a fulsome public debate on these issues in the mainstream media in the months prior to the election. It should have been a rational debate with all of the issues on the table and Stuff should have facilitated that by moderating the arguments. That would have sensibly and rationally developed public opinion and taken the public with it, leading to an informed vote at the election. If we trust ourselves as rational agents, we can expect that would bring us together rather than drive us apart. 

I go into the reasons why I say this in my following 23 October complaint to the NZMC as well as give further examples for debate that have been omitted from Stuff publications. That debate is a necessary element of a healthy democracy which Stuff could have and should have facilitated, but did not. I suggest the reason why they did not is because they believe it would not have produced their desired answer. 

It seems I was not the only person to have thought that, because the election blew up in their face. While that was a necessary first step, it is a small start on a long road of amends. The work still needs to be done to give effect to the election words and remove the He Puapua application in our legislation. 

In addition to my recent complaint about these issues, I had made a previous complaint to the NZMC about a Stuff article, “Rejection of Catholic conquest and 'white supremacy' law not enough: advocate” by Tom Hunt, 2 April 2023. That piece quotes three radical Maoris and makes the fantastic claim that an obscure papal bull is the basis of a so-called ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ which it is claimed is somehow embedded in New Zealand’s legislation. I refuted that in “Barrie Davis: The Doctrine of Discovery Essay,” BreakingViews, 21 June 2023. There I also said, “With an impending election, and David Seymour proposing a referendum on the Treaty and co-governance, knowledge and understanding of this issue is a useful part of an informed vote.” 

The NZMC did not uphold my ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ complaint. According to the NZMC Ruling, “All three of those spoken to have the mana, knowledge and background to speak with authority on the subject and there is no basis to support Dr Davis’s suggestion they were radical or that the article was not fair and balanced because they were Māori with a personal stake.” 

There are numerous flaws in the Ruling, here are two: I had cited two scholarly articles by academic historian Professor Moon (2023 and 2022) which claim that the Doctrine of Discovery did not play a role in Britain’s intervention in New Zealand. The NZMC replied that Moon “appeared to be a lone voice against the weight of contrary academic research,” but they did not cite any such research. Furthermore, I had identified others who sided with Moon, including academic lawyer Paul McHugh whose writings were used as the basis of the courts reinterpretation of the Treaty in the 1980s. According to McHugh (in Kawharu, Waitangi, p. 29), the English placed the sovereignty of the Crown “over the non-Christian societies of the New World on a higher ground than conquest or unilateral assertion (as in the vilified Papal Bull Inter Caetera of 1493).” 

I had done some of the background reading on the topic, so I was not simply parroting Moon and the others. Besides, the idea that an obscure papal bull is somehow embedded in New Zealand law is too far-fetched for me. New Zealand has never been subject to the Pope. Yet even that is not my point. What concerns me is that Stuff did not publish both sides of the story. Rather than leave it to we, the voters to decide, Stuff did the thinking for us. 

I have also made a complaint to the Ombudsman about the veracity of the Human Rights Commission’s recent Marangi Mai Report (also Summary) which says, “The principal recommendation of Maranga Mai! tasks the government with committing to constitutional transformation and establishing co-governance … Central to this reform would be the government condemning and rejecting the constitutional application of the Doctrine of Discovery to Aotearoa…” That is, Maranga Mai is predicated on the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’. I told my story in “Barrie Davis: Maranga Mai and the Doctrine of Deceit,” BreakingViews, 10 September 2023 where I addressed the question, “Are the authorities and the media participating to suppress information prior to the election?” 

Professor Moon had provided a review of the Maranga Mai report to the HRC – “Review of Claims Relating to the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ in the Human Rights Maranga Mai Report, 2022” – which concludes as follows: 

Many of the main historical claims and assertions made in Maranga Mai in connection with the Doctrine of Discovery variously show signs of errors in fact, misrepresentation, errors of omission, errors in historiography, ideological interpretation, presentism, the rendition of subjective interpretations and opinions as objective material, patterns of bias, and a lack of awareness of the relevant primary sources and bodies of literature that ought to inform discussion on the topic. 

I wrote in my 1 August complaint to the Ombudsman “My concern is that Professor Moon’s Review will be swept under the mat until after the election, something like He Puapua.” On 23 August I received a notification the Ombudsman had received my complaint and on 26 September I was told who would investigate it, but I haven’t heard from them since. 

I disagreed with the NZMC Ruling and we exchanged emails, but they did not change their ruling. I cannot help but wonder if it is just too important to refute. The Maranga Mai report is predicated on the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’, so if the Doctrine of Discovery claim falls, so does Maranga Mai which recommends establishing co-governance. And if Maranga Mai falls, that will throw shade on He Puapua and the legislation it initiated. The whole lot could come down, as it should. 

Furthermore, the NZMC has refused to accept my recent 23 October complaint regarding the “race-baiting” article. They advised me they have a requirement that I must agree to waive any right I may have to take other proceedings in any way related to the complaint against Stuff or the Media Council “in any jurisdiction or forum.” The NZMC explained “the waiver is necessary as publishers must feel free to deal with the Council frankly, acknowledging error when it arises. They will be greatly inhibited in conceding error and fixing it if such concessions could be used in Court proceedings.” I looked it up: a forum is a medium for an exchange of views, such as, I assume, BreakingViews. So I refused to agree to the waiver. 

However, I had sent my earlier ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ complaint via email rather than via the NZMC website which will not progress a complaint until one ticks the ‘waive of rights’ box. So I did not agree to the waiver on that occasion either, yet they processed it. Had I agreed, I expect I would not now be able to complain here about their ‘not upheld’ ruling, even though I am quite convinced that it is wrong. For me at least, the Media Council has become a means to block complaints that Stuff was biased over a period of time regarding issues that pertained to our election. 

Stuff achieved their immediate objective. They published a piece supporting an implausible claim for a ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ that is the basis of the Maranga Mai report and got away with not publishing the opposing scholarly argument before the election. Furthermore, shortly before the election, Stuff tried telling us it was not supposed to be about Treaty issues and soon after the election they tried telling us that a Treaty referendum is a ‘hot potato’, a ‘poisoned chalice’ and a bad idea. I expect our election would have been quite different had we instead had a fulsome debate on the opposing views of the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ and its central role in the Maranga Mai report which recommends establishing co-governance. But that was kept from us by Stuff. 

Despite this bias, the NZ Media Council did not uphold the claim that Stuff had not met the Media Council “Statement of Principles”, namely Accuracy, Fairness and Balance. Because the issue was not resolved by the NZ Media Council, I now intend to wait until we have our new government and write to the Minister of Broadcasting and Media and suggest regulation of the print media so that it does not happen again at the next election. 

New Zealand is becoming a Maori ethno-state. The Maori parliamentary seats have never been appropriate and the coast is now being taken over by the Maoris (see Muriel Newman and Anthony Willy, NZCPR, 26 October 2023). Imagine the response if there were exclusive seats on the Greater London Council for indigenous British or if descendents of the Dumnonii tribe were given ownership of the coast of Cornwall. The salient difference is the colour of the indigenous skin. 

Various races evolved because of geographic separation. Now that separation has been removed the races will inevitably disappear. Regressing to separation of races by co-governance is an impractical attempt to go in the opposite direction. We should be removing the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation just as the Magna Carta has been removed from British legislation. 

Attachments 

Below are copies of the ‘race-baiting’ article that is the subject of my complaint (10 Oct), my complaint to Stuff (11 Oct) and my subsequent complaint to the NZMC (23 Oct). I have included these for completeness, to provide additional detail, and most importantly to raise issues for debate. Some of these issues, such as race differences in intelligence, are suppressed in our society even though they are relevant. The information I have given is mostly from books by scholarly authors, such as found in high street bookshops, but I am not claiming it is the final word on the subjects they cover. In my opinion we the voters need to get all the relevant information on the table and thrash it out to our satisfaction before our next election. The print media has a role to play in that, which may require government regulation, because at present they are lying by omission. 

Complaint to NZ Media Council, 23 October 2023 

To:      Raynor Asher, NZMC Chair 

Copy:  Tracy Watkins 

Philip Matthews 

Margot Chandler, NZ Media Council 

Media Council

Rebecca Chivers, The Ombudsmans Office 

Melissa Lee, National MP 

ACT Party 

Jenny Marcroft, NZ First broadcasting spokesperson 

Geoff Mills, NZ First Rongotai candidate 

Dear Raynor Asher, 

Stuff, Co-governance and the Election 

Please consider my following complaint regarding a Stuff publication on co-governance, “The sad business of race-baiting” by Philip Matthews, 10 October 2023, and its relevance to the 14 October election. 

I made a detailed complaint to the Stuff editor, 11 October, which is given below; however, Stuff has not replied to me. Here, I will reiterate that complaint, then consider three relevant procedural issues, and finally identify the relationship between Stuff, co-governance and the election. 

I have this year made three complaints to the NZMC regarding bias shown by Stuff to Maori issues. The first was about a 3 April article in which Stuff presented implausible Maori grievances based on a so-called ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ allegedly from an obscure fifteenth century papal bull which were refuted by an academic historian (see my Essay), but which you ruled against nevertheless; the second was with respect of four articles about preserved Maori heads which demonstrated a pro-Maori / anti-European bias, which you have not yet ruled on; and the present complaint. 

The Stuff ‘Race-Baiting’ Article 

The article is largely given over to the views of Canterbury University political scientist Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald. It begins with an introduction that intentionally deceives the reader to believe that it is about the New Zealand election when it is not. It attempts to draw a similarity with the Voice referendum in Australia and quotes MacDonald saying: 

“What is it like to be in a country where you weren’t given the vote until 1967 and then the country turns around and says, ‘No, we don’t even want to hear from your elders’?” 

He brings it up because recent arguments about race in New Zealand have him feeling much the same way. 

That is fallacious, because in New Zealand Maori men got the vote in 1867, even before both European and Maori women in 1893. The comparison with Australia is a lie. The salient similarity between the New Zealand election and the Australian referendum is that they did not produce MacDonald’s preferred result. 

MacDonald is uncritically quoted complaining that it is “brutally sad” that some politicians are suggesting that Maoris are “at fault and they are to blame and they’re trying to ruin the country.” I think that is at least a plausible possibility and it should be further explored in the article. So also MacDonald’s complaint that politicians are “suggesting that Māori want to take over the universe. I find it appalling and terribly sad. It’s not what my granddad fought in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force for.” For an academic, MacDonald demonstrates a poor grasp of reasoning and logic. The article should identify how, specifically, fighting in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force is related to politicians now suggesting Maoris want to take over the universe. MacDonald is merely stringing concepts together and hoping we will accept that as an argument. I don’t. 

The article then claims that there is a wider, damaging effect of the political speech we are hearing and quotes MacDonald saying: “We’re having to make sure our kids don’t go on social media because of the kinds of messages that are being conveyed. We can’t let our kids watch some of the debates because of the way Māori are being talked about.” That is conditioning: The Maoris are indoctrinating their children in much the same way that the authorities are indoctrinating children with history in school. It is true that children do not have a fully developed rational faculty with which to evaluate the issues, but they benefit from hearing all the opinions, not just the ones you want them to adopt. They will learn to figure it out in due course and parents and teachers can help by showing them how to think, not what to think. They could start by refuting Maori claims that facts and logic are unnecessary European concepts. 

MacDonald further claims “Politicians are pretending that in some way Māori are getting special advantage from a co-governance scheme that gives them no advantage whatsoever.” But other academics think that the Maoris are advantaged by co-governance. 

The article presents a weak opposition to MacDonald’s views by quoting NZ First’s Rangitata candidate, Rob Ballantyne. Ballantyne has been chosen not because he is necessarily wrong but because he is cavalier with his terminology, leaving himself open to the pejorative epithet “racist” and the implication that he is flakey by espousing a “conspiracy theory about a Maori takeover”. There would have been a more balanced discussion had the article given the more considered views of Professor Elizabeth Rata, for example, who here prefers democratic governance to the relentless march to Maori ethno-nationalism enabled by a compliant media; or Dr Wendy Gillespie from the Leighton Baker Party who here evaluates co-governance and how elite Maoris are profiting from the privatization of New Zealand taxpayer-owned assets. 

Ballantyne said much the same when he spoke of “the ‘fatal mistake’ New Zealand made when it created the Waitangi Tribunal and warned of ‘a disingenuous Maori elite [who] are laughing all the way to the bank’.” However, because of his intemperate language, Ballantyne has been used as a straw man to avoid confronting contrary views more admissibly expressed. 

There is information missing that offers an opposite view to that given in this biased article. The opposing view is not necessarily correct, but it is authoritative and at least plausible. Academic scholarship operates by publishing opposing views for debate by other scholars and democratic elections should work the same way for voters. By omitting views opposed to their own, Stuff is lying by omission. 

I will put this problem in a broader context, but first I will consider three procedural issues that are inhibiting the desired debate. 

Procedural Issues 

The NZ Media Council has three procedural issues I am aware of which are reducing the effectiveness of the NZMC to deliver an effective complaints function to the Media and their consumers: the NZMC Mailbox is not working effectively; the Waiver of rights requirement is not fair and reasonable; and the Time limit is not practical for multiple articles. As these issues are relevant to my present complaint, I will mention them here. 

NZMC Mailbox 

The process for making a complaint to the NZMC is flawed which reduces the efficiency of the NZMC when addressing problems in the media. Before my first complaint regarding the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was recognized and processed by the NZMC, I sent 5 emails to the NZMC mailbox (7, 21, 28 May, 18 June, 2 July), an email to you (Raynor Asher, 2 July), 3 messages via the NZMC website (30 May, 9, 18 June), 2 letters in the post (21 May, 2 July) and a call to the NZMC 0800 number (30 May). I have given each of these communications and their chronology at Note 1. 

During that time, I received a call from Margot Chandler (31 May) who said complaints should be made via your website. I said then that a notice on The Post Letters page said to send complaints to the NZMC email address and Margot said she would get it fixed. However The Post notice still reads the same. Note that I had sent three messages via the NZMC website and they were not actioned either. 

Consequently, complainants may possibly send their complaint to the NZMC mailbox because that is what Stuff tells them to do. However, I have been advised by Margot (11 Oct) that the NZMC no longer accepts complaints via the NZMC mailbox. The NZMC process for submitting complaints is therefore faulty and needs to be fixed. 

Waiver of rights 

To submit a complaint via your website it is necessary to tick two boxes, which read as follows: 

¬ I AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THE COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE 

¬ IN SUBMITTING THIS COMPLAINT FOR CONSIDERATION BY THE MEDIA COUNCIL, I AGREE TO WAIVE ANY RIGHT I MAY HAVE TO TAKE (OR CONTINUE) OTHER PROCEEDINGS IN ANY WAY RELATED TO THE COMPLAINT, AGAINST THE PUBLISHER, BROADCASTER, JOURNALIST, IN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION OR FORUM. I ALSO WAIVE ANY RIGHT I MAY HAVE TO TAKE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE MEDIA COUNCIL IN ANY JURISDICTION OR FORUM. 

I was told by Margot, 19 September, that is because “the Media Council wants to avoid it’s process being used as a trial run for litigation as I’m sure you would understand – hence the waiver.” I hadn’t thought of that. But now that I have, and although I still don’t properly understand what it refers to, I don’t see why I should relinquish any ability I might have to run Stuff or you through the courts. From my perspective, submitting a complaint to the Media Council is like first submitting it to Stuff: to resolve the issue sensibly without getting litigious. Consequently, I decline to waive any right and ask that you process my two outstanding complaints submitted to your email address; this one and the Maori Heads one please. Stuff is still directing complainants to your mailbox, so you are obliged to service it anyway. 

Time limit and “balance can be achieved cumulatively over time” 

A problem was identified with my Maori heads complaint which referred to four articles of 11 June, 5 July, 9 July and 30 July 2023. Your Complaints Procedure says that a complaint must first be made to the Editor within one calendar month of the publication of the article. You allow for a longer time for a series of articles, but you ruled that the four articles I referred to are not a series and advised: 

You complained to Stuff on 9th August 2023 about four articles. Only one of these four articles is within time and that is the Sunday star-Times article of 30 July 2023.  The council will assess your complaint about this article but is unable to consider your complaint in relation to the other three articles. 

However, your Principles say here that “Publications should be bound at all times by accuracy, fairness and balance,” but: 

“Exceptions may apply for long-running issues where every side of an issue or argument cannot reasonably be repeated on every occasion and in reportage of proceedings where balance is to be judged on a number of stories, rather than a single report.” 

It is therefore not possible to make a complaint, as I did, that “Stuff publications regarding Maori remains such as mummified Maori heads are not accurate, fair and balanced.” That is because that objective need not be achieved in a single report and because multiple reports could occur over a period of more than a month, as was the case with Maori heads. One cannot make a complaint against the first article, because any of the subsequent articles may achieve the objective. Much the same can be said about the second article. Perhaps, having complained about four articles, the fifth would have supplied the necessary balance. 

Let’s consider the example of my present complaint about the Race-Baiting article, which you will now send to Stuff for comment. Stuff might publish another article prior to you making your ruling, which is months away; or, after you make your ruling, Stuff may claim they were about to publish another article. In case you are tempted to look for Stuff articles prior to the 12 October date of my present complaint to Stuff to identify balance, don’t forget you can only go back a month and that month was when Stuff was omitting referring to co-governance. 

Stuff, Co-governance and the Election 

The central problem I have with the Race-Baiting article is given in the following excerpt: 

What happened? How and why did race become such an issue in New Zealand? 

This was supposed to be an election about the cost of living, but rather than the two major parties arguing about the economy, the real ideological warfare has been raging over views of the Treaty of Waitangi. It has been between minor parties, with ACT and NZ First on one side and Te Pāti Māori and the Greens on the other. 

But it is we the people who decide what an election is about. One of the issues we voted on and which Stuff avoided, is what the NZ Herald has called “the elephant in the election.” On 8 September 2023 Stuff published an article “Nearly two-thirds of voters think country going in wrong direction” here, which is taken from The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll. That article included a Table labeled “The most important issues according to voters”, which included 13 issues. Although the ideological conflict has been over views of the Treaty of Waitangi, it is inconsistent that co-governance was not one of the 13 issues. 

Editor, journalist and columnist Graham Adams, 21 October, wrote: 

Co-governance and race-based policy generally is the elephant that lingers in the nation’s legacy newsrooms. 

The fact that a substantial section of voters know enough about co-governance to make them deeply suspicious of it — if not down-right hostile — seems to be something the mainstream media either can’t see or perhaps are determined not to see. 

Nevertheless, the 10 October “race-baiting” article recognized the issue of co-governance, but by then it was too late for a sensible, rational debate before the 14 October election. Instead it presents the opposing views of Rob Ballantyne who says “Their end goal is not co-governance, it’s self-governance,” and warned of “a disingenuous Māori elite [who] are laughing all the way to the bank”, and Lindsey MacDonald, who says “My basic point is that co-governance is a stupid word. It’s supposed to make you feel good about being included when the Crown still holds all the cards.” 

But that is too little and too late. It is not a moderated public debate that sensibly and rationally develops public opinion and that takes the public with it, leading to an informed vote at the election. That debate is a necessary element of a healthy democracy which Stuff could have and should have facilitated, but did not. 

Stuff had tried to exclude race issues from pre-election debate. But after the 14 October election, on 16 October Stuff published “Where now for race relations” by K Gurunathan which he said had been written well before polling day and before knowing the final results. 

Gurunathan’s language patterns are similar to the three Newspeak slogans promulgated by the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four: WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. For example, Gurunathan refers to “the legendary Te Rauparaha”. Te Rauparaha was a notorious war-monger, slaver and cannibal; a Ngati Toa chief who committed genocide on Ngai Tahu in the South Island in the 1830s. He left a trail of misery wherever he went and tortured his adversaries to death, including Ngai Tahu chief Te Maiharanui who strangled his eleven-year-old daughter Nga Roimata so Rauparaha could not have her. Rauparaha was not “legendary” but a depraved despot, down there with Pol Pot, Hitler and Hongi Hika. (Encyclopedia of NZ, s.v. “Rauparaha”; Moon, Fatal Frontiers, pp. 34-6; Tamihana Te Rauparaha, Te Rauparaha Nui, pp. 164-69, 178-203; Rushdon, p. 8; Angas, p, 249; Reischek, p. 120; Newsroom, Philip Temple, 31 May 2022.) 

Gurunathan refers to “a resilient bicultural nation strong enough to embrace a vibrant multicultural society”. That is Oceania doublethink; or in standard English Oldspeak, linguistic poncey-toggling. A bicultural nation encompasses only Maori and Pakeha, where ‘Pakeha’ means “non-Maori New Zealanders of European ancestry” (Jennie Smeaton, Imagining Decolonisation, p. 18). But if New Zealand includes a multicultural society (a group of people of different racial traditions living together in one place), it is also a multicultural nation. To instead say that New Zealand is a bicultural nation is to alienate everyone that does not belong to one of two nations who are united by common descent, culture and language; the Asians and Islanders are excluded. It is a racist proposition by Gurunathan who hypocritically goes on to complain of “racial muckraking by politicians”. 

Gurunathan is sympathetic to the idea of decolonisation and suggests that adding the terms “restoration” and “reconciliation” is helpful, “as suggested by Moana Jackson in his book Imagining Decolonisation”. Actually, the originators of the book are Bianca Elkington (Ngati Toa) and Jennie Smeaton (Ngati Toa) who supplied chapter essays and wrote the Introduction. Jackson provided the final chapter in which he writes (p. 135), “decolonisation is the reclaiming of the right of Indigenous peoples to once again govern themselves in their own lands”. We have seen that Rob Ballantyne said much the same thing: “Their end goal is not co-governance, it’s self-governance”. That is from a speech which Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins said was racist. Maori community leader, Mark Solomon, insisted we take sides when he said, “When you turn your back to rhetoric like this, you are racist”. 

Gurunathan voiced the view that “Pakeha who have been complaining about the so-called ‘maorification’ of their mainstream society should meditate on the experience of Māori who have been subject to 183 years of ‘pakehafication’.” But he failed to mention that ‘pakehafication’ was undertaken at the request if not insistence of the Maoris. 

Elkington and Smeaton write about “what a decolonised city might look and feel like” and then complain that “most of the dominant systems and institutions in this country are based on ideas from Europe” (Imagining Decolonisation, p. 17-18). Indeed, the rise of civilization – beginning with writing and mathematics in Mesopotamia and Egypt, followed by philosophy and science in Greece and Rome – has been attributed to the establishment of cities and their systems and institutions. Note the similarity between the words ‘civilization’ and ‘city’: ‘civilization’ is from the Latin civilis (‘civil’) which is related to civitas (‘city’). 

Those advances spread further West and culminated in the Industrial Revolution in Britain around the time Cook discovered New Zealand. The British subsequently brought their taongas to New Zealand by the process of colonization. But sadly the Maoris were mostly interested in muskets and inter-tribal warfare. Maori tribalism persisted until they moved into the cities a century later: “Before World War II, 90% of Maori lived in rural tribal communities; by the mid-1970s, almost 80% lived in cities” (Urban Maori, Bradford Haami). That is, within thirty years, around the middle of last century, more than two thirds of the total Maori population chose to move from traditional homelands into European cities so they could more fully participate the pakeha taonga. 

Using Ngati Toa and Porirua as a case study, Elkington and Smeaton complain about “the forceful taking of land, language, culture and autonomy without permission, without anyone ‘saying that they could’ – the imposition of one group’s will on another” (pp. 7-8) But they do not mention that their Ngati Toa tribe, lead by Te Rauparaha, invaded Porirua during the 1820s, replacing Ngai Tara and Ngati Ira, the original tribes from A.D. 1100, or that in the 1830s Ngati Toa committed genocide on Ngati Tahu in the South Island. (Encyclopedia of NZ, s.v., “Porirua”, “Whatonga”; King, History, p. 138) 

They complain that “language is another structural thing that underlies life in this place” (p. 18). But they do not mention that it was nineteenth-century Maori leaders, such as M.P. Karaitiana Takamoana in 1871, and later Sir Apirana Ngata and Dr Maui Pomare, who insisted that Maori children be taught English in schools and taught only in English. When asked by the Minister of Education, Peter Fraser, “what your people expect of our school system”, Sir Apirana replied “we send our children to school to learn the ways of the Pakeha.” (Note 2) 

Yet Elkington and Smeaton now say (p. 18) “It’s these structures that we think need to change to reflect this place.” That is, they want to remove the ‘structures’ which the Maoris initially moved into the cities to participate. So when they ask us to imagine “what a decolonised city might look and feel like,” I imagine it would be like a decivilized city, divest of the civilizing structures that made it a city. 

The Maoris are indignant at having been overwhelmed by an evolutionarily more advanced race. Without understanding it, they now have access to the pakeha taonga, yet they resent that technological European civilization is better than primitive Maori tribalism. The Maoris are more about unearned power and prestige than culture and tradition. So they want to infiltrate and take control of the European cities, which is what they complain about of colonization. It would be howled down as racist if it were proposed to have exclusive seats on the Greater London Council for the indigenous British minority there, yet that is the arrangement we already have in New Zealand. The salient difference is the colour of the indigenous skin. 

Today, everything the Maoris have, from the food they eat, the clothes they wear and the houses they live in, to the devices they thumb, the SUVs they drive and the internationally used language they speak and can now write, is a result of ‘pakehafication’. Maori life expectancy has more than doubled since the time of the Treaty and the 100,000 Maori population has since increased to 800,000 part-Maoris today. The Maoris flourished under colonization, as did the colonists and now the Islanders and Asians. 

Gurunathan disagrees, however: 

A compendium of socio-economic statistics show that a significant percentage of Māori suffer from low education achievement leading to low wage employment, poor and unaffordable housing, poor physical and mental health, and high ratios of criminal prosecution and incarceration. 

Its reasonable to argue these apartheid-type inter-generational outcomes suffered by Māori are caused partly by the system of governance introduced by Pākehā culture. 

But it is more reasonable to argue that Gurunathan is mistaken, as correlation is not causation. Gurunathan does not supply an argument or cite any evidence to show that the European system of governance is the cause. He assumes that the cause of Maori underachievement is due to Eurocentric ideas that are extrinsic to Maoris and does not allow the possibility that the problem is in some way intrinsic. 

Morgan Godfrey makes the same mistake in a 19 October piece in The Post after the election when he writes here: 

When controlling for income, location and other demographic factors, Māori are still more likely to suffer from a series of chronic diseases suggesting that the issue is, to frame it politely, “unconscious bias” or, to frame it starkly, structural racism. 

Godfrey’s mistake is that he omitted to control for intelligence as a factor to drinking, smoking, and diet leading to obesity, as well as intelligence as a factor to health by taking European medical advice and following treatment drawn from European medical science. Instead, he assumes the cause of disease is extrinsic (“unconscious bias” / structural racism) and ignores the possibility that Maoris are in any way responsible for their own health. 

It is held within academic science that there are race differences in intelligence, and that intelligence is heritable and relevant for success in education and labor markets. The definitive average IQ by race for New Zealand is given by Lynn (2015) as follows: North East Asians 102, Europeans 99, Maoris 90, and Pacific Islanders 85. Stuff was made aware of these statistics when they published them 26 July 2018 in a Letter to the Editor from me; but they have since chosen to ignore them. 

It is moot if race differences in intelligence is due to environmental and/or genetic factors. But in any case, race differences in intelligence has been found to be heritable; that is, it is derived at least in part from one’s parents or ancestors. So factors to the socio-economic statistics alluded to by Gurunathan and the chronic diseases mentioned by Godfrey are to some degree inherent to Maoris whether they are they carried as memes in the culture or by genes in the biology (i.e., the gametes). (Note 3) 

Elkington and Smeaton claim (p. 15) that Maori tribes need to influence policy and decision-makers to get outcomes inclusive of a Maori worldview. But identifying intelligence as a factor to Maori disadvantage lies within the realm of science and statistical analysis. It is not to be found within a Maori worldview which is subjective and so it doesn’t provide the objective knowledge that is required for science. 

The cause of Maori disadvantage is fundamental to the co-governance argument and should therefore be on the table. That Stuff omitted it from their publications before the election is lying by omission. After the election, on 22 October, the Sunday Star-Times published pieces by Editor Tracy Watkins and journalist Eugene Bingham on the Treaty and co-governance, both of which quoted David Seymour saying that the need for his Treaty referendum “does need to be discussed and debated”. 

Watkins alludes to “the terrible statistics of Maori deprivation and poverty, and poor outcomes in just about every measure including health and education” and then asserts “the only way to fix them is by targeting funding and solutions at Maori”. Watkins could compare Maoris, Islanders and Asians with respect of those statistics, then account for any differences and explain targeting funding only at Maoris. Claiming there is no other way but that of Stuff’s principal editor is an attempt to close down discussion and debate and to condition readers with repeated directives to give more money to Maoris. Having denied readers a forum before the election, Stuff’s editorship is now trying to influence the forming of a government after the election. 

Gurunathan argued that anti-Maori sentiment and opposition to co-governance provided a backdrop to the build-up to the election, “reflecting the maturing that our race relations still need to go through.” But that ‘maturing’ should have happened before the election. 

Stuff’s position is racially biased and Stuff is also biased to the Left. In The Post, 11 October for example, there was one full front-page pro-Labour advertisement and two full-page anti-National advertisements all sponsored by the same person. There were two such advertisements the following day. Stuff facilitated a negative attempt from the Left to recover from poor poll results. 

Stuff readers also perceive that Stuff is biased to the Left and Stuff knows it. A Curia poll in April 2023 found that a nett 18% of respondents thought Stuff leaned to the Left, compared with a nett 0% who thought the Herald leaned Left or Right. On 11 October there was a Letter to the Editor in The Post which begins: 

Rental Income 

I am very frustrated with your letters to the editor because there is a definite political bias with publication. I can't imagine that you don’t have a good choice of letters to publish, but you have a theme and it is largely to the left. 

... 

Teresa McClymont, Masterton 

I too believe Stuffs articles are biased to the Left, and I also believe that they are fallacious. I expect that Stuffs fallacious bias to the Left alienates those on the Right and drives them further Right. Those on the Left, like most people, are subject to confirmation bias which means they select information from Stuff articles which supports and hence bolsters their position on the Left. (Wikipedia, s.v., “Confirmation bias”) Stuff is thereby polarising the nation, rather than facilitating an evidence-based rational debate with the objective of reaching consensus on an optimum solution. 

The objection common to my three complaints is not only that Stuff writers are mistaken in their assertions regarding Maoris, but also that Stuff has failed to publish opposing views given multiple opportunities to do so. My primary complaint, then, is that Stuff editorship is biased on the Maori issue and has therefore not achieved a balance in their publications. This is evidenced in the 10 October Race-Baiting article and subsequently in the articles by Gurunathan and Godfrey. 

All of the above and more should have been on the table before the election, not after. I repeatedly said in my correspondence to Stuff (7 May, 2 July) and the NZ Media Council (7 May, 25 June, 25 July, 30 Aug, 20 Sept) that it was necessary to have opposing views published with time for public debate prior to the election if we were to cast an informed vote. Yet Stuff continued to publish biased articles and intentionally withheld publications until after the election. 

In “Stuff introduces new charter following apology to Maori,” 30 November 2020, Stuff owner Sinead Boucher boasted, “If you think the job of the news media, in our company and others, is to hold the powerful to account, well, we are the powerful.” That’s not all you are: you are also the mistaken egoists – a harmful combination. You are using your power to distort our election. 

But it spectacularly blew up in their face. Thanks to social media, you can’t fool the people much of the time these days and we were mostly aware of the Maori issues. Instead of moderating an informed rational debate on co-governance before the election, Stuff did their best to avoid the issue, somewhat like He Puapua was hidden from us at the previous 2020 election. So instead of voting from an informed rational mind we fell back on our non-rational faculties’ discernment of opposites, or what in Newspeak is called ‘unconscious bias’. 

People naturally adopt a liberal Left or conservative Right position according to two of the ‘Big Five’ dimensions of personality, namely openness to experience (curious vs. cautious) and conscientiousness (easy-going vs. organised). Thus, on average, the liberal Left tend to be curious and easy-going, whereas conservatives on the Right are more cautious and organised. (Klein, Why We’re Polarized, pp. 43-48) These individual differences are not only subject to innate predispositions but also to environmental influences, such as newspapers. 

Back in the day, when they published my 2018 Letter to the Editor on race differences in intelligence, The Dominion Post made a point of presenting various perspectives on Maori issues. But since Sinead Boucher introduced a new charter for Stuff following an apology to Maori in 2020, they have demonstrated a pro-Maori bias. They have primarily done so by omitting information that jeopardizes their present pro-Maori ideology, such as not publishing the points I made above. That is, they are habitually lying by omission. Specifically, Stuff ceased publishing on the issue of co-governance before the election and resumed publishing pro-Maori / anti-European rhetoric after the election. (see my Essay) 

For Stuff, ‘unconscious bias’ is a pejorative term. But the non-conscious ‘Big Five’ dimensions of personality are adaptive. Here is how Klein (p. 46) put it regarding openness to experience and conscientiousness which influence how we vote: 

Openness isn’t better than closed. Conscientiousness is a trait, not a compliment. Evolutionarily, the power is in the mix of outlooks, not in any one outlook – that’s why this psychological diversity has survived. 

That we have different perspectives is not the problem. The problem is when we do not rationally synthesize the views they each provide consciously and instead automatically retreat into our own camp instinctively and fortify it so it is impervious to its opposite faction. Yet that is what Stuff has done and in so doing took a significant portion of the voters with it. 

Karl du Fresne, former editor of The Dominion, recently wrote here (21 Oct), “But the media have squandered whatever moral authority they might once have enjoyed through a pattern of partisan, highly selective and often embarrassingly petty political reportage.” In my opinion, the blatant subterfuge by Stuff (and by politicians too, I suspect) provoked our sensibilities. Our primal binary decision making faculties were aroused and we collectively voted further out to Left and Right, polarizing the nation without reason. The overall effect, however, was a vote from Left to Right. Stuff had made a big mistake. 

The NZ Media Council is participating to protect Stuff in their present position. In my experience, the NZMC rules restrict complaints such that Stuff cannot be censured in any meaningful way. Additionally, the NZMC processes are faulty and inhibit making a complaint. I expect that Stuff and the NZMC share an ideology which neither will jeopardize, so the NZMC only rules in favour of complaints the subject of which are not essential to their common doctrine. As a consequence, the NZMC is an objection handling device which gives the appearance that Stuff is held accountable for maintaining journalistic standards. 

I’m not objectively saying the points I raised above are necessarily correct, even though I subjectively believe they are. But I am saying that they are at least plausible and worthy of publication. If we want a healthy democracy, we need all the relevant information on the table several months prior to the election so that the points raised may be subject to a moderated public debate. That process will identify relevant problems and contribute to developing their solutions, inform the public of election issues, and carry the public to casting a rational evidence-based vote. 

Instead, Stuff is lying to us to meet their bias, facilitated by the NZ Media Council. 

Yours sincerely, 

Dr Barrie Davis 

Note 1. My Interaction with The NZ Media Council 

It is a requirement of the NZMC that “Editors are to publish the Council's complaints process in each issue of the publication.” Consequently The Post letters page carries a notice as follows: 

The Post is subject to the NZ Media Council. Complaints must be directed to editor@thepost.co.nz. If the complainant is unsatisfied with the response, the complaint may be referred to the Media Council, PO Box 10-879, Wellington, 6143 or info@mediacouncil.org.nz. Further details at mediacouncil.org.nz. 

When I made my ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ complaint to you, 7 May, I followed that procedure and emailed my complaint to info@mediacouncil.org.nz, but I did not get a response. I sent a follow up email to info@mediacouncil.org.nz and copy in the post PO Box 10 879 Wellington 21 May and another follow up email on 28 May, but I still did not get a response. So I tried calling on 0800 969 357, 9:00am Tuesday 30 May, however the office was unattended. 

I also sent a message to https://www.mediacouncil.org.nz/contact/, which advertises: 

Get in touch 

Fill in the form, and we’ll respond within one business day. 

My message, sent 9:27, 30 May 2023, reads: 

I emailed you at info@mediacouncil.org.nz a Complaint about The Dominion Post 7 May, a follow up email and copy in the post PO Box 10 879 Wellington 21 May and another follow up email on 28 May, but I have not had a response from you. All I have asked for is that you reply so that I know you have received my Complaint and if you could advise a date when you would respond. I have this morning, 9:00, 30 May tried calling you on 0800 969 357 but the office is unattended. 

Would you please reply now advising if you have received my Complaint and if possible a date by when you will respond. 

I got a response, 9:28 30 May 2023, as follows: 

“Thank you for contacting the Media Council. 

“Someone from our team will reply to you in due course.” 

I received a call from Executive Director Margot Chandler 4:55 pm, 31 May, who said that Complaints should be made on their website form at www.mediacouncil.org.nz/contact/ When I pointed out that the Dominion Letters page says to send an email to info@mediacouncil.org.nz, she said that was wrong and she would get it fixed. She said she will check my form from the website and emails and call me the following morning. 

On 9 June at 9:50 am I sent the following message to https://www.mediacouncil.org.nz/contact/: 

I sent you the following message 30 May 2023 in which I detailed the previous messages regarding a Complaint I had sent to you without a reply and asked that you contact me please. On 31 May I got a phone call from Margot Chandler who said she would check my form from the website and emails and call me the following morning; however, I have not heard from her. 

Would you please respond advising what is happening. 

On 18 June I sent another follow-up email to info@mediacouncil.org.nz and to https://www.mediacouncil.org.nz/contact/, saying: 

On 7 May, I emailed to you “Complaint: The Post and the Doctrine of Discovery” (see below) claiming that a 3 April The Post article does not provide accuracy, fairness and balance. On 21 May I sent you a follow-up in both softcopy by email and hardcopy in the post and on 28 May I sent a second follow-up by both email and via your website. On 31 May I took a call from Margot Chandler who said she had read the second follow-up from your website and that she would check my complaint and get back to me the following morning; however I did not hear back from her. So on 9 June I sent another follow-up via your website; but I have not had a response. Would you please reply now and advise a date by when you will send me a response to my initial complaint. 

On 2 July, I sent a letter to you in the post and by email to info@mediacouncil.org.nz and asher@richmondchambers.co.nz, saying, “I have repeatedly contacted editor Caitlin Cherry and the Media Council, but their response has been minimal and now, two months later, there seems little likelihood of an article from Stuff before the election. … Please help to rectify this situation in time for informed debate prior to the election.” 

On 10 July I received an email from Margot saying she had found my email and that “I have today asked Stuff for their formal response to your complaint to the Media Council. Once we have received their response, I will forward it to you for your final comments. I anticipate your complaint may be able to be considered at the next Council meeting on August 7th. I will do my best to ensure this happens.” And indeed it did. Margot also said that your website is the primary means of lodging a complaint with the Council. 

However, the notice in The Post still directs the complainant to the NZMC postal or email address, as given above: “If the complainant is unsatisfied with the response, the complaint may be referred to the Media Council, PO Box 10-879, Wellington, 6143 or info@mediacouncil.org.nz.” However, neither of those worked for me, but then nor did your website form nor your 0800 number. I had to write to you via the post before you processed my complaint. 

Note 2. The Maori Instigation of English in Maori Schools 

Source: R.S. Bennett, Treaty to Treaty Volume III, Appendix IV, p. 319 

Karaitiana Takamoana M.P. for Eastern Maori said in Parliament in 1871 ‘that the whole of the Maoris in this Island request that the Government should give instruction that the Maoris should be taught in English only.’ Another petition by Renata Kawepo and 790 others, and also one from Piri Ropata and 200 others asked for every endeavour to have schools established throughout the country so that Maori children could learn the English language. 

In 1876 a petition to Parliament from We Te Hakiro and 316 others, asked that all children of two years of age, when just able to speak, should be taught the English language, so that their first language should be English. The petition also asked that not a word of Maori be allowed to be spoken in the school, and that the schoolmaster, his wife, and children be altogether ignorant of the Maori language. 

For years the leaders of the Young Maori Party preached up and down the country what both Sir Apirana Ngata and Dr Maui Pomare believed: that “the first subject in order of priority in the school curriculum was English, the second most important subject was English, the third most important subject was English and then arithmetic and other subjects.” 

At the refresher course for all teachers of the Maori Schools Service held in Rotorua in 1939, Ngata was still advocating that policy. It was a widely held Maori opinion that the function of the school was to teach English and the function of the home was to keep the Maori language alive and in that way ensure that all Maoris grew up bilingual. In 1936, Peter Fraser, the Minister of Education, wrote a letter to Sir Apirana as follows: 

Dear Sir Apirana, 

Referring to your statements in the House last night, I would esteem it a favour if you would kindly let me know what your people expect of our school system. 

Yours sincerely, 

Peter Fraser. 

Sir Apirana replied: 

Dear Mr. Fraser, 

In reply to your letter, the question you pose is one that I have raised with my people of the Tairawhiti and the reply has always been the same – we send our children to school to learn the ways of the Pakeha. 

Yours sincerely, 

A. T. Ngata. 

Note 3. Race Differences in Intelligence 

K. Gurunathan claimed: 

A compendium of socio-economic statistics show that a significant percentage of Māori suffer from low education achievement leading to low wage employment, poor and unaffordable housing, poor physical and mental health, and high ratios of criminal prosecution and incarceration. 

Its reasonable to argue these apartheid-type inter-generational outcomes suffered by Māori are caused partly by the system of governance introduced by Pākehā culture. 

It is likely that the different outcomes by race referred to by Gurunathan are due to race differences in intelligence. Consider the following from professor of clinical psychology Kathryn Paige Harden in The Genetic Lottery (2021): 

“Like Herrnstein and Murray [The Bell Curve] (and the vast majority of psychological scientists), I also believe that intelligence tests measure an aspect of a person’s psychology that is relevant for their success in contemporary educational systems and labor markets, that twin studies tell us something meaningful about the genetic causes of individual differences between people, and that intelligence is heritable.” (p. 16) 

Richard Lynn, Professor of Psychology, offers a meta-analysis of the relevant studies in Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, Second Revised Edition (2015). According to Professor Helmuth Nyborg, University of Aarhus, “This is the definitive study … by the man who did more than anybody else to collect the extensive data.” The first edition (2006) is available here and has a chapter on Pacific Islanders which also includes Maoris which is not given in the Second edition. The need for a second edition of Lynn’s book was due to information acquired from sequencing the human genome beginning around 2003. 

The average IQ by race for New Zealand is given in the Second edition of Race Differences in Intelligence as: 

North East Asians 102, Europeans 99, Maoris 90, and Pacific Islanders 85.  

There is little doubt that race differences in educational achievement and other subsequent outcomes in New Zealand are due, at least in part, to race differences in intelligence. The question remains as to whether these differences are due to environmental factors and/or genetics. 

Gurunathan elsewhere claims: 

The Human Genome Project, concluded in 2003, confirmed that humans at the genetic level are 99.9% identical. The concept of race is not genetic but a social and political construct. Physical features like skin colour and hair are a minor 0.1% reality. 

Paige Harden explains further: 

“As I discussed above, race is not a valid biological category. But to hold that there are no genetic differences between groups of people who identify as different races is simply incorrect: as I described previously in this chapter, racial groups differ in genetic ancestry, and so differ in which genetic variants are present and how common those variants are.” (p. 91) 

Although Harden says: 

“There is no scientific evidence for genetically based differences in intelligence test score performance between racial groups or between ancestral populations.” (p. 94) …  

She is nevertheless concerned (in her 2021 book) that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: 

“What if, next year, there suddenly emerged scientific evidence showing that European-ancestry populations evolved in ways that made them more genetically prone, on average, to develop cognitive abilities of the sort that earn higher test scores in school?” (p. 91) 

That is, what if the ongoing genome sequencing program revealed a genetic basis to IQ variation between different ethnic groups? 

Complaint to Stuff Editor, 11 October 2023 

To:       The Post Editor 

Copy:  Tracy Watkins 

Philip Matthews 

Margot Chandler, NZ Media Council 

Rebecca Chivers, The Ombudsmans Office 

Melissa Lee, National MP 

ACT Party 

Jenny Marcroft, NZ First broadcasting spokesperson 

Geoff Mills, NZ First Rongotai candidate 

Dear Sir / Madam, 

Complaint: Co-governance and the Election 

With respect to co-governance, Stuff has not been following the “Stuff Editorial Code of Practice and Ethics” as given on your website, which says: 

Balance 

Journalists should strive to represent all significant sides to a story, to serve our audience with a balanced picture. 

For long-running issues, balance can be achieved cumulatively over time rather than every piece of content needing to feature every voice. 

Bias 

Stuff is politically non-partisan. Journalists should take care not to allow bias – or the perception of bias – in their reporting and in public comments, including on social media. 

On 10 October 2023 you published a piece “The sad business of race-baiting” (see below). It deceptively conflates the situation in Australia with that in New Zealand, when there are significant differences. It sympathetically reports the pro-Maori views of Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald at length and labels the brief anti-Maori views of Rob Ballantyne with the pejorative term “conspiracy theory”, and says “When you turn your back to rhetoric like this, you are racist.” It does not consider the veracity of either of these views, yet it requires the reader to accept the pro-Maori perspective. It complains that people are resisting the transition of the New Zealand democracy into a Maori ethno-state. It claims that Maoris should have exclusive rights and says anyone who opposes that is racist, which is the pot calling the kettle black. Worst of all, it describes how Maori children are being conditioned by preventing them from hearing an alternative point of view. In summary, it quotes radical Maoris and their patronizing European supporters and presents a one-sided perspective. 

On 9 September 2023 you published another piece, “Who is winning the battle of Chris vs Chris?” (see below). That offered an explanation of The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll, but it didn’t explain why co-governance wasn’t one of the 13 categories considered by the poll. You have deliberately excluded the issue of co-governance and then try to tell us what to vote on. In the above 10 October piece you write: “This was supposed to be an election about the cost of living, but … the real ideological warfare has been raging over views of the Treaty of Waitangi.” We the people decide what the election is about, not you. 

Also on 9 September, you published “Julian Batchelor and the apocalypse,” in which you denigrated Batchelor’s co-governance views (copy below). You quoted Batchelor as saying, “Māori were self-annihilating” … “Cannibalism, slavery, and infanticide were rife”. Batchelor is right however, the Maoris even named these things: kai tangata, taurekareka and roromi. You also quoted Vincent O’Malley as saying Batchelor’s view of the past “has no merit at all”. Yet when referring to the 1818 - 1840 inter-tribal Musket Wars in The Great War for New Zealand (p. 99), O’Malley claimed 2,000 Waikatos were killed by Ngapuhi at Matakitaki pa in 1822 alone. It is estimated that 20,000 Maoris were killed in the Musket Wars. Batchelor was essentially correct; the Maoris were self-annihilating and your reporting was biased. 

On 3 April 2023 you published “Rejection of Catholic policy ‘good first step’,” which claims that “the so-called Doctrine of Discovery” was a series of late 15th century papal bulls which “allowed the ‘conquest, colonisation and subjugation’ of indigenous people including Māori” (copy below). I pointed out to you that this had been refuted in two scholarly articles by Professor Paul Moon who is an authority on New Zealand history, having published a score of books on the subject. (see references below) However, with the help of the NZ Media Council, you avoided publishing a contrary scholarly view. Nevertheless, I suspect many people did not believe your article, because it is common knowledge that Henry VIII separated England from Catholicism and that New Zealand colonial policy was determined by Britain. 

Having looked into the matter, I believe that Moon is correct; but that is not my point. I made a complaint to the NZMC who responded that “he appeared to be a lone voice against the weight of contrary academic research,” but they did not cite any such research. They did however say, “The Media Council acknowledges that there are differing views on the Doctrine of Discovery.” In that case Stuff should publish them also to provide balanced reporting and you have not done that. To the contrary, you have continued to publish pro-Maori / anti-European rhetoric, such as the above examples. 

You are selecting your facts and constructing your argument to fit your propagandist ideology. These articles do not offer any contrary facts, even though I provided you with a Letter to the Editor on each of them, all of which offer an alternative perspective and none of which you published. 

You do not mention that everything the Maoris have today from the food they eat, the clothes they wear and the houses they live in, to the devices they thumb, the SUVs they drive and the internationally used language they speak and can now write, they have because Europeans came to New Zealand. Nor do you mention that Maori life expectancy has more than doubled since the time of the Treaty or that the 100,000 Maori population has since increased to 800,000 part-Maoris today. The Maoris flourished under colonization, as did the colonists and now the Islanders and Asians. You vilify the colonists, yet they built one of the best countries in the world, which you now benefit from. 

Your position is racially biased. For example, you do not consider that it would be howled down as racist if it were proposed to have exclusive seats on the Greater London Council for the indigenous British minority there, yet that is the arrangement we have in New Zealand. The salient difference is the colour of the indigenous skin. Your paper is also quite clearly to the Left. In The Post today (11 October) for example, there was one full front-page pro-Labour advertisement and two full-page anti-National advertisements all sponsored by the same person. You are facilitating a negative attempt from the Left to recover from poor poll results. 

People naturally adopt a liberal Left or conservative Right position according to two of the ‘Big Five’ dimensions of personality, namely openness to experience (curious vs. cautious) and conscientiousness (easy-going vs. organised). Thus, the liberal Left tend to be curious and easy-going, whereas conservatives are more cautious and organised on average. (Klein, Why We’re Polarized, pp. 43-48) These tendencies are not only subject to innate predispositions but also to environmental influences, such as newspapers. 

Your readers perceive you as being biased to the Left and you know it. A Curia poll in April 2023 found that a nett 18% of respondents thought Stuff leaned to the Left, compared with a nett 0% who thought the Herald leaned Left or Right. For instance, in todays paper (11 October) you published a Letter to the Editor which begins: 

Rental Income 

I am very frustrated with your letters to the editor because there is a definite political bias with publication. I can't imagine that you don’t have a good choice of letters to publish, but you have a theme and it is largely to the left. 

... 

Teresa McClymont, Masterton 

I too believe your articles are biased to the Left and they are fallacious, which alienates those on the Right and drives them further Right. Like most people, those on the Left are subject to confirmation bias which means they select information from your articles which supports and hence bolsters their position on the Left. (Wikipedia, s.v., “Confirmation bias”) You are thereby polarising the nation, rather than facilitating an evidence-based rational debate with the objective of reaching consensus on an optimum solution. 

You are part of the problem, therefore, not part of the solution. You are driving us to participate in so-called ‘unconscious bias’ rather than using our uniquely human rational faculty to address the significant problems we now face. In “Stuff introduces new charter following apology to Maori,” 30 November 2020, Sinead Boucher boasted, “If you think the job of the news media, in our company and others, is to hold the powerful to account, well, we are the powerful.” Well, so you are, and you are also the mistaken, which is a harmful combination. You have used your power to distort our election. 

My complaint, therefore, is that you have not met the “Stuff Editorial Code of Practice and Ethics” regarding balance and bias on co-governance issues. The 10 October article is not balanced and nor are the preceding examples given above back to last April. Additionally I have seen no articles which mention the benefits that Europeans have brought to New Zealand that I have also mentioned above. Stuff is also biased to the Left in these articles and is generally perceived by readers to be to the Left. Generally, Stuff is not politically non-partisan and gives the perception of bias and this is reflected in co-governance issues. 

Yours sincerely, 

Dr Barrie Davis 

Subject Article, 10 October 2023 

“The sad business of race-baiting,” The Post, Philip Matthews, 10 October 2023 

https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/politics/350086477/sad-business-race-baiting 

Te Pāti Māori candidates Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, left, Meka Whaitiri and Rawiri Waititi in Parliament in May. 

So much is at stake on October 14. Voters will be thinking about their impressions of history but also their views of the future. They will be thinking about the thorny subject of race relations in a colonised country, where the hope is that the vote might smooth over some of those painful and lasting differences, but the reality is that in the lead-up to the vote, the differences might have become even starker and the cracks wider. 

The general election in New Zealand? No, this is in Australia where the Voice referendum will determine whether an indigenous voice to Parliament will be enshrined in the constitution. It has been a culture war unlike any other. 

Polling released in early October showed the no vote leading the yes vote by 53% to 38%, with the strongest opposition coming from older, rural Australians. 

It leaves Canterbury University political scientist Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald with a sense of sadness. 

“What is it like to be in a country where you weren’t given the vote until 1967 and then the country turns around and says, ‘No, we don’t even want to hear from your elders’?” 

A march in Sydney for the “yes” vote in the Voice referendum. 

He brings it up because recent arguments about race in New Zealand have him feeling much the same way. 

He finds it “brutally sad” that when New Zealand has done fairly well coming out of Covid-19, and is a place so many still want to come to and that has so much to offer, some of our political leadership is “focused on suggesting that other people in New Zealand are at fault and they are to blame and they’re trying to ruin the country. 

“I haven’t met a Kiwi who’s trying to ruin the country and yet you go on Facebook and people prompted by what politicians have been saying are denigrating each other, shaming each other and suggesting that Māori want to take over the universe. I find it appalling and terribly sad. It’s not what my granddad fought in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force for.” 

There is a wider, damaging effect of the political speech we are hearing. 

“We’re having to make sure our kids don’t go on social media because of the kinds of messages that are being conveyed. We can’t let our kids watch some of the debates because of the way Māori are being talked about.” 

What happened? How and why did race become such an issue in New Zealand? 

This was supposed to be an election about the cost of living, but rather than the two major parties arguing about the economy, the real ideological warfare has been raging over views of the Treaty of Waitangi. It has been between minor parties, with ACT and NZ First on one side and Te Pāti Māori and the Greens on the other. 

We have not seen such racially divisive politics since 2005, a time of iwi/Kiwi billboards, when National’s “election strategists aimed to exploit anxiety among conservative Pākehā voters that Helen Clark’s Labour-led government was privileging Māori at their expense”, as political scientist Colin James put it. 

The atmosphere is “fetid”, MacDonald agrees. Many Māori politicians, academics and commentators are unwilling to speak on the record about their views and experiences for fear of being targeted, but there are well-documented incidents that create a picture of a racially divisive election. 

Seventeen Māori community leaders, including Dame Naida Glavish, Ta Mark Solomon, Pania Newton and Tukoroirangi Morgan took the rare step of publishing an open letter calling on National leader Christopher Luxon to condemn racist comments made by NZ First candidates and the race-baiting policies of ACT, “and commit himself to representing all of us – including Māori”. 

ACT leader David Seymour has denied that his policies are race-baiting. 

The letter writers had NZ First’s Rangitata candidate, Rob Ballantyne, in mind. Ballantyne was speaking at an event in Timaru when he outlined what amounted to a conspiracy theory about a Māori takeover. 

“Their end goal is not co-governance, it’s self-governance,” he said, as he talked about the “fatal mistake” New Zealand made when it created the Waitangi Tribunal and warned of “a disingenuous Māori elite [who] are laughing all the way to the bank”. He spoke about “radical, race-based conspirators” and an “insidious, covert invasion”. 

He urged Timaru voters not to “be fooled by their puppy dog eyes and their pleas for special treatment”. He concluded that “we’ve been tolerant enough and we’re fighting back”, and told Māori to “cry if you want to, we don’t care, you pushed it too far, and we’re the party with the cultural mandate and the courage to cut out the disease and bury you permanently”. 

During a televised debate, both Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins agreed Ballantyne’s comments were racist. 

When challenged, Ballantyne said he was talking about a “Māori elite” not “ordinary” Māori. 

But language that describes people as a “disease”, an “elite” and an “invasion” is familiar from the long and tragic history of racism. Mark Solomon expanded on his condemnation in a statement read by TVNZ presenter Jack Tame during a minor leaders’ debate. 

“When you turn your back to rhetoric like this, you are racist,” Solomon said. 

NZ First leader Winston Peters responded by claiming that Solomon’s iwi, Ngāi Tahu, wants total control of all of the South Island’s water, which has previously been disputed, but leads directly to one of the murky causes of race-based politics. That is, Three Waters reform and co-governance. 

Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke in Huntly. 

Something in the water 

In Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald’s view, one of the problems with arguments about co-governance is the term itself. 

“My basic point is that co-governance is a stupid word,” he says. “It’s supposed to make you feel good about being included when the Crown still holds all the cards.” 

It would have been better to talk about iwi representation, for example. But the term co-governance suited the Government “because it sounds like they’re meeting the Treaty principle of partnership”. 

He argues that “if Three Waters had been put in place within a month of the policy being announced, everybody would be dealing with it now and there would be no hassle. Politicians are pretending that in some way Māori are getting special advantage from a co-governance scheme that gives them no advantage whatsoever. 

“Unsurprisingly, there are great incentives for politicising water and the easiest way to do that in New Zealand is to target a population group and in this case, it’s Māori, and say it’s their fault when the really hard issue at stake is between commercial interests and the rest of society around climate change.” 

When you are talking about iwi, but using the word Māori, that is racist, he argues. But he sees some truth in what NZ First candidate Shane Jones has recently said about co-governance, which is that the Government failed to fully explain its position, thus scaring rural voters. 

There are iwi interests and a vague idea of a “Māori elite” – when pressed on it, Ballantyne named the Labour Government’s Māori Development Minister, Willie Jackson – and then there are individual Māori MPs, most of whom have been women. 

Willie Jackson says politics is harder for Māori women. 

In an interview with broadcaster Mihingarangi Forbes in August, Jackson said: “I would agree that Māori women probably get it worse than anyone.” 

He was talking about Kiritapu Allan, but also Nanaia Mahuta, Marama Davidson and, going back further, Metiria Turei, Tariana Turia and Sandra Lee. Since then, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, a Te Pāti Māori candidate who emerged as a star of TVNZ’s young leaders’ debate, has been at the centre of arguably the most bizarre story about race-based politics in the entire 2023 campaign. 

The party claimed there were politically motivated attacks on the Huntly-based candidate, who said she was threatened “because I’m young, I’m female, and I’m Māori”. 

Waikato police confirmed there had been reports of a suspicious vehicle, the theft of an election hoarding, a threatening letter, a burglary and a trespass notice, although police disputed that the events were coordinated or racially motivated. The trespass notice was issued after an elderly Pākehā National supporter appeared uninvited at Maipi-Clarke’s home, ostensibly to congratulate her on a poll result. 

ACT leader David Seymour saw the police’s scepticism as vindication that Te Pāti Māori had played “fast and loose with the truth” and used the incidents to “smear political rivals”. 

The party’s president, John Tamihere, remained convinced that Maipi-Clarke was targeted and argued that “there should be no doubt now in anyone’s mind that National and ACT’s race-baiting has empowered and emboldened a dangerous type of human being who is hell-bent on silencing Māori by targeting who they think is our most vulnerable”. 

National has denied race-baiting but has committed to repealing Three Waters, scrapping the Māori Health Authority, as it believes services should be based “on needs, not ethnicity”, and intends to ensure that government departments use their English name first, and their Māori name second. 

In contrast, both Labour and the Greens reject what they call race-baiting from parties of the right. In Northland last month, Hipkins criticised ACT’s wish to have a referendum on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing that it would “undo decades of progress and decades of legal precedent”. 

Rawiri Waititi from Te Pāti Māori, left, Winston Peters, David Seymour and the Greens’ James Shaw during a televised debate. 

Hipkins added that for a party of law and order, ACT had no respect for the rights of others. 

“For example, David Seymour has interpreted Tino Rangatiratanga only as a right to authority over property – not self-determination in the way that scholars, the courts, and most importantly, Māori have defined it for over a century. 

“His new proposed Treaty Act makes no mention of Māori, or the Crown, or hapū, or iwi. In fact, it only refers to all New Zealanders. It’s as if history never happened.” 

In an interview with broadcaster Julian Wilcox, Luxon said ACT’s referendum is “divisive” and National would not support it. However, he “would be open to hearing different views about” the Treaty principles. 

In a 2022 interview, Luxon said Māori ceded sovereignty when the Treaty was signed, a controversial view not supported by the Waitangi Tribunal. 

Voting has started in rural Taranaki. 

The Māori vote 

Voter turnout among Māori is traditionally lower than for non-Māori. Some argue that the controversies we have seen this year will have the effect of lowering the vote even further, as Māori voters may be discouraged by the rhetoric. Marama Davidson has called it “a purposeful tactic to put people off”. 

MacDonald’s academic research says that “Māori are very keen on the vote, but are not altogether sure that their vote counts. They don’t necessarily see themselves represented that well on the issues.” 

There is “open debate in the minds of some Māori voters about the efficacy of their vote. On the other hand, my research also says that Māori really value the vote and having political agency.” 

The low turn-out might be “because Māori are doing a lot of other political work. The political work might be at the marae and iwi level, supporting each other.” 

Perhaps it helps to take a long view. The 2023 election may be unpleasant, he says, but it will pass, the politicians will pass, and the Māori political institutions like iwi and hapu, which have already shown incredible resilience to withstand colonisation, will continue, just as Parliament itself will continue. 

“Those Māori political authorities will continue to fight to be able to self-determine for the people they represent in much the same way that any large extended family will fight for the interests of their people,” he says. “This isn't surprising. What is surprising is the characterisation of those interests as somehow invalid.” 

Again, the word “sad” seems fitting. 

“The opposition to Māori having a seat at the table is really sad, when for the first time in 200 years, you are starting to see Māori being able to deliver services and deliver progress to their people and the Crown hasn’t really done that. 

“If people don’t have a seat at the table, they don’t have political equality, no matter what people might say about the vote. That’s really important for the political legitimacy of the country.” 

- The Press 

Dr Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.