Among the welter of commentary surrounding the recent publication of Jacinda Ardern’s memoir, it was very noticeable that journalists avoided mentioning co-governance and race-based policy as a significant factor in her political demise. It’s a topic they mostly prefer to skirt if they can.
This is perhaps not surprising given she paid legacy media companies $55 million to promote co-governance by insisting the Treaty be treated as a “partnership” as a condition for receiving taxpayer money.
Having accepted that bribe meant they largely left the heavy lifting in examining co-governance in education, water management and other policy to independent media like The Platform and campaign groups such as the Taxpayers’ Union.
The Treaty clauses in the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) going through Parliament now would no doubt have also been similarly overlooked if The Platform’s Michael Laws hadn’t interviewed Auckland University education professor Elizabeth Rata last month about their retention in the update of the original 2020 legislation.
Laws described their retention as “sabotage” of the secular underpinnings of our school education system given the bill’s emphasis on giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, including by promoting mātauranga Māori, local tikanga and te ao Māori — with their liberal infusion of spiritual elements.
Professor Rata said she was “shocked” and “incredibly disappointed” to find the clauses had been “fully embedded” in the new legislation given she had believed the government “was removing the Treaty from all legislation, except that concerned with Treaty settlements”.
The interview set off a firestorm on social media, and eventually sparked Mike Hosking’s interest on Newstalk ZB after he was inundated with emails fulminating against the clauses.
The interview — headlined on the Newstalk ZB website as “Stanford refutes claims she’s entrenching co-governance in schools” — was possibly one of the most damaging any minister has given during the term of this coalition government. Veering between defensiveness, aggression and bluster, Stanford committed a spectacular act of political self-harm by insulting a substantial slice of the government’s voters who follow lobby group Hobson’s Pledge and are dedicated to New Zealand treating all citizens equally. She alleged her critics are “whipped up with hatred and lies... they are yelling at the sky... frothing at the mouth with hatred... it’s utter rubbish.”
Her intemperate language notwithstanding, Stanford was at least technically correct to say some of Hobson’s Pledge’s claims were wrong, including the accusation she has elevated the clause in the 2020 Act to “give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi” to the status of a ‘paramount objective’. In fact, in the new bill, a board’s paramount objective in governing a school is “to ensure that every student at the school is able to attain their highest possible standard in educational achievement”.
That Treaty clause — which is a ‘primary objective’ in the current Act — has become a ‘supporting objective’ in the bill, making it look as if the emphasis on the Treaty in the 2020 Act has been removed.
However — and here’s the rub — schools can attain the paramount objective only by fulfilling the supporting objectives. It’s a cynical exercise in legislative smoke and mirrors that has left opponents of co-governance feeling, with justification, that they have been played. As Laws put it, the supporting objectives put the paramount objective into a “straitjacket”.
In Stanford’s mind, it’s up to Paul Goldsmith to solve the problem as part of the promised review of Treaty clauses in legislation (as agreed in National’s coalition agreement with NZ First). Unfortunately, she was unable to convincingly answer the question of why she hasn’t removed them herself while the legislation is being amended. Unless, of course, National doesn’t intend to remove them at all.
She appeared defeated by the enormity of the task — pointing out such clauses are seeded right throughout the bill: “in section 4, section 6, section 32…” — and unconvinced the clauses even should be excised.
The best she could do was acknowledge it was a “legitimate question” whether “mātauranga Māori and te ao Māori should be included in the [school] curriculum”. But having been voted into office to expunge co-governance and “Māorification”, it seems a little late in the piece for her to be mulling whether those excisions are actually needed.
With as little as 15 months before next year’s election, more and more of those who voted for the Coalition — and for National in particular — are losing faith it will get around to reversing enough of Ardern’s co-governance programme to convince them it is seriously committed to fulfilling its promises.
Stanford’s cloth-eared, ambivalent approach on Newstalk ZB isn’t going to help assuage voters’ fears. And she damned herself more directly during the first reading in Parliament on 10 April with her views about the importance of the Treaty’s role in education:
“The [Education and Training] bill makes it clear that giving effect to Te Tiriti is essential and key to support student achievement. The bill also makes the requirement that schools are achieving equitable outcomes for Māori students at the top of the list of how schools are required to meet Te Tiriti o Waitangi objective.”
That is certainly not what a majority of voters voted for in 2023.
Leaving aside the issue of what voters expected from the government, the deeper question Stanford needs to answer is one that was raised by Professor Rata in the Platform interview. She stated: “There is no substantiated connection between educational achievement and ethnic identity — and a school system that recognises the ethnic identity of children. It’s been claimed for 30 years but there are no longitudinal studies that support it. It is a false connection.”
Laws: “We have accepted as a truism, haven’t we, that the reason that Maori students don’t achieve in the educational system is because it is somehow biased against their culture and ethnicity — and this is aimed to redress that. You’re saying there is no empirical evidence to suggest that?”
Rata: “There have been many advocacy studies done over these decades which make the claim, but they’re very small, qualitative studies where a small number of people are asked, ‘How do you feel if you have an education that recognises your culture?’ Of course respondents always say, ‘Oh, it would make me feel good’ but real data about the causal link between practices and policies that recognise ethnic identity has not been established…
“Almost two generations of children now have been subjected to what I’d call an unconscionable experiment with this idea that if you recognise ethnic identity that will cause educational achievement. Well, it certainly doesn’t seem to have.”
The trouble for National — and Stanford in particular — is that all the evidence points to her and her party unquestioningly supporting the idea of a link between promoting ethnic identity and educational achievement. Her assertion quoted above that “The [Education and Training] bill makes it clear that giving effect to Te Tiriti is essential and key to support student achievement” leaves little doubt about where she stands.
As long as that belief is prevalent among National MPs, voters have serious reason to doubt the government will actually get around to removing the Treaty clauses in the bill.
National is going to have to also decide whether its most important constituency is its own voters or activists in the education sector, who fully subscribe to the belief that pandering to ethnic identity is essential to lifting educational achievement.
Last September, education sector leaders — including Te Akatea, NZEI Te Riu Roa, New Zealand Principals’ Federation, PPTA Te Wehengarua, Secondary Principals’ Council, Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, Pacific Principals’ Association, Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand, Montessori Aotearoa NZ, New Zealand Kindergartens Network, and NZAIMS — issued a joint statement opposing any downgrading of the importance of the Treaty in education (and, for good measure, recorded their opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill as well).
The education sector is powerful but most of its members are very unlikely to ever vote for any of the coalition’s parties. So the decision who to back should not be particularly difficult for Stanford, or her leader, Christopher Luxon.
However, watching Luxon at his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, it was hard to escape the conclusion he has no idea how much National’s voters are bridling at what they see as backsliding on the party’s promises to reject co-governance and “Maorification” in law and policy. Asked about the Treaty clauses in the Education and Training Amendment Bill, he made it clear — as Stanford had — that removing them is a secondary consideration to raising standards of literacy and numeracy generally. He is showing himself to be every bit as cloth-eared as his minister.
Submissions have closed but the Education and Workforce Committee will not report back to Parliament until 16 September. That leaves plenty of time for government supporters to make it very clear to the minister that the bill progressing as it stands is completely unacceptable to them. And plenty of time for National to calculate the electoral damage it will suffer if it doesn’t remove them.
After all, Act has already cast down a gauntlet this week by indicating that if it wasn’t bound by the constraints of being part of a coalition government it would have deleted the clauses. In fact, David Seymour has said Act fought to do that — but was overruled.
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 Treaty clauses in the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) going through Parliament now would no doubt have also been similarly overlooked if The Platform’s Michael Laws hadn’t interviewed Auckland University education professor Elizabeth Rata last month about their retention in the update of the original 2020 legislation.
Laws described their retention as “sabotage” of the secular underpinnings of our school education system given the bill’s emphasis on giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, including by promoting mātauranga Māori, local tikanga and te ao Māori — with their liberal infusion of spiritual elements.
Professor Rata said she was “shocked” and “incredibly disappointed” to find the clauses had been “fully embedded” in the new legislation given she had believed the government “was removing the Treaty from all legislation, except that concerned with Treaty settlements”.
The interview set off a firestorm on social media, and eventually sparked Mike Hosking’s interest on Newstalk ZB after he was inundated with emails fulminating against the clauses.
The interview — headlined on the Newstalk ZB website as “Stanford refutes claims she’s entrenching co-governance in schools” — was possibly one of the most damaging any minister has given during the term of this coalition government. Veering between defensiveness, aggression and bluster, Stanford committed a spectacular act of political self-harm by insulting a substantial slice of the government’s voters who follow lobby group Hobson’s Pledge and are dedicated to New Zealand treating all citizens equally. She alleged her critics are “whipped up with hatred and lies... they are yelling at the sky... frothing at the mouth with hatred... it’s utter rubbish.”
Her intemperate language notwithstanding, Stanford was at least technically correct to say some of Hobson’s Pledge’s claims were wrong, including the accusation she has elevated the clause in the 2020 Act to “give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi” to the status of a ‘paramount objective’. In fact, in the new bill, a board’s paramount objective in governing a school is “to ensure that every student at the school is able to attain their highest possible standard in educational achievement”.
That Treaty clause — which is a ‘primary objective’ in the current Act — has become a ‘supporting objective’ in the bill, making it look as if the emphasis on the Treaty in the 2020 Act has been removed.
However — and here’s the rub — schools can attain the paramount objective only by fulfilling the supporting objectives. It’s a cynical exercise in legislative smoke and mirrors that has left opponents of co-governance feeling, with justification, that they have been played. As Laws put it, the supporting objectives put the paramount objective into a “straitjacket”.
In Stanford’s mind, it’s up to Paul Goldsmith to solve the problem as part of the promised review of Treaty clauses in legislation (as agreed in National’s coalition agreement with NZ First). Unfortunately, she was unable to convincingly answer the question of why she hasn’t removed them herself while the legislation is being amended. Unless, of course, National doesn’t intend to remove them at all.
She appeared defeated by the enormity of the task — pointing out such clauses are seeded right throughout the bill: “in section 4, section 6, section 32…” — and unconvinced the clauses even should be excised.
The best she could do was acknowledge it was a “legitimate question” whether “mātauranga Māori and te ao Māori should be included in the [school] curriculum”. But having been voted into office to expunge co-governance and “Māorification”, it seems a little late in the piece for her to be mulling whether those excisions are actually needed.
With as little as 15 months before next year’s election, more and more of those who voted for the Coalition — and for National in particular — are losing faith it will get around to reversing enough of Ardern’s co-governance programme to convince them it is seriously committed to fulfilling its promises.
Stanford’s cloth-eared, ambivalent approach on Newstalk ZB isn’t going to help assuage voters’ fears. And she damned herself more directly during the first reading in Parliament on 10 April with her views about the importance of the Treaty’s role in education:
“The [Education and Training] bill makes it clear that giving effect to Te Tiriti is essential and key to support student achievement. The bill also makes the requirement that schools are achieving equitable outcomes for Māori students at the top of the list of how schools are required to meet Te Tiriti o Waitangi objective.”
That is certainly not what a majority of voters voted for in 2023.
Leaving aside the issue of what voters expected from the government, the deeper question Stanford needs to answer is one that was raised by Professor Rata in the Platform interview. She stated: “There is no substantiated connection between educational achievement and ethnic identity — and a school system that recognises the ethnic identity of children. It’s been claimed for 30 years but there are no longitudinal studies that support it. It is a false connection.”
Laws: “We have accepted as a truism, haven’t we, that the reason that Maori students don’t achieve in the educational system is because it is somehow biased against their culture and ethnicity — and this is aimed to redress that. You’re saying there is no empirical evidence to suggest that?”
Rata: “There have been many advocacy studies done over these decades which make the claim, but they’re very small, qualitative studies where a small number of people are asked, ‘How do you feel if you have an education that recognises your culture?’ Of course respondents always say, ‘Oh, it would make me feel good’ but real data about the causal link between practices and policies that recognise ethnic identity has not been established…
“Almost two generations of children now have been subjected to what I’d call an unconscionable experiment with this idea that if you recognise ethnic identity that will cause educational achievement. Well, it certainly doesn’t seem to have.”
The trouble for National — and Stanford in particular — is that all the evidence points to her and her party unquestioningly supporting the idea of a link between promoting ethnic identity and educational achievement. Her assertion quoted above that “The [Education and Training] bill makes it clear that giving effect to Te Tiriti is essential and key to support student achievement” leaves little doubt about where she stands.
As long as that belief is prevalent among National MPs, voters have serious reason to doubt the government will actually get around to removing the Treaty clauses in the bill.
National is going to have to also decide whether its most important constituency is its own voters or activists in the education sector, who fully subscribe to the belief that pandering to ethnic identity is essential to lifting educational achievement.
Last September, education sector leaders — including Te Akatea, NZEI Te Riu Roa, New Zealand Principals’ Federation, PPTA Te Wehengarua, Secondary Principals’ Council, Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, Pacific Principals’ Association, Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand, Montessori Aotearoa NZ, New Zealand Kindergartens Network, and NZAIMS — issued a joint statement opposing any downgrading of the importance of the Treaty in education (and, for good measure, recorded their opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill as well).
The education sector is powerful but most of its members are very unlikely to ever vote for any of the coalition’s parties. So the decision who to back should not be particularly difficult for Stanford, or her leader, Christopher Luxon.
However, watching Luxon at his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, it was hard to escape the conclusion he has no idea how much National’s voters are bridling at what they see as backsliding on the party’s promises to reject co-governance and “Maorification” in law and policy. Asked about the Treaty clauses in the Education and Training Amendment Bill, he made it clear — as Stanford had — that removing them is a secondary consideration to raising standards of literacy and numeracy generally. He is showing himself to be every bit as cloth-eared as his minister.
Submissions have closed but the Education and Workforce Committee will not report back to Parliament until 16 September. That leaves plenty of time for government supporters to make it very clear to the minister that the bill progressing as it stands is completely unacceptable to them. And plenty of time for National to calculate the electoral damage it will suffer if it doesn’t remove them.
After all, Act has already cast down a gauntlet this week by indicating that if it wasn’t bound by the constraints of being part of a coalition government it would have deleted the clauses. In fact, David Seymour has said Act fought to do that — but was overruled.
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.
26 comments:
The main issue, as Rata suggests, is that Education researchers refuse to undertake proper quantitative studies examining all factors that help to explain student performance. 'Do you think learning French will help you understand French culture?' are not the kind of questions serious researchers pose. My experience in education is that the top students attend all classes, read, study and try to use their brains. Read, read, reading is the key. It is now school holidays when students goof off for two weeks--you know, because they work so hard during terms. Yeah, right. Serious students would read books these two weeks.
Am I the only one relieved to hear that the chocolate teapot that is Paul Goldsmith is the Minister who is going to sort this mess out?
In the meantime, who is running the petition demanding that the Treaty Principles Bill be enacted? I will sign it in a heartbeat and I suspect that the numbers that do sign will have Luxon running for the hills.
Finally, thanks Graham for another great article.
Voters sent a clear message. National has chosen to ignore that message. Voters will either stay at home 2026 or will send another clear message. Luxon is not stupid so this is all deliberate.
The warm embrace of David Seymour awaits all disaffected National supporters. Act is really the only option and maybe NZ First, National are too weak at the knees to really get anything done.
I grew up in a country that taught many maori 'studies' usually as an aside topic (learning haka etc) or in social studies (or art class) including local histories etc.
They were in my time well received and enjoyed because they are a part of what is NZ.
What we experience today is something different and much more indoctrinational and this is what makes it not well recieved nor enjoyable.
When compulsion is applied the thing that was once a joy becomes a chore.
When it is compulsion of a cultural nature that has very limited global utility it becomes indoctrination.
Indoctrination of culture at the expense of all 'other' eventually leads to civil conflict.
Is civil strife the main goal of this compulsion because as Professor Rata clearly explains 'educational achievement' certainly isn't!
"Proper quantitative studies" (as per Anon above) involve taking representative samples and subjecting them to a battery of inferential stats tests. Most people think simple percentages when they see the word 'quantitative' (or 'statistics') but a quick look at an inferential stats source reveals a host of weird symbols backed up by immensely complex formulae. People need to be trained to use these methods and many in the field of Education do not have the requisite skills to use them or interpret the results of their application.
A caveat here is that the most sophisticated quantitative analytical procedures on Earth won't turn a poor sample into a good one. Unlike marbles in a barrel (which we may use to explain quantitative analytical procedures), people can refuse to participate or lie when hit with questions. Under the guise of ethics, it has been made more and more difficult for researchers to apply sampling procedures that are likely to yield representative samples. I gave up on this kind of research about 10 years ago when the research ethics committee at the university I was at adopted a new set of rules which hamstrung researchers by e.g. banning us from approaching people considered to be useful participants - we now had to pin descriptions of the intended work on the wall and wait for people to approach us about participating. People who want to be heard are definitely not representative of the larger population, and are more likely to hold minority views.
We can still use sophisticated quantitative methods when dealing with e.g. census data or data arising from external exams, so all is not lost, but a lot is.
LNF I disagree that the PM is not stupid . He has NOT assisted the Coalition government achieve the mandate of the voters and it would be so easy. Remove Section 127 from the Education Bill re-enact the Treaty Priciples Bill and state categotically Water and the Seabed and Foreshore are the Crown's. Yes, remove Maori seats by a simple majority in Parliament would be magnificent for a real start to being a nation of one people in NZ
It has not backfired as hardly anyone in this country is aware of it as negative aspects are ignored or twisted as racism by msm. For the masses with their daily lives etc there is not issue, just some old white folks and a few hangers on doing their conspiracy thing as usual.
“Is civil strife the main goal of this compulsion”?
Yes, this is the goal throughout the collective west. Our “reaction” to the “problem” created by each country to wind up and anger their citizens, leading to civil unrest, will be the excuse needed by the state to go full on totalitarian and bring in their NWO reset “solution”, which they have been planning for since the 1990’s.
Our PM has made such a cock of all this that I do not want him to survive the fruits of his folly but of course that must not happen at the cost of having a Liebore coalition reinstated to dictate everything and chuck us down the plughole. I struggle when searching for an appropriate adjective to describe his modus operandi or that of Minister Goldsmith with his vacillation on all he touches. For David Seymour this must be like trying wade through molasses, such is the inertia. As for Stanford’s sly Treaty move backfiring, I see it as a full blown stall or refusal to act.
No, you are not alone, Goldsmith is Luxon's sink hole for everything he just wants to bury with inaction. Agree, let's give the TPB the Lazarus treatment.
Graham, have you submitted this to your previous employers from their better years, the Herald and Stuff ?
They now wouldn't touch your erudite submission, even as they know that publishing it would actually give them some credibility.
Another extremely well crafted piece.
I also listened to Stanford in disgust, and wondered why she was shafting those who voted her to do a job, and she was failing to comply.
She, and other National ministers need to stop listening to Luxon ( because he isn't going to last ), and listen to the voters.
Clearly, Stanford can not be trusted.
It would take just the stroke of a pen to remove this commitment to all things Maori, and prove that she has the best interests of all NZers in mind.
Until she does this, we must assume that she and National have no intention of ever restoring democracy to NZ.
MfK
If you google the nz school curriculum 2025 and then google the australian school curriculum, you will see how much they differ. The australian curriculum is all in english, there are no politics and it covers what subjects are to be taught very clearly. There is nothing about australian kids having to learn aboriginal myths instead of science, there is no reference to equitible outcomes for kids who identify as aboriginal. If you look up both, you can see how much of a joke nz education has become. Hopefully the aussies will keep their borders open to nz citizens wanting to escape.
Both the nz school curriculum 2025 and the austrailan school curriculum should be published in all nz papers and media so that everyone can see for themselves this rort against our kids
Vote Labour, get a quick trip into the 3rd world. Vote National, get a slower but equally well-planned arrival. Political parties, probably all of them, are not the solution, they are the problem.
Indeed - but this ride will be rough. The Opposition - and woke National - both expect this move. Life for DS will be blood, sweat and tears .... but he is more than up to the challenge.
We must ensure that ACT has a landslide with help from NZF.
When Chris Luxon stated prior to the 2023 election that he was opposed to co-governance “in the delivery of public services” many, including myself, thought he was advocating a reversal, or at least a halt to the co-governance revolution in New Zealand.
Instead, it seems that Luxon’s statement was a careful carve out. What National really wanted was a return to a quiet co-governance revolution alla "la fable de la grenouille qui bout". In other words, the revolution we were having, but did not know about, until Labour broke cover during the Ardern-Hipkins administration.
That these clauses were in the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) seems incredible given the sentiment at the 2023 election and NZ First’s promised legislative review of treaty references. Clearly National do not feel very constrained by such a review. That alone should be telling us something very concerning.
Stanford clearly hasn't read or is unable to comprehend the ToW. That there's no 'partnership' and no requirement to promote and promulgate te reo, tikanga, matauranga and te ao Maori, least of all to all of our young and most impressionable. Even if there was a requirement to teach the language, culture, spirituality, and belief systems of what really was an unsuccessful, very primitive tribe-based, warmongering race, this will not achieve the proposed amendment's "paramount objective."
Stanford is beyond naive if she thinks she can achieve 'equitable outcomes' without dumbing down the achievement levels of all, given what is proposed.
Quite frankly, 'equitable outcomes' is nothing but a nice aspirational sound-bite that lacks any kind of credibility in the real world and is as fraudulent and stupid as Ardern's "sole source of truth" and Luxon's "there's nothing I like..." comments. By their own utterances and beliefs, these people prove beyond doubt that they are unfit to hold office and be making decisions for the future of our country.
And just who will be the judge of that 'equity' and what will happen when it's not achieved? Could there be another Waitangi Tribunal recommendation for yet more compensation, or perhaps another Royal Commission of Inquiry into another State sanctioned wrong, not to just a comparative few, but to a whole generation?
Stanford is also bereft of empirical evidence and her warped thinking places her clearly in the wrong party, although looking at its leader and many of its other sycophantic members, they do belong together - it's just that they all seem to have become confused and forgotten what they campaigned on?
One thing is for sure, they need to be given the message that the majority of New Zealanders do not support this nonsense and unless they get us 'back on track' as they promised, they're toast - along with this country!
Blimey, don't let Albo see that, he'll have someone in there quick smart to stuff it all up! "Hey Burke, Bowen, got a few spare minutes? - Got a job for you, the States and Territories need pulling into line, they are actually educating kids and that must stop, we need indoctrination and more of it!"
Agree!
“Quite frankly, 'equitable outcomes' is nothing but a nice aspirational sound-bite that lacks any kind of credibility in the real world”?
Remember when they started giving out prizes (equitable outcomes) to ALL participants at school sports events.
You've captured exactly what the problem is Peter; total misinterpretation of the ToW. However, I have it on very good authority that communications staff for some (?All) ministers are ignoring instructions and placing questionable ToW stuff into cabinet papers and speeches in opposition to what their minister wants; white-anting on a grand scale because the comms. staff are probably unredeemed Marxists. Wholesale dismissal seems the only answer.
“She [Stanford] alleged her critics are “whipped up with hatred and lies... they are yelling at the sky... frothing at the mouth with hatred... it’s utter rubbish.”
She is projecting…
If Māori educational attainment cannot be improved, are school boards now being instructed to lower the academic standard in order to achieve an equitable outcome?
MfK... thanks for your kind comment.
My columns used to be published on occasion by the Herald, Newsroom, RNZ and even Stuff but I believe I have been blacklisted for writing once too often on the fact the big media orgs took a bribe by accepting money from the Public Interest Journalism Fund. Their editors/CEOs loathe being accused of taking a bribe — and in fact one of them even today on an FB post referred to "the bullshit bribe" accusations I have made. I have also, memorably, been called an "embittered sniper" by one very senior journalist for the same reason.
However, a changing of the guard at NZME might shake things up regarding who is persona non grata.
I thought that we already had Maori immersion schools, tax payer funded, for those that wanted this sort of education. It would now seem that Ms Standford and National want everyone educated the Maori way.
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