It sounds harmless. Even noble. A word supposedly meant to honour New Zealand’s history. But scratch beneath the surface, and you’ll find it’s one of the most corrosive terms in our entire legal system. It’s the foundation of a two-tier framework — a system that divides citizens not by merit or equality, but by ancestry and spiritual entitlement.
The word bicultural appears in countless places — public service policy, education law, environmental regulation, and even health and heritage management. It’s the linguistic gateway for race-based privilege, mandatory consultation with iwi, spiritual red tape like karakia and “wairua health,” and culturally enforced obligations that ordinary citizens are expected to obey — often at a financial or legal cost.
This isn’t unity. It’s apartheid by paperwork. It's not inclusion — it’s a soft form of segregation, dressed up in government branding. The state keeps pretending we are a nation of “two peoples.” But that’s not true. We are multicultural. Every Kiwi, regardless of background, is a mixed-race human being — not a tribal statistic.
Anthropology makes this obvious. New Zealand law does not.
That’s why removing every reference to biculturalism from legislation needs to be part of the movement to make New Zealand secular. Because biculturalism is more than just a word — it’s the policy arm of a belief system. And it’s through that word that spirituality and race-based thinking enter the law disguised as fairness.
One law for all means exactly that: no spiritual clauses, no cultural vetoes, and no more pretending that the Treaty created two legally separate species. It’s time we said it plainly — biculturalism doesn’t unite us. It divides us.
John Robertson is a patriotic New Zealander who frequently posts on Facebook.
This isn’t unity. It’s apartheid by paperwork. It's not inclusion — it’s a soft form of segregation, dressed up in government branding. The state keeps pretending we are a nation of “two peoples.” But that’s not true. We are multicultural. Every Kiwi, regardless of background, is a mixed-race human being — not a tribal statistic.
Anthropology makes this obvious. New Zealand law does not.
That’s why removing every reference to biculturalism from legislation needs to be part of the movement to make New Zealand secular. Because biculturalism is more than just a word — it’s the policy arm of a belief system. And it’s through that word that spirituality and race-based thinking enter the law disguised as fairness.
One law for all means exactly that: no spiritual clauses, no cultural vetoes, and no more pretending that the Treaty created two legally separate species. It’s time we said it plainly — biculturalism doesn’t unite us. It divides us.
John Robertson is a patriotic New Zealander who frequently posts on Facebook.
7 comments:
This is the NZ of your children and grandchildren. Better grasp the implications now.... as many are doing.
You are quite right John. I think the reason Parliament and the judiciary are doing it is to protect the Maoris because they cannot compete in a European-Asian world, even if they have to lie to do it.
Fully agree John; in fact the lie about 'biculturalism' began once maoris began interbreeding with European /British settlers in the 19th century, and genetic merging, which started small but, like the infamous 'hockey stick' global warming graph, increased markedly. Also, once maoris grasped (with both greedy hands I might say) what the settlers brought in terms of technology, agricultural practices, clothing, housing, livestock and rule of law, plus the concept of ownership, then the cultures merged and what appeared was 'blurredcultural' and has remained so ever since, added to by an order of magnitude by migrants from all around the planet. If someone these days tries to introduce the bicultural concept into conversation or an argument, just ask if they can count, noting that arithmetic doesn't seem to be their strong point.
>"A word supposedly meant to honour New Zealand’s history."
That's debatable given the presence of significant numbers of various peoples including Chinese, Danish and Dutch by the mid-19thC.
'Bicultural' is a political term that doesn't even pretend to describe the ethnic composition of NZ society, which is multicultural. 'Bicultural' is truly an apartheid term.
The sooner folk understand that, for millenia, people of all races have swarmed the earth in search of food and security. The Neanderthals included. And "races" get bred out and demolished. Soon there will be No Maori.... They were such a microscopic minority to start with. No hope against the Asians especially. Best explore the history Maori/Chinese..... VERY interesting - and stuff they wont like.
“This isn’t unity. It’s apartheid by paperwork. It's not inclusion — it’s a soft form of segregation, dressed up in government branding. The state keeps pretending we are a nation of “two peoples”.
This is by design. The state in 1975 introduced into legislation a false English language treaty document that did not agree with the original Maori treaty text to foster this segregation and apartheid falsehood.
In Article third of the original, the last sentence reads, “All the rights will be given to them the same as her doings to the people of England. (end)
Now we the chiefs of the assembly of the hapus of New Zealand, now assembled at Waitangi. We also, the chiefs of New Zealand, see the meaning of these words; they are taken and consented to altogether by us. Therefore, are affixed our names and marks. This done at Waitangi on the sixth day of February 1840.
Governor Hobson then shook the hand of every signatory, and in the tangata Maori language said to each one, “He iwi tahi tatou” - We are now one people.
Bi-culturalism was a Helen Clark construct when she ran for Sec Gen of the UN as the "Oceania " candidate.
She could not run as an Asia/Pacific candidate as the outgoing SC was from Sth Korea - the same region is never re-elected. So Clark's campaign team invented another geographical label.
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