Barrie Davis: Principle of Sovereignty Proposition

I expect Breaking Views readers are alarmed at the reason Richard Prebble gave for his resignation from the Waitangi Tribunal. After reading the Tribunal’s restricted ten-year strategic plan, he understood that the Tribunal will pursue economic equality for Maoris. Prebble claimed that is an impossible socialist objective which will result in endless claims to the Tribunal. He also claimed that its judges and members are turning the Tribunal into a constitutional court answerable to no one.

A transition from democracy to Maori rule is being forced upon us. It is an offence of unprecedented proportions in New Zealand, equivalent to the corruption of Germany between the wars. It is a folly of gross foolishness: We have been told what will happen, yet we are doing it anyway.

 

The He Puapua Report 2019 (here), which is so repugnant that the Government hid it from us until after the 2020 election, says that governance of New Zealand is to be divided among three bodies: the Rangatiratanga sphere with Maori governance over people and places; the Kawanatanga sphere (including Maoris) for Crown governance; and a joint sphere for co-governance over issues of mutual concern. I have yet to read of the Government disagreeing with this report, even though it usurps their authority.

 

When considering Richard Prebble’s letter of resignation, Tribunal Chief Judge Dr Caren Fox said Prebble referred to the Tribunal’s strategic review, which she couldn’t comment on because it was still a draft and had only been sent to stakeholders. To be clear, We the people are the stakeholders: the information contained in the Tribunal’s strategic review belongs to us. The mention of a draft is an irrelevant excuse. Withholding the Tribunal’s draft strategic review from us is He Puapua all over again. Having done it with impunity, they have become emboldened and do it routinely.

 

Nevertheless, Prebble summarized the Waitangi Tribunal’s rulings (here): The Tribunal has overturned its previous findings, making a mockery of the promise of ‘full and final’ settlements. The Tribunal now says sovereignty was not ceded and the Crown promised to govern in partnership. Moreover, the Crown promised Maori economic equality and pledged to enhance the Chief’s authority. And it is for Maori to decide what is to be decided by Maori and the only thing Maori agreed to was that the Crown would control settlers. By these rulings, the Tribunal is not acting in good faith.

 

I understand these claims to be false and anyway absurd, yet our Parliament allows them to stand and does not deny them. Instead, Prebble says the ten-year plan identifies that the Tribunal expects to hear many claims regarding these findings in the future.

 

I doubt Parliament have a reason for doing it and suspect they are merely capitulating to Maori aggression. The changes the Coalition are making are only window dressing: it makes little difference if the Maori or English name is written first, Whanau Ora has not been dismantled but merely has different Maori suppliers (here) and the dissolution of the Maori Health Authority just shifted the roles and functions to Te Whatu Ora and Manatu Hauora. Prime Minister Luxon refuses to address the central problem of the Treaty and Minister Potaka is more focused on Prebble’s replacement than reviewing the Tribunal.

 

These people are collectively one sandwich short of a picnic and off their rocker. They are sufficiently deluded to claim that a mountain, Mt Egmont, has the quality or condition of being a person, Mr Taranaki. Even worse than that, they are using propaganda to instill their deranged beliefs in us, without shame or scruples: The posters with the facing red and black busts and the caption “Together for Te Tiriti”, for example, are due to the same faction who are forcing us apart. It is crass, hypocritical propaganda and our Parliament are accepting if not facilitating it. In the process, they are making fools of themselves and a mockery of New Zealand on the world stage (here).

 

It's a crying shame what they are doing to New Zealand. It will be difficult to reverse, the seeds of corruption having long since been sown. History will mock us: How can they have been so stupid? They had everything and they just threw it away. The names Key, Ardern and Luxon will be placed alongside Nero, Nicholas II and Herbert Hoover. Aotearoa will be derided as a basket case.

 

I marvel that I lived when I did and in this wonderful country. But what do you tell the children? That Gods’ own country, which their colonial ancestors laboured to create, was destroyed to satisfy the childish antics of a Mad Hatter’s Te Pati and the egotistical aspirations of a Humpty Dumpty Waitangi Tribunal.

 

Tell them the story of how New Zealand was once great, until suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by and, for no discernable reason, members of Parliament and the judiciary followed it down its rabbit-hole under the hedge into malice in Blunderland. There they appear before a large blue Caterpillar sitting on a large mushroom, to whom they complain they can’t remember things as they used to. “Ca’n’t remember whatthings?” asks the Caterpillar. “Oh, merely imaginings to do with ‘full and final' settlements,” replies the Hatter.

 

In the future, in the cold light of history, today’s children will think we were very silly to have been so negligent.

 

Proposition: A Principle of Sovereignty

 

Sovereignty - Supremacy in respect of power or rank.

Power - Ability to do, capacity of doing.

 

There is a way to fix the problem. We replace the multiplicity of ill-defined principles devised by an illegitimate Tribunal which has no accountability to the people with a single principle: the Principle of Sovereignty.

 

The Principle of Sovereignty states what is not manifest in practice, but what is obviously the case: Sovereignty resides and originates in We the people who have ultimate power.

 

Because we are a large group, we cannot directly manage ourselves. We need to employ a group to coordinate doing that for us. We call that group our ‘Government’. We thus employ them to do a specific job; they are our executive public servants.

 

All core constitutional arrangements must be agreed by the people in a referendum, including provision of a representative Parliament and an accountable judiciary. The members of Parliament must be elected by the people and the judiciary must be accountable to the people. The only governmental power is that which We the people vest in Parliament who develop the laws which the judiciary must in turn faithfully dispense. To do otherwise is an abuse of the power which we have vested in Parliament, a subversive action which must be punishable by law.

 

That is the only fair and reasonable arrangement, but it also has a further purpose.

 

People behave according to the consequences of their behaviour (here). Making the people responsible for the direction of government of their country conditions them to behave in a manner which is beneficial for their country and hence themselves. Similarly, it is they who suffer if they get it wrong due to a behaviour they will consequently be less likely to repeat. Part of the problem we have now is that the elite people who are directing the country do not necessarily participate the consequences. Making us responsible forces us to take ownership.

 

But, if We the people are to be sovereign, we need to be as wise as sovereigns and behave as sovereigns; that is, we need to be political animals. We must learn to vote on issues, not merely our individual predisposition to Left - Right politics (here). That means we need to be trained on politics and we need to be properly informed of political issues.

 

That requires there must be no hiding of information, such as He Puapua and the Tribunal’s strategic review. Let’s not forget: We own that information and as the people who are withholding it from us are our public servants, we own them too. By withholding our information from us they are committing theft as a servant. Irrespective of whatever lame excuses they come up with, they are jeopardizing our democracy when they attempt to control us with misleading propaganda or incomplete information.

 

We must also learn to think for ourselves, independent of the zeitgeist, the groupthink of the times. We must be rid of the diversity, inclusion and equity memes which are a poor substitute for thinking for yourself. That training must begin at school. Sure, tell the kids what to think, but also teach them how to think critically and empower them to judge for themselves. Teach them to judge rationally, the central element of which is to think logically, which is more difficult than it might seem.

 

Rational thinking is a development of evolutionary significance. It is uniquely developed in humans and it has brought about our philosophy, science and technology. It has also brought about significant psychological, sociological and environmental problems. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that the development of rationality is complete.

 

The only option we have is to go forward. We must continue to develop and use our rational faculty to overcome the issues we now face. We must go full rational. Being distracted by woke race and gender issues and regressing into primitive Maori tribalism and knowledge is just the opposite of what we need to do.

 

For these reasons, we must stop the insane implementation of co-governance in New Zealand. We the people must instead insist on our position of sovereignty, we must also ensure that we are sufficiently trained and informed to exercise our sovereignty wisely, and we must insist that our representative Parliament democratically implements our desired direction for New Zealand. Finally, we must ourselves accept responsibility for the outcome. We must take ownership of New Zealand; we must make it our country.

 

On our present trajectory, I can see no other possibility but that New Zealand is going to crash and burn. If we are to avoid that, we need to pull up. I believe we could do that. All the right things are still there. We are founded on the British culture, which has been the most successful of all time, and we are now an emergent culture of fresh ideas. We are in a position to go from strength to strength. I would not be surprised if New Zealand, a couple of islands about the size of Britain, were to participate in leading the world into a new, enlightened era. That is entirely plausible if we come together with sufficiently common values and objectives.

 

To change our direction, you need to have an attitude in everything you do: a strong assertive ego coupled with the subtle judgement of when to be intolerant and when to be forgiving. That is not what we have now. We cannot keep doing the same and expect things to magically come right. That would just be death by a thousand cuts. Instead, we need to insist that We the people are driving New Zealand and then do so with the voice of reason, not the irrational ideology of our present placatory Parliament and egotistical judiciary.

 

It is incumbent on you to supply the energy and direction made absent by our delinquent Parliament. Use whatever leverage you have. Don’t buy goods and services from people you disagree with, write letters to the newspapers and your MP, deny them a four-year election cycle. Be creative. Don’t hesitate to communicate. Be politely assertive in your interaction with others. Once the future of your country is in your hands, they will resent it. Be careful. They will use force against you as they are in Britain, with folk-hero Tommy Robinson presently in solitary confinement for reporting on rape gangs. The optimum formula of assertiveness and acceptance will be elusive, but you must achieve it.

 

Because if that doesn’t work, you can kiss goodbye to New Zealand. 

 

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.