New Zealand is presently descending into a tribalistic third-world country which demise is in large part due to Maori separatism. There are three things that we need to do to arrest that descent: 1) disestablish the Maori seats in national and local government; 2) disestablish the Waitangi Tribunal; and 3) understand the Treaty of Waitangi in an historical context.
It has been made abundantly clear that we want these things and yet we are being ignored or fobbed off. Here I will consider the example of the Treaty bill to illustrate how we, the sovereign people of New Zealand, are being unjustifiably denied our sovereign right to determine the direction of our own country by a delinquent Parliament.
Putting the Treaty in an historical context does not mean that we ignore it in our present constitutional arrangements but that we consider it as an historical fact. A year before our last election ACT put out a Press Release saying:
“ACT proposes that the next Government pass legislation defining the Principles of the Treaty, in particularly their effect on democratic institutions. Then ask the people to vote on it becoming law.
“It would define the Principles of the Treaty as.
1. The New Zealand Government has the right to govern New Zealand.
2. The New Zealand Government will protect all New Zealanders’ authority over their land and other property
3. All New Zealanders are equal under the law, with the same rights and duties.
That seems to me to be an appropriate acceptance of the Treaty as an historical fact and I voted accordingly. I believe that a significant proportion of voters did so as well. Subsequent to the election, a National-Act Coalition Agreement was written which included, “Introduce a Treaty Principles Bill based on existing ACT policy and support it to a Select Committee as soon as practicable.” However, once the Bill was drafted, it was instead sent to the Cabinet, who approved the following for Principle 2 / Article 2:
2. Rights of Hapū and Iwi Māori: The Crown recognises the rights that hapū and iwi had when they signed the Treaty. The Crown will respect and protect those rights. Those rights differ from the rights everyone has a reasonable expectation to enjoy only when they are specified in legislation, Treaty settlements, or other agreement with the Crown.
The revised Article 2 has the opposite effect of the Act policy on which we voted and breaks the National-Act Coalition Agreement. Having voted for the present Coalition Government, I now find that they are doing the opposite of what they said they would do. I therefore now want not to have the Bill and I expect a significant proportion of those who voted for the Government do not want it either.
Our democratically elected Government have misled us on a key constitutional issue which is affecting the efficiency of our country and will continue to do so until it is resolved. They have done this blatantly and apparently without shame. They are thumbing their noses at us. They are following democratic principles only when it suits them which makes a farce of our claim to being a democratic country.
We have been through the democratic process to resolve this issue and that did not work. We would be naive if we were to be coerced into trying it again. What alternative recourse do we have?
Power: the capacity to influence the behaviour of others (Oxford Concise)
What power does the Government have to force us to comply with their illegitimate course? Let’s follow the money for an answer. The two basic powers of a government are to make laws and to raise taxes. The Government then use our tax money to exercise other powers, such as employing and controlling a Police force and an Army. As we the people are the ultimate source of tax, we could simply stop paying taxes until the Government meet their commitment to us.
But the Government including the courts would then use the Police – who they employ and control with our tax money – to punish us with imprisonment until we pay up. The remaining recourse left to us is insurrection, which I note the American Constitution provides for in the Second Amendment. But before we rush into a ruinous civil war – which the Government would quell with the Army that they employ and control with our tax money – let’s take a closer look at the source of power.
Theodore Roosevelt was quoted in The Post, 1 October, as saying “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.” But that is like having a dog and barking too. Our government has a necessary function to fulfil and it is not for us to do it for them; we are not the Government. Instead, we empower Parliament so that they may fulfil that function on our behalf. If you claim that is not so, you then acquire the burden of identifying the source of Parliamentary power. Other than despotic use of the Police and Army, I expect you will find that we the people are the only plausible source of Parliamentary sovereignty.
Having vested power in Parliament, we thereby hold an executive position over the Government including the judiciary which we express in elections and referenda. That is what the democratic process is supposed to provide, but our present Government is abusing that. They seem to get sidetracked by the political process to the detriment of the democratic one.
We need someone, a person who has constitutional power to control the Police and Army, to represent us at the executive level and, if necessary, force the Government to do what they promised they would do prior to the election. The obvious contender for that task is our King as Head of State, but he is curiously absent without leave. Other possibilities are that we institute an elected President or an upper house. My concern is that empowering a further constitutional entity might introduce more problems than it solves.
The preferred solution is that our government acts in a responsible manner.
Sovereignty: supreme power or authority (Oxford Concise)
Here I will identify how the example of the Treaty should have been handled according to our Constitution. In other words, identify the rules we can reasonably require our government to follow.
As matter of fact, whatever power our government has comes from we the people by the mechanism of taxation. From that it follows that we are the source of sovereign power which we vest in the Crown in Parliament, that we elect every three years.
One would expect that fact to be written in bold in the Constitution Act 1986, but it is curiously absent. By way of contrast, the powers of the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary are spelled out in detail; for example, “The Parliament of New Zealand continues to have full power to make laws” (15(1)). I note also that Principle 1 of the ACT proposal given above and in the draft Treaty Principles Bill submitted to Cabinet is consistently written as “1. The New Zealand Government has the right to govern New Zealand”. The Cabinet approval for Article 1 similarly says, “1. Civil Government: The Government of New Zealand has full power to govern, and Parliament has full power to make laws.”
It is clear that Parliament are looking after themselves whilst contemptuously manipulating us. There is scant recognition of our sovereign power.
However, an authoritative view on our constitutional arrangements is given by Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Dr Andrew Butler. In 2016 they published A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand in which they propose a written, codified ‘Constitution Aotearoa’ that sets out the fundamental rules and principles under which New Zealand is to be governed. In 2018, after they had solicited and obtained feedback on their first book, they published Towards Democratic Renewal in which they included a revised version of their proposed Constitution.
Palmer and Butler claim in the initial 2016 book that “While Constitution Aotearoa makes some important changes, it is at pains to preserve the sound elements of our past and our unique constitutional culture.” (p. 7) The changes include the abolition of Royal powers (p. 39), engrossment of the Treaty of Waitangi (p. 62), a four-year Parliamentary term, engrossment of the Bill of Rights, addition of right to education and right to property and constitutional protection of the environment (p. 18); most of which I disagree with.
I’m not suggesting that you agree with the Palmer and Butler proposal; I certainly don’t. I especially do not like the idea of engrossment of the Treaty, for example. But – like the Kawharu translation of the Treaty which I also usually use – the Palmer and Butler Constitution provides an authoritative source to argue for or against. It inescapably presents the other side to the argument.
The Preamble of both versions of their Constitution says that the people govern themselves by a system of democratic elections. For example, the 2016 version says that their constitution is founded on six principles, including:
“(a) a recognition that the people govern themselves through a democratic system of representative and responsible government based on free and fair elections, with clear distribution of public powers between the Head of State, the Parliament, the Government and an independent Judiciary” (p. 34).
That does not say, however, that the power exercised by the State originates with the people. However, they confirm that it does in the Articles of the initial 2016 version:
“3 Source and exercise of governmental powers
“(1) All powers of government vested in the State, legislative, executive and judicial, derive from the people of Aotearoa New Zealand” (p. 36).
However, the above clause 3(1) does not appear in the revised 2018 version. Instead, they added into the Preamble, “We the people of Aotearoa New Zealand declare- … We are committed to governance in the interests of all the people of Aotearoa New Zealand from whom all power is derived…”
Whereas the initial 2016 version is a definitive rule, the revised 2018 version is presented as a presumptive declaration by the people that we are committed to governance. I have not and will not make that commitment, but they are trying to impose it upon us by inclusion in their Preamble. To the contrary, We the people bestow sovereignty on Parliament at our pleasure and we will withdraw it if we see fit. Palmer and Butler backed away from their initial directive and the presupposition of their revised version is not acceptable to me. It occurs to me that is indicative of a general change in thinking in Government and academia over the past decade. We are being increasingly suppressed.
My take is that they know that sovereign power comes from the people, but having had time to think about it they realized that would give the plebs ideas above their station, so they took it out. Giving us elections is something they can rort, as they are presently doing with the Treaty bill. But 3(1) specifies that we the people are sovereign; that is, we are the source of supreme power from which the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government obtain their power.
It is nevertheless clear that Palmer and Butler are aware that the people have the power to control Parliament. They still say in the text of the revised 2018 book that “…the real constitutional principle is not the sovereignty of Parliament but the democratic authority of the people” (p. 92). Yet they did not specify that authority – the power to control Parliament – in the second version of their Constitution.
To be clear, I do not support the Palmer and Butler Constitution. What I am saying is that in developing their proposition they have conceded that ultimate power lies with the people.
I will take the opportunity here to make a supplementary point. We vest sovereign power in Parliament by election every three years. At the end of that time we should expect that power is returned to us in its entirety to subsequently be vested in the next Parliament. What I mean by that, is that it is not for the Government to give some of it away during their term to, for example, the United Nations by signing the UNDRIP. It is not theirs to give and we the people may wish to retain all of it for ourselves. It is not to be given to some organization comprised of people who I do not even know let alone get to vote for. Signing the UNDRIP was just another example of the contempt our government has for our democracy and for us. That which Parliament has given away they can go and get back.
For the Treaty bill, we need to ensure that any debate we have includes the full range of options or it is not a valid debate. The 8 October debate between David Seymour and Helmut Modlik was merely a disagreement between two men – each with a Maori ancestor and a European name – about how specifically they will hand New Zealand over to the corporate iwis. We need to consider putting the Treaty in an historical context and disallowing the constructions made by the Waitangi Tribunal, such as partnership. It is not acceptable that that possibility should be withheld from us.
Make no mistake; you are being right royally rorted by self-serving wideos spouting the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” mantra while simultaneously participating to ensure that you have no significant influence on the major illicit changes they are presently making to the constitution of our country. They have a magical belief that they have an intuitive rationale for their actions which you are not capable of grasping.
In my view, their perspective is distorted by an inflated sense of their own importance, swayed by the unmandated influence of the unelected United Nations, and cowed by a visceral fear of the Maoris.
Therefore, I declare that the sovereignty of New Zealand rests with We the people which we vest in the Crown in Parliament for a term not exceeding three years. Moreover, I take the liberty to request and require on behalf of the Sovereign people of New Zealand that our representative Parliament restore the Treaty bill to the terms given in the above ACT press release (on which we voted in a lawful election), and that it then goes to a Select Committee and public debate.
We the people need to take a more active interest in what is happening and in particular we need to insist that sovereign power only comes from us, and which we choose to vest in the Crown in Parliament. We are paramount, not the courts nor a constitution, and Parliament exists at our pleasure to represent us. Moreover, we need to work to make democracy work and we need to accept more responsibility, which will happen naturally when we perceive and understand that the power to succeed or fail rests with us.
Hear the voice of the people.
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.
References
Press Release: “Defining the Treaty principles,” Nicole McKee, 10 October 2022
Release: “Next steps agreed for Treaty Principles Bill,” Hon David Seymour, 11 September 2024
1 comment:
Amen, to that!
The issue is now how to truly motivate the people to grasp that sovereignty when our Fourth Estate is corrupt, and our institutions - including education, the judiciary, and even those of religion - are no longer our allies?
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