The referendums on Maori wards to be held in tandem with the local elections is a critical moment for the future of race-based representation. The result will either embed them for a very long time or challenge their place in a democratic society. Although Maori wards have been available to councils for 20 or so years, it was Nanaia Mahuta’s tapestry of lies to take away the petition right that removed the barrier to their introduction.
Ironically
was the Clark Labour government that included the petition right when it
mandated Maori wards and there was a very good reason why they did so -
democracy. There is a foundation stone of democracy which says electors should
have the final say about how their representatives are elected, not the
representatives.
What could
be more basic to a healthy democracy than that?
Regrettably,
allowing electors to have a say on how their representatives are elected did
not suit Mahuta’s racist agenda, and nor does it suit a majority of
councillors. It seems they believe in local representation, when “local” means
they have the say, not those they pretend to represent.
Mahuta lied
on two counts. Those lies were repeated by racial activists and to their shame,
went unchallenged in the mainstream (activist) media.
The first lie was that the petition right
applied only to Maori wards. It didn’t.
The same
petition right is available to citizens when their council resolves to change
the voting system from First Past the Post to STV. Why? Because it is changing the voting
system!
Introducing
the Maori roll into the voting system and dividing people into either the
general roll or the Maori roll, also changes the voting system. And that’s why
the petition right applied.
Those who
say the petition right is racist, are either fools or liars, or both. And the
village idiots who say “but it does not apply to rural wards” are too
simple to understand that shifting ward boundaries or creating new wards to
define a geographic community of interest is not changing the voting system.
The second
lie perpetuated by Mahuta, and one that still resonates today, is that Maori
are under-represented on local councils. The facts show otherwise, but facts
that challenge the false narratives of activists is too inconvenient for them
to accept.
The
inconvenient truth is the number of councillors that identify as having Maori
ancestry is greater than their relative share of the population, both now and
after the 2019 election (before Mahuta’s intervention). Maori are able to be
elected onto councils on their own merits – they do not need to get a free ride
via Maori wards.
That truth
does not suit the radicals because it detracts from their bogus narrative which
says, or at least implies, that pakeha don’t vote for Maori (wrong) and they
don’t vote for them because they are racist (very wrong). They prefer to hold
the delusional opinion that Maori are victims of the tyranny of the majority.
When the
obvious is pointed out to them – namely the examples of Maori that are elected
on their own merits - they usually say “but they do not speak for Maori”.
In other words, they are not their sort of Maori, which means they only
want Maori who are as radical as they are.
A second
reason why the radicals are not convinced by the facts is that their objective
is not to have “fair” representation based on population proportionality. Their
“fair” is to have 50% representation and they quote the “partnership” and their
sovereignty as the reasons.
They prefer
not to talk about this because they know it will scare the public and cause a
backlash that will erode the incremental gains that they are making.
What they
also know, but dare not say, is 50% representation will give them control. They
know some of the “non-Maori” representatives will side with Maori – the Labour
and Green party councillors for example, who may as well be members of the
Maori Party when it comes to the advancement of Maori privilege.
Gaining
control of the council is the prize they are after, and what a prize to win.
They would control a huge and captive income stream into perpetuity, paid for
by non-Maori, which they can divert for the benefit of Maori. And there is
absolutely nothing those getting the juice squeezed out of them could do about
it. It’s a case of either shut up and pay up, or shut shop and move overseas.
The squeeze is already happening in some councils, like the Northland Regional
Council.
It’s a
deliberate and brazen political strategy. What is astounding is that so many
non-Maori are so blind that they don’t see it and so naive that they fall for
the mystical nonsense used by Maori to justify their position of privilege. It
is as simple as robbing a bank without security.
Unfortunately,
a casualty of the Maori rights war is democracy itself. If New Zealanders allow
our basic democratic rights to be lost, then we will forever be hostage to
racists who believe their privileges are more important than democracy itself.
Sadly, we are a long way down that track. It will take courage to bring it back
from the precipice.
No comments:
Post a Comment