Barrie Davis: Co-governance is Not a Democracy

There have been two related articles on Breaking Views recently: one is “Lindsay Mitchell: The Death of Personal Responsibility,” 5 July 2025 (here) and the other is by me, “Barrie Davis: Divisive Racism Propaganda,” 2 July 2025 (here). I will briefly outline each of them, but they have in common that responsibility is being moved from the individual to the State. I am wondering if this is an element of co-governance, whereby all responsibility is on the impoverished taxpayer and none on the wealthy Maori elite. Are we being made the taurekareka of the iwi chiefs?

Lindsay Mitchell takes a welfare perspective (here) and refers to two terms from respective reports of the Health Quality Safety Commission: 1. ‘deficits of a society’ (here) and 2. ‘inequities’ (here). Mitchel argues that these terms are used to shift responsibility from the individual to society and supplies a quote from the first report which substantiates that, “The presentation of comparisons between different ethnic groups is not to provide commentary on the deficits of any particular ethnic group but rather to highlight the deficits of a society that creates, maintains and tolerates these differences.”

I approached it from linguistics (here) and considered a couple of articles in the Sunday Star-Times, 29 June, “In Aotearoa ‘racism never went away – people just got better at hiding it’,” which are promoting a book of chapter essays edited by Sereana Naepi (here and here). The first article tells us that, “The analysis of structural racism offered in this book enables us to move away from focusing on individuals doing bad things…”. Here, the responsibility for racism is moved from the individual to ‘structural racism’ and ‘systemic racism’, which means responsibility is somehow embedded in society.

Both of these approaches show that responsibility for problems are moved from the people who participate the problem to nominal ‘structures’ in society. That is an ill-defined concept, which is taken to mean whatever complainants say it means. Who is doing what, when and how, is lost leaving only what is said to be done, which introduces ambiguity and obscures agency. As Lindsay Mitchell put it, “It's never the fault of an individual that he or she is under-achieving or obese; absent from school or drug-addicted. It is society that has let them down.”

If the problem resides in society, then it is held to be the responsibility of the various Government ministries and agencies to fix it, such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. And, if it is the responsibility of the Government to fix it, then it is the responsibility of the taxpayer to finance it. We are on a fool’s errand. The problem will only be fixed by placing the primary responsibility with those who are responsible. That is Behaviourism 101 at work: people learn by placing the outcomes of their behaviour back with the individual (here).

There is already a multiplicity of co-governance arrangements, and I have read nothing of the responsibility of the Maori side of the arrangement. It seems that we are not to know and that we will not be told. Nevertheless, I doubt that the Maoris will accept any responsibility for what is claimed to be structural or systemic problems in society. Instead, the macho Maori and the woke White will continue to pressure the Government to increase funding to address them.

This is rather obviously happening and I expect that Parliament and the judiciary, at least, are aware of it. Yet they do little if anything. Instead, they resist initiatives to fix it, such as the Treaty Principles Bill. Prime Minister Luxon has no right to refuse us a referendum on that Bill – voting and referenda are essential elements of democracy – yet he has done so.

The situation will only get worse, until the wealth and sovereign power of New Zealand are in the hands of a few Maori elite, as is now the case in South Africa and Zimbabwe. I expect our Parliament know that. Is that what they want? Or is it in the ‘too hard’ tray and they leave it for whoever comes after them?

Co-governance is at best inefficient and is open to corruption. Co-governance needs to be entirely abolished. Co-governance is racist. It is disappointing that the Government has allowed it to happen.

I know what will happen next and so do you. After complaints from us, leading up to the election, the next Government – National / Labour, whatever – will make a few conciliatory promises, like they did at the last election, and little if anything will happen in the succeeding term, just like in this term and the one before this. And so on until all is gone.

They may as well stop talking, because I have stopped listening. But we will nevertheless fall for it because there is nowhere else to go. And they know that too. David Seymour might stand a chance, if he would only stop acting the fool. But even so, it’s not looking good.

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.