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Thursday, July 10, 2025

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.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately the future of our country depends on the likes of you and me trying to get our politicians to get over their naivety and return NZ to the great inclusive free country it once was.

Anna Mouse said...

They say history never repeats but I am in the camp that says history always repeats.
Tribalised feudalism is incoming.
It will take a while for it to be challenged and when it does it will be more than bloody noses out of joint.
Global history if you look close enough tells you all you need to know......

CXH said...

'Are we being made the taurekareka of the iwi chiefs?'

I have no idea what taurekaeka means and no great inclination to look it up. However, if it translates as 'slaves' then the answer to your question is yes.

Anonymous said...

Why does Luxon prefer to see democracy in every other country except NZ ?

He lied to us at the last election and he has no intention of restoring it here.

Anonymous said...

Co-governance is not democracy and democracy is not freedom, it is collectivism. Another “ism” like socialism, communism, fascism, all centralized corporate statism’s.
Every three years we keep giving our consent for statism to grow in size and power, handing over our individual sovereignty, freedom and rights to the state and giving our authority to the state to govern us, control us, dictate to us and bow to its demands, all in the name of democracy.
Democracy is statism. The state is sovereign its citizens slaves and we allow it by consenting to it at every election cycle.
If we the people must have a government, retain our individual sovereignty, freedom and rights, then it would be via a Constitutional Republic, a form of government where the head of state and other representatives are elected by the citizens, and the exercise of governmental power is limited by a constitution. It combines elements of a republic (where power is held by the people and exercised through elected representatives) and a constitution (a document outlining the fundamental laws and principles of the state).

anonymous said...

Any PM who denies citizens a referendum on such a vital issue cannot be trusted. Despite this glaring problem, National is still betting on people voting for them in preference to the Left..... very cynical.

MODERATOR said...

Allen Heath, I am unable to edit submissions so please resubmit your comment including the little stars.
MODERATOR

Anonymous said...

It is impossible to believe that the downward spiral our national society is now on is purely accidental. Both major parties have had opportunities to correct our course, and attempt to return our cultural base to the envy of the world, as it once was. But no. Anyone willing to see knows the direction we are now heading is towards societal chaos. As do, surely, our political ‘leaders’. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Allen Heath said...

Thank you; My comment in essence was that I have used the term 'maorification' for what is happening in NZ; some others have used 'maorication' which is ungrammatical. I have come up with a stronger term to define how NZ is being pushed to apartheid; 'maorif***kation. Having said that I am a little surprised that newspapers and MPs can use c***t in full, yet the bastion of free speech, 'Breaking Views' has to be circumspect.

MODERATOR said...

That's because we don't want to lower ourselves to their level, Allen.
MODERATOR

Allen Heath said...

Fair enough; I don't have much time for them either, although I do cringe at some of the comments I see on BV, but free speech (or, as much as is allowed) is going to throw up some weird stuff. It can, however, make interesting reading.

Peter said...

Never fear Barrie, for it won't be co-governance, as with that power of veto, those part-Maori minority will always win-out over the woke, complacent masses. The more I experience both the aforementioned, the more I despair. And all note, the coming of the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItDFsPqDIEs