One of former Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s most singular achievements during her tenure as premier was to push a majority of voters to the point of revulsion regarding race-based policy. Now the coalition government is orchestrating a swift counter-revolution, with the support of the disaffected constituency Ardern helped create.
What alarms the Maori nationalists and their allies among our political and cultural elites, including the mainstream media, is that they know the backlash is not going to stop at unpicking laws and policy around co-governance, which Ardern stealthily instituted in everything from health and resource management to educational policy and local government.
The reaction to the Labour government’s overreach could result in the seven Maori seats eventually being abolished (as the Royal Commission into the Electoral System recommended in 1986), the Treaty being neutralised as a vehicle for grievances, and a widespread indifference, if not hostility, to Maori culture and language among the general population.
Such a scenario will seem improbable, if not fantastical, to many but we’ve been here before of course in New Zealand when what looked like an unassailable part of our political and social fabric collapsed surprisingly quickly. The fall of unionism in the early 90s would have seemed just as improbable 10 years earlier as dismantling the notion of New Zealand as a bi-cultural state would have when the radical He Puapua report came into public view in 2021.
Unionists dominated the nation’s economic activity for decades, until suddenly they didn’t. The mouthy big beasts of the union movement became relics in a surprisingly short time after the Employment Contracts Act was introduced by Jim Bolger’s government in 1991. It removed much of the legislative backing for unions and, by deregulating the labour market, crippled the union movement.
Like the cocksure Maori nationalists in Labour’s Cabinet throwing their weight around under the indulgent Jacinda Ardern (particularly in her second term from 2020), the union leaders badly overplayed their hand for years, securing influence and financial benefits through extensive strike action, or the threat of it.
When I worked as a “seagull” on Auckland’s wharves in the late 70s, the union ran a system of “ups and downs”. That meant I worked a morning shift but had the afternoon off on full pay. It was clear to me then that society would not tolerate being held to ransom by the unions so outrageously for ever. The featherbedding in union-dominated industries was a tax on everyone who bought those enterprises’ products. And most products came into the country via our ports.
Voters increasingly see the demands by iwi for compensation and control over a broad swathe of New Zealand life and business in the same way. Auckland’s Watercare being obliged, for example, to pay a $2m annual fee to Waikato-Tainui for 20 years for water taken from the Waikato River not far from where it enters the sea is widely viewed as unjustified indirect taxation extracted by what amounts in many people’s minds to a ransom — or perhaps standover — payment.
OIA documents have revealed Manurewa Marae was paid “koha” of $10,000 by Statistics NZ last year for simply accepting a Census collection contract. A number of other Maori-centric organisations were also paid substantial amounts simply for their co-operation.
Voters might object less, of course, if they had seen the billions of dollars that disappeared into “Maori initiatives” in the 2021/2022 budgets had lifted the living conditions, education and health statistics of some of our poorest citizens, but those improvements seem as far away as ever.
So far, the government has fulfilled many of the promises its constituent parties made to the electorate before October 14, including repealing the Maori Health Authority and Three Waters. Although the repeals have been loudly opposed, including predictably by the Waitangi Tribunal, they have not caused the widespread disruption that was initially expected — mostly for the simple reason the coalition parties all campaigned on them, and they are reversible. A future Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori coalition could reinstate these examples of co-governance easily enough if they wanted.
Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, however, is a different sort of threat altogether. It represents an existential challenge to the Treaty Project that has been running for the past 50 years under the aegis of the professional managerial class, with the complicity of the judiciary. As a result, barely a day goes by without another journalist, academic, translator or religious leader publicly denouncing Seymour and his bill — and, weirdly, Luxon too for not reneging on his coalition agreement and killing the bill before it gets anywhere near Parliament.
Seymour has proposed a solution that should be unremarkable in a democracy but is seen as subversive and revolutionary — he wants voters to be given the chance to decide their own constitutional future. Such a proposal is a complete anathema to our ruling classes, who appear to believe that even allowing voters to discuss the matter of the Treaty’s place in New Zealand’s life is unacceptably risky.
Unfortunately for them, Seymour has secured a full six-month public consultation for the select committee stage, which will give a cross-party group of MPs the chance to assess what will no doubt be an avalanche of written and oral submissions from the public.
And this is not exactly Seymour’s first rodeo. He took on the might of the Catholic church and religious fundamentalists over assisted dying and by tirelessly prosecuting his case up and down the country persuaded nearly two-thirds of the population to support him in a referendum in 2020.
He is backing himself to repeat the exercise, aiming to bring down big game in the Treaty debate while his coalition partners content themselves with shooting rabbits.
Last August, he said — to the outrage of his opponents — that he thought “the debate will be fun”. The reason he thinks this is because he knows his pitch to voters’ sense of fairness is both extremely popular and unimpeachable. His assessment is that even if the Treaty is the nation’s founding document, it is no longer seen by many as relevant to the New Zealand of the 21st century. It is, in fact, the founding document for a bi-cultural New Zealand that no longer exists. As David Lange said in 2000: “The Treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts. It is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place”.
Seymour’s ultimate fallback argument is that no matter what the Treaty says, or what scholars declare its articles actually mean, New Zealand has no future as a modern and prosperous nation if detecting a smidgen of Maori ancestral blood can grant different political rights to that person.
The panicked, almost hysterical reaction from our ruling classes to the prospect of a national debate — let alone a referendum — on the Treaty principles is a clear sign that Seymour understands the national mood, while his critics’ overblown response confirms they fear he is correct even as they deny it.
And there is a delicious irony that opponents to his principles bill, who were always ready to ask solicitously when Ardern was Prime Minister, “What exactly scares you about co-governance?” are now being asked, “What scares you about a national debate or referendum on the Treaty principles?”
The answer the Establishment and its supporters in the mainstream media don’t want to face is that the jig is up for Maori nationalism — just as it was for unionism more than 30 years ago. In both cases it is mostly because of gross overreach.
Last week, the Māori Working Group on Aerospace declared itself “shocked” that the Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology, Judith Collins, hadn’t included consultation with iwi as part of its Aerospace and Advanced Aviation Strategy — as if a neolithic culture which never got around to inventing the wheel deserves a share of the benefits of space technology on account of an imagined “partnership” with the Crown.
The group, set up “to advocate for Māori rights and interests in aerospace”, was appalled that, unlike in 2023 under the Labour government, the strategy “makes no reference whatsoever to Māori, the Crown’s partner under Te Tiriti o Waitangi” — thus losing the opportunity “to build and strengthen relationships with tangata whenua in the protection and appropriate use of aerospace resources”.
The group wants the nation’s burgeoning aerospace industry to develop policy “centred on tikanga” to enable “ethical and responsible exploration, caring for our environment, and unlocking economic and social benefits”.
Part of the justification for Maori involvement turns on the mystical notion that space is a “taonga” because it is the realm that Ranginui — the “sky god” — inhabits. The irony of religious dogma having been the biggest impediment to the work of astronomers like Galileo, who was declared a heretic for asserting that the Earth orbits the Sun, is apparently lost on the activists.
The extent of race-based favouritism — including among councils and universities — is far more widespread than most guess. Last week, Act obtained a copy of AUT’s policy for funding researchers’ travel, which allocates 30 per cent more points to travel applications for researchers who identify as Māori, and 20 per cent more for Pasifika.
As Act noted: “The AUT points system for travel funding prioritises applications based on a number of criteria, before an ‘equity multiplier’ of up to 1.3x is applied to advantage selected groups. This means that while a Māori-identifying researcher can earn up to 37.7 points, a researcher not eligible for an equity multiplier may only accumulate 29 points. In effect, an Asian academic seeking to attend a conference to which they are contributing a paper could lose funding to a Māori-identifying researcher who is merely visiting the conference, solely on the basis of race.”
AUT management justifies such a discriminatory practice by reference to its adherence to te Tiriti.
In Auckland, some developers end up paying iwi what is known as a “taniwha tax” on developments or alterations to a building or property if they fall within a large circle around a “culturally significant” site. And there are hundreds of such sites across Auckland affecting thousands of properties.
These examples are just the tip of an iceberg and the extent of them will shock the public when they are more widely publicised, as they will be once Seymour’s bill is tabled in Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Act party and its leader are already happily shooting fish in a barrel — and the six-month select committee stage has not yet begun.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
The reaction to the Labour government’s overreach could result in the seven Maori seats eventually being abolished (as the Royal Commission into the Electoral System recommended in 1986), the Treaty being neutralised as a vehicle for grievances, and a widespread indifference, if not hostility, to Maori culture and language among the general population.
Such a scenario will seem improbable, if not fantastical, to many but we’ve been here before of course in New Zealand when what looked like an unassailable part of our political and social fabric collapsed surprisingly quickly. The fall of unionism in the early 90s would have seemed just as improbable 10 years earlier as dismantling the notion of New Zealand as a bi-cultural state would have when the radical He Puapua report came into public view in 2021.
Unionists dominated the nation’s economic activity for decades, until suddenly they didn’t. The mouthy big beasts of the union movement became relics in a surprisingly short time after the Employment Contracts Act was introduced by Jim Bolger’s government in 1991. It removed much of the legislative backing for unions and, by deregulating the labour market, crippled the union movement.
Like the cocksure Maori nationalists in Labour’s Cabinet throwing their weight around under the indulgent Jacinda Ardern (particularly in her second term from 2020), the union leaders badly overplayed their hand for years, securing influence and financial benefits through extensive strike action, or the threat of it.
When I worked as a “seagull” on Auckland’s wharves in the late 70s, the union ran a system of “ups and downs”. That meant I worked a morning shift but had the afternoon off on full pay. It was clear to me then that society would not tolerate being held to ransom by the unions so outrageously for ever. The featherbedding in union-dominated industries was a tax on everyone who bought those enterprises’ products. And most products came into the country via our ports.
Voters increasingly see the demands by iwi for compensation and control over a broad swathe of New Zealand life and business in the same way. Auckland’s Watercare being obliged, for example, to pay a $2m annual fee to Waikato-Tainui for 20 years for water taken from the Waikato River not far from where it enters the sea is widely viewed as unjustified indirect taxation extracted by what amounts in many people’s minds to a ransom — or perhaps standover — payment.
OIA documents have revealed Manurewa Marae was paid “koha” of $10,000 by Statistics NZ last year for simply accepting a Census collection contract. A number of other Maori-centric organisations were also paid substantial amounts simply for their co-operation.
Voters might object less, of course, if they had seen the billions of dollars that disappeared into “Maori initiatives” in the 2021/2022 budgets had lifted the living conditions, education and health statistics of some of our poorest citizens, but those improvements seem as far away as ever.
So far, the government has fulfilled many of the promises its constituent parties made to the electorate before October 14, including repealing the Maori Health Authority and Three Waters. Although the repeals have been loudly opposed, including predictably by the Waitangi Tribunal, they have not caused the widespread disruption that was initially expected — mostly for the simple reason the coalition parties all campaigned on them, and they are reversible. A future Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori coalition could reinstate these examples of co-governance easily enough if they wanted.
Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, however, is a different sort of threat altogether. It represents an existential challenge to the Treaty Project that has been running for the past 50 years under the aegis of the professional managerial class, with the complicity of the judiciary. As a result, barely a day goes by without another journalist, academic, translator or religious leader publicly denouncing Seymour and his bill — and, weirdly, Luxon too for not reneging on his coalition agreement and killing the bill before it gets anywhere near Parliament.
Seymour has proposed a solution that should be unremarkable in a democracy but is seen as subversive and revolutionary — he wants voters to be given the chance to decide their own constitutional future. Such a proposal is a complete anathema to our ruling classes, who appear to believe that even allowing voters to discuss the matter of the Treaty’s place in New Zealand’s life is unacceptably risky.
Unfortunately for them, Seymour has secured a full six-month public consultation for the select committee stage, which will give a cross-party group of MPs the chance to assess what will no doubt be an avalanche of written and oral submissions from the public.
And this is not exactly Seymour’s first rodeo. He took on the might of the Catholic church and religious fundamentalists over assisted dying and by tirelessly prosecuting his case up and down the country persuaded nearly two-thirds of the population to support him in a referendum in 2020.
He is backing himself to repeat the exercise, aiming to bring down big game in the Treaty debate while his coalition partners content themselves with shooting rabbits.
Last August, he said — to the outrage of his opponents — that he thought “the debate will be fun”. The reason he thinks this is because he knows his pitch to voters’ sense of fairness is both extremely popular and unimpeachable. His assessment is that even if the Treaty is the nation’s founding document, it is no longer seen by many as relevant to the New Zealand of the 21st century. It is, in fact, the founding document for a bi-cultural New Zealand that no longer exists. As David Lange said in 2000: “The Treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts. It is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place”.
Seymour’s ultimate fallback argument is that no matter what the Treaty says, or what scholars declare its articles actually mean, New Zealand has no future as a modern and prosperous nation if detecting a smidgen of Maori ancestral blood can grant different political rights to that person.
The panicked, almost hysterical reaction from our ruling classes to the prospect of a national debate — let alone a referendum — on the Treaty principles is a clear sign that Seymour understands the national mood, while his critics’ overblown response confirms they fear he is correct even as they deny it.
And there is a delicious irony that opponents to his principles bill, who were always ready to ask solicitously when Ardern was Prime Minister, “What exactly scares you about co-governance?” are now being asked, “What scares you about a national debate or referendum on the Treaty principles?”
The answer the Establishment and its supporters in the mainstream media don’t want to face is that the jig is up for Maori nationalism — just as it was for unionism more than 30 years ago. In both cases it is mostly because of gross overreach.
Last week, the Māori Working Group on Aerospace declared itself “shocked” that the Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology, Judith Collins, hadn’t included consultation with iwi as part of its Aerospace and Advanced Aviation Strategy — as if a neolithic culture which never got around to inventing the wheel deserves a share of the benefits of space technology on account of an imagined “partnership” with the Crown.
The group, set up “to advocate for Māori rights and interests in aerospace”, was appalled that, unlike in 2023 under the Labour government, the strategy “makes no reference whatsoever to Māori, the Crown’s partner under Te Tiriti o Waitangi” — thus losing the opportunity “to build and strengthen relationships with tangata whenua in the protection and appropriate use of aerospace resources”.
The group wants the nation’s burgeoning aerospace industry to develop policy “centred on tikanga” to enable “ethical and responsible exploration, caring for our environment, and unlocking economic and social benefits”.
Part of the justification for Maori involvement turns on the mystical notion that space is a “taonga” because it is the realm that Ranginui — the “sky god” — inhabits. The irony of religious dogma having been the biggest impediment to the work of astronomers like Galileo, who was declared a heretic for asserting that the Earth orbits the Sun, is apparently lost on the activists.
The extent of race-based favouritism — including among councils and universities — is far more widespread than most guess. Last week, Act obtained a copy of AUT’s policy for funding researchers’ travel, which allocates 30 per cent more points to travel applications for researchers who identify as Māori, and 20 per cent more for Pasifika.
As Act noted: “The AUT points system for travel funding prioritises applications based on a number of criteria, before an ‘equity multiplier’ of up to 1.3x is applied to advantage selected groups. This means that while a Māori-identifying researcher can earn up to 37.7 points, a researcher not eligible for an equity multiplier may only accumulate 29 points. In effect, an Asian academic seeking to attend a conference to which they are contributing a paper could lose funding to a Māori-identifying researcher who is merely visiting the conference, solely on the basis of race.”
AUT management justifies such a discriminatory practice by reference to its adherence to te Tiriti.
In Auckland, some developers end up paying iwi what is known as a “taniwha tax” on developments or alterations to a building or property if they fall within a large circle around a “culturally significant” site. And there are hundreds of such sites across Auckland affecting thousands of properties.
These examples are just the tip of an iceberg and the extent of them will shock the public when they are more widely publicised, as they will be once Seymour’s bill is tabled in Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Act party and its leader are already happily shooting fish in a barrel — and the six-month select committee stage has not yet begun.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
13 comments:
This excellent analysis offers a small glimmer of hope... but no reason to celebrate yet. The opposition to the ACT Bill will be unprecedented. NZers must demonstrate their resolve in this matter.
I would like to agree with these predictions about Maori nationalism, but their situation is very different to that of the trade union movement. Maori nationalism is much more entrenched.
While the trade union movement controlled the Labour Party for many years, they didn't control Parliament with their own seats. So when they lost control of Labour in the 80s, they no longer could influence laws. In comparison, Te Pati Maori have a tiny electoral mandate but a huge Parliamentary influence.
The trade union movement also didn't have the media industry. the judiciary and a generation of school children brainwashed to uncritically accept whatever they had to say.
But more important is the way Maori privilege is becoming entrenched., Once Maori own all the coastline, water and other natural resources, we won't get them back again. Once they take away democracy, as TPM intend to do, or entrench the Treaty in a written constitution, then we will never have our democratic rights again. It won't matter if the public are tired of them.
Your faith and confidence in the same corporate state and career statists who created this apartheid situation and the corporate Iwi’s, and then promise to reverse its direction of travel (agenda) is interesting.
Until ALL apartheid Acts and Statutes which give explicit recognition to the treaty are removed from legislation, the apartheid Waitangi Tribunal shut down, nothing will change this direction of travel, just make it worst.
You are dreaming. Unions were run by plebs who lacked the IQ and initiative to personally succeed in the outside world. They relied on rhetoric which became unconvincing, along with a few dollars legally forced subscription from members. Maori now embrace the most artful business minds and are financed from huge successful corporations. High IQ trace maori are streamed to legal and insurgency studies .Instead of a few bleak trades halls they have a network of comfy state subsidised insurgency coordination centres (marae) Maori have captured the education system, public service, nursing, education, police, universities, councils, historians, msm and particularly RNZ, providing a means for endless unchallenged state subsidised pro maori propaganda . In addition to their own public provided TV network. A scale of operations totally different from the pleb unions and now near impossible to restrain
Let's hope you're right, Graham.
Maori nationalism has been exposed as nothing more than greed and self-interest for the elite few, masquerading as pompous cultural superiority and an endless sense of entitlement.
While shamelessly enjoying all the benefits of colonialism, they push their cherry-picked and sanitised version of Maori culture, ignoring all the atrocious and offensive past practices.
They demand to be consulted on every issue, even when many have no relevance to Maori culture, and try to justify it with superstition.
A masterful, and one would hope prescient, commentary Graham. The lid cannot be kept on a simmering pot of resentment without it boiling over at some point, and that point may not be far off. The heat under the pot is maintained by the media and their refusal to allow responses to the biased and often racist opinion mongers that they employ to push their socialist, post-Ardern agenda. I look forward to the day when we can dance around a fire fuelled by the crumbling remnants of the treaty and a pile of newspapers.
Perfectly said Graham.
> It is, in fact, the founding document for a bi-cultural New Zealand that no longer exists.
I agree. The treaty was between the Queen of England and Maori. In the last government the Crown comprised Nanaia Mahuta and her mates. That is a conflict of interest at the expense of NZ. You're right, bi-cultural NZ no longer exists.
In a world of gloom, doom, and 'woke,' your comments are most encouraging, Graham. However, many of us remain sceptical, given the extent of the insidious and divisive corruption that now permeates almost every sphere of our society. Hopefully, the next seven months will become something of a watershed moment in our history - one where we shed the past shackles of racial division created by politicians, the judiciary, and other activists. Through public enlightenment and its demands, let's hope we witness the rebirth of a unified, egalitarian nation - one where we are all equal in the eyes of the law, with equal rights, duties, and opportunities.
Well, substitute 'near impossible' for 'challenging' and accept the challenge to call out these contemptible people as Graham has done. I despise the very word Maori these days and want to avoid all mention, but that's our problem - a mixture of apathy and 'politeness' . I read your list and quail, and then think NO - they have infiltrated all those agencies, but not captured them entirely - there are still people capable of rational thought in NZ. We need gumption.
Sorry Graham, I can't agree with you.
Too much of this poor mistreated Maori crap has been embedded in the judiciary, academia, education, public service, etc at the highest levels where the sympathetic leaders have enormous power to continue this campaign.
As ordinary citizens we must put maximum pressure on Luxon to accept Act's Principles Bill, otherwise NZ which is teetering on precipice, will fall over it.
This complete debacle can be shafted right back to Ardern.
Well said Ellen. We need to keep speaking up, speaking out and never give up. True democracy free from racial preference is the only future to fight for
The racist Maori seats in Parliament and Local
Government should be dispensed with. The designated Maori seats have meant that there is over-representation of Maori in Parliament. MMP adds to this imbalance. In hindsight, we should not have voted for MMP.
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