Whether the media reporting is right that the Prime Minister gave Seymour a telling off, or whether David was right that it was just a nice chat, or whether the media reporting is right that Winston is cross with David for sending the letter, or whether David’s right that Winston is fine and is basically going to send the same letter again, or whether Winston is right when he says that’s not true – I’m as interested as you are in what the truth is.
But regardless of whether David is in trouble, he was right when he called the letter "presumptive, condescending, and wholly misplaced".
I personally think he did us a favour giving the UN a slap-down for piping up on the Regulatory Standards Bill with their letter, which started the chain of correspondence.
In particular, what the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples got wrong is his assertion that the bill fails to uphold indigenous rights guaranteed in the Treaty, including partnership.
There is no partnership guarantee. It’s not in the Treaty. It was a judge's comment in the mid 80's and was subsequently misinterpreted to mean partnership.
He apparently also claims Māori have been excluded form consultation, which is again not true, because we’ve just had a full week of select committee hearings which included submission from Māori.
Both of these facts could’ve been discovered with a simple Google search.
Unfortunately for the UN this makes the case, again, for the thing being scaled back to what it was originally set up for: preventing WWIII.
They should get out of everything else —climate change, indigenous rights, advocating for wealth taxes— because it’s gone way beyond its original remit.
It's too political and it's frankly not very good at any of it. Just look at the fact that it hasn’t stopped climate change.
So thank you to David Seymour for giving the UN a well overdue slap-down.
Even if he wasn’t really supposed to.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
You can be 100% sure that the UN official who sent the letter was given a detailed draft by the NZ Human Rights Commission.
Prof Claire Charters, the He Puapua lead author, has a close association with this body - including a secondment there under Paul Hunt.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Heather.
The UN has definitely gotten too big for its britches and needs to be scaled way down.
Well done David Seymour. Only a globalist would take exception to your justifiably scathing letter to the UN. Look at the damage they have done to NZ.
Whatever, it is a great letter. Straight language rare today. Just what the UN deserves. I hope it gets wide international publication. Puts Winston in a spot. Would be great if he simply repeated it. But NZ first still panders extensively to maori.. Perhaps Winston can get input from Jones for a few biblical words and colourful metaphor to give it an independant touch.
Part of the coalition agreement between NZF and National was to advise the UN that they have no legal powers over NZ regarding UNDRIP and indigenous rights . This letter shows action in that regard. David and Winston say no "repertoire" can tell us what to do. Although Rawiri Waititi thinks they can as he stated in parliament yesterday. A humorous moment.
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