John Bell: New Zealand’s Constitutional Crisis - Where to for Treaty Principles?

With the recent defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill, New Zaland faces a constitutional crisis. With the exception of the ACT Party’s MPs, every Member of the House voted to reject both the principle that our democratically elected Parliament is sovereign and the principle that all New Zealand citizens have the same equal status before the law. Worse, the Prime Minister has specifically stated that there was nothing in the Bill that he supported.

What the Members who voted down the Bill have yet to make clear to us is what constitutional arrangements they envisage in lieu of parliamentary sovereignty and equal rights for all.

It comes as no surprise that the country finds itself in this quandary. Rejection of parliamentary sovereignty as we have known it and of equal legal status for all has been signalled on many occasions over recent years. All the Treaty Principles Bill did was to provide an opportunity for making apparent an agenda that already existed.

Led by Te Pati Maori and a range of academics, there has been a mounting chorus of claims that Maori did not cede sovereignty in 1840; rather, we are told, Maori agreed to allow Britain to have oversight of its own citizens residing in New Zealand, while Maori would retain full tribal authority over their own people. In the House, Willie Jackson has openly mocked the notion that all New Zealanders should have equal rights and has advised that democracy has moved on from the outdated concept of all votes in an election being of equal value. Activists openly advocate 50/50 power sharing, the Maori half likely to be tribal appointees, while on The Platform, Sean Plunket has recently exposed plans for a further aspect of the new age democracy - consultative groups of the “right” sort of people. It is obvious that the public is being groomed to accept growing tribal influence in government at all levels, leading to full control by the target date of 2040.

Item by item resistance seems ineffective. As soon as the Maori Health Authority and tribal control of Three Waters are dismantled, up crops a Ngai Tahu legal claim for control of the South Island’s fresh water and a plan for co-governance of the Waitakere Ranges. A new constitutional and social framework is being advanced by so many activists embedded in so many organisations that effective resistance on so many fronts seems impossible, especially when the major Coalition partner is only at best half-hearted in resisting.

The ACT Party’s initiative was a noble attempt to enable the New Zealand people finally to have their say on the country’s constitutional future. Some may have had difficulty with the wording of Clause 2 dealing with property, but the meaning of Clauses 1 and 3 could not have been clearer, and public endorsement via a referendum would have brought the country’s slide towards tribal control to a halt. No wonder such opposition was stirred up and such effort made to distract attention from the actual content of the Bill.

The ACT Party has vowed to keep the issue of our constitutional future alive, but it will need a strategic re-think. David Seymour is undoubtedly right when he tells us we should focus not on who our ancestors were but on our “common humanity”. That, however, does not have the effect of bringing focus to bear on immediate political issues. What is needed, as the country looks toward the 2026 election, is a simple policy proposal that can serve as a de facto referendum by aiming right at the heart of the agenda that underpins the tribal takeover.

Consideration might be given to a policy of terminating all official recognition of ethnicity.

Such a policy is far from novel. The Roman Empire encompassed a vast array of territories around the Mediterranean Basin and beyond and an equally vast range of peoples and cultures. The only status that mattered was that of a Roman Citizen as St Paul showed when he announced sum civis Romanus. Modern European countries like France have experienced centuries of movements of people and invasions; the task of identifying one ethnic group that was there before anyone else would be pointless. The only status that matters is citizenship. New Zealand’s obsession with race needs to come to an end. Rather, we should heed William Hobson’s advice at Waitangi: He iwi tahi tatou - We are now one people.

Whole volumes could be compiled detailing examples of New Zealand’s obsession with race, but the Taxpayers’ Union has unearthed Department of Conservation practices that display unprecedented levels of lunacy.

> DOC seeks to engage with Maori employees so as “to build an understanding of their role as Maori”

> DOC seeks to identify conflicts for Maori employees where directives from management “may not sit comfortably with them as Maori”

> DOC seeks via “best practice” to ensure that Maori networks within DOC operate effectively

One has to wonder how many employers would encourage race-based networks within their organisation or seek to pander to employees who find that an instruction from management does “not sit comfortably” with them.

No society can sustain the waste of time, effort and money to say nothing of the divisiveness that such idiocy represents. It has to stop. And it is hard to think of any more effective way of stopping it than the removal of the basis of its existence – the practice of official recognition of ethnicity and the subsequent granting of status and entitlement on the basis of having a distant ancestor of the favoured race.

With ethnicity no longer having official status, there could be no more race-based seats or race-specific party in Parliament, no more race-based wards in local government, no more census questions about ethnicity, no more co-governance, and no more basis for claims of unending victimhood. No society can survive in harmony let alone prosper while activists promote division and entitlement on the basis of race, and the only way to bring this to an end is by ceasing official recognition of and status for ethnicity.

Voices will be raised against such a policy of course, and none more loudly than that of Willie Jackson who shouted, “Shame on you!” in the House at David Seymour in response to the latter’s daring to propose that all citizens should have equal rights. Willie, however, provides a convincing rationale for ending the practice of granting official recognition to ethnicity. In 2016, he appeared on the TV programme “DNA Detective” and I noted that his DNA test showed him to be substantially of Welsh and Jewish ethnicity. When asked about his identity as Maori, Willie replied that “that is how I feel.” So, on the basis of how Willie and several others feel about their ethnicity, we have seen our Parliament disrupted, our democracy subverted and the entire country groomed to acquiesce in creeping tribal takeover.

If, by way of giving the public a say on our constitutional future, the ACT Party were to adopt an election policy of ending official recognition of ethnicity, they could be on to a winner.

Footnote
The case of Willie Jackson is interesting not only because of his insistence on a separate identity and separate entitlements for Maori (“his people”) but because of the provable disparity between fact and the impression he seeks to convey.

I have managed to find and watch again the “DNA Detective” programme Series 1, Episode 4 featuring Willie and actress Shavaughn Ruakere.

On his father’s side, Willie’s DNA results showed his ancestry to be:

33.7% East Asian

25% Ashkenazi (German) Jewish

18% Other European (substantially Welsh)

2.04% Oceanian / Maori

Interesting statements made by Willie in the course of the programme:

“A lot of it (ancestry) is anecdotal. You don’t know what is true and what’s not.”

“I don’t get too worked up about percentages of who you are. The reality is you are a product of your upbringing. I am a product of my upbringing which has been 99.9% Maori”.

“I don’t see that because I have a certain amount of Jewish ancestry that should affect me in any way whatsoever.”

I leave readers to draw their own conclusions as to what the above facts signify in terms of the current debate on ethnicity and entitlement.

John Bell is a former secondary teacher with grass-roots political experience including in the National Party and PPTA. This article was first published HERE