The August 25 edition of the Hawke’s Bay Today included a two-page advert displaying what looked like 63 candidates for eight councils from Wairoa to South Wairarapa.
The Wairoa District, Hawke’s Bay Regional, Napier City, Hastings District, Central Hawke’s Bay District, Tararua District, Masterton District, and South Wairarapa councils are listed on a map in the background of the advert.
This advert was the centre-piece of the latest fortnightly lift-out newsletter for the local “mana whenua” tribe, Ngati Kahungunu.
The term “mana whenua” describes a sort of authority that the government has fostered among the main tribes of given areas.
The Maori dictionary defines it as the authority and rights of a tribe over land and territory that encompasses not only the land itself but also the beds of lakes, rivers, and the sea, and is derived from genealogical links to the area.
This definition conveys an impression of ownership or control that may be sincerely believed by iwi-Maori affiliates but which is in conflict with the private property rights and common law that affect every citizen.
Also posted in this lift-out was Ngati Kahungunu’s 25-year plan which says “rangatiratanga and political representation” is one of its five key goals.
Part of this plan, called Kahungunu 2050, is to “advance ‘rangatiratanga’ through political representation, build Maori presence in local and central government and across public institutions, [and] influence decision making systems, dismantle colonising structures, and support indigenous diplomacy and sovereignty”.
Another translation is needed. “Rangatiratanga”, according to the Waitangi Tribunal’s re-translated and redefined Treaty of Waitangi, means “chiefly authority”.
More words need precise definitions: An iwi is the largest social unit of Maori society.
The Ngati Kahungunu iwi may be accurately described as an income-tax-exempt-racial-financial-political entity.
The entity has benefited from more than $300-million in treaty settlements.
Kahungunu iwi members probably believe that they are entitled to exercise any authority given to them by the government over the region that extends from, you guessed it, Wairoa to South Wairarapa.
A map displayed in the lift-out shows the location of the tribe’s government-funded social service centres in Wairoa, Napier, Hastings, Waipukurau, Dannevirke, and Masterton.
Nowhere in the advert was the word “candidate” used, although a related article in the supplement says that Ngati Kahungunu is training and mentoring candidates to champion “kaupapa such as housing, environmental protection, education, economic development, and upholding the treaty partnership”.
Iwi-Maori infiltration of local councils is well under way. A quick visit to the online “Your Council” pages revealed that a number of the faces displayed in the advert have been on local councils since the 2022 election, and some much longer:
Maori ward representation is not the only way iwi-Maori assert political power.
The Hastings District Council in 2019 appointed four members of the Maori Joint Committee to the council’s four standing committees with voting rights.
And the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has a “co-governance” Regional Planning Committee to manage natural resources in Hawke’s Bay, with an equal number of regional councillors and treaty settlement entity representatives. All have full speaking and voting rights.
So, all that adds up to a substantial Ngati Kahungunu voting bloc on East Coast local bodies pushing for iwi-Maori housing, environmental control, education, economic development, while promoting the flawed treaty partnership ideology.
Meanwhile, ratepayers are facing double-digit rates hikes to pay the massive debt incurred by poor quality council decisions on both basic services and extracurricular follies.
Although Ngati Kahungunu has the third-largest Iwi population, it’s 95,751 affiliates or 9.7 percent of the Maori population is much less than the total voting population.
That population is spread all over New Zealand (and the world), is not confined to the Wairoa-to-South Wairarapa area, and includes children who, of course, are not voters.
The total number of enrolled voters in those eight council areas from Wairoa to South Wairarapa is 124,000 people.
Why, in a few weeks, some ratepayers get to vote on a Maori ward in their area is a long story that goes back to 2001, with two initiatives.
That year, a Maori constituency was set up on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, by an Act of Parliament, to mirror Maori roll seats in Parliament.
Also that year came the Local Electoral Act 2001, which among other initiatives, enabled any council to set up a Maori constituency (for regional councils, or Maori wards (for other councils), subject to a vote by affected residents.
In 2011, the then Human Rights Commissioner, Joris De Bres, asked 78 councils nationwide, to consider separate Maori seats.
The Nelson City Council, the Wairoa District Council and the Waikato District Council, proceeded, but all three proposals were voted down, mostly around 80 percent against.
In 2017, Kaikoura District, Western Bay of Plenty District, Manawatu District, Palmerston North City, and the Whakatane District councils, tried but were all were voted down, most with similar opposition.
Yet another round of proposals came in 2020, from nine councils in New Plymouth, Tauranga, Whangarei, Kaipara, the Far North (regional), Gisborne, Taupo, South Taranaki, and Ruapehu.
Tauranga was the first to have sufficient signatures validated, with Northland soon to follow suit, when the Ardern Government changed the law to outlaw binding referenda and that rendered the nine petitions null and void.
Once central government had removed the right for affected residents to have a say, 45 councils set up Maori wards or constituencies while knowing that most residents opposed them.
The current coalition government restored the right for affected residents to vote and required those 45 councils either to disestablish the Maori wards set up during the no-vote period, or, hold a referendum during this year’s local election.
Kaipara was the only council to disestablish its Maori ward. All 44 other councils are holding a referendum, the results of which would take effect in the 2028 election.
Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson said that continued grandstanding by the Maori ward councillor, initially over a demand to say a “karakia” prayer in Maori at the beginning of every meeting, impeded council function substantially.
What impact is Ngati Kahungunu’s bid to “advance rangatiratanga through political representation” and “dismantle colonising structures” having at a time when councils are struggling with massive debt and ratepayers with massive rates hikes?
One instance is at the Hastings District Council, which spent $70,000 rebranding the name of its council and city to “Heretaunga Hastings”. As a Hastings ratepayer, I have no recollection of a public submissions process on this.
That initiative was partly sold as aligning to the council’s Heretaunga [Maori language] Ararau Strategy (2020), which was “guided by a memorandum of understanding with Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated”, and introduced by then councillor Bayden Barber who is the current Ngati Kahungunu chair.
There were no public submissions of imposing Maori language on residents of Hastings.
But when that council faced the decision on whether to disestablish its Maori ward that was set up during the no-referendum period, or go to a referendum, it gerrymandered a submission process and claimed widespread support in the hope that the public will do the same in the October vote.
A karakia at the start of every meeting. Translating signs into Maori. Changing the name of a council and a city by stealth. All can be presented as innocuous, but all provoke in a certain demographic a sort of impotent rage.
Those short-sighted white councillors who possibly believe they are doing the right thing for their brown brothers and sisters by “letting them have their te reo”, and who seem happy to back-stab their rellies by staying silent when they are smeared as “pale, stale, and male”, are acting as enablers, the sort of people that Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin allegedly called “useful idiots”.
White councillor paternalism of the sort that I saw at a mayoral debate in Hastings a few days ago, is useful idiocy, useful for iwi Maori in accomplishing their quest for control, which is what the word “rangatiratanga” is all about.
No doubt, the other 106 income-tax-exempt-racial-financial-political entities that have collectively benefited from more than $4.6-billion in treaty settlements are pushing their candidates on both the general and Maori rolls all over New Zealand to enlarge to “iwi Maori” voting bloc to tighten control over us.
Don’t be a useful idiot.
When voting opens on September 9, don’t vote for a Maori ward.
And definitely don’t vote for those councillors who voted to impose a Maori ward, when voting on the issue was outlawed, while knowing that their constituents opposed racial voting.
Mike Butler wrote The First Colonist, Tribes, Treaty Money, Power, and The Treaty Basic Facts, available at Tross Publishing, and researched treaty settlements for NZCPR under Treaty Transparency.
The term “mana whenua” describes a sort of authority that the government has fostered among the main tribes of given areas.
The Maori dictionary defines it as the authority and rights of a tribe over land and territory that encompasses not only the land itself but also the beds of lakes, rivers, and the sea, and is derived from genealogical links to the area.
This definition conveys an impression of ownership or control that may be sincerely believed by iwi-Maori affiliates but which is in conflict with the private property rights and common law that affect every citizen.
Also posted in this lift-out was Ngati Kahungunu’s 25-year plan which says “rangatiratanga and political representation” is one of its five key goals.
Part of this plan, called Kahungunu 2050, is to “advance ‘rangatiratanga’ through political representation, build Maori presence in local and central government and across public institutions, [and] influence decision making systems, dismantle colonising structures, and support indigenous diplomacy and sovereignty”.
Another translation is needed. “Rangatiratanga”, according to the Waitangi Tribunal’s re-translated and redefined Treaty of Waitangi, means “chiefly authority”.
More words need precise definitions: An iwi is the largest social unit of Maori society.
The Ngati Kahungunu iwi may be accurately described as an income-tax-exempt-racial-financial-political entity.
The entity has benefited from more than $300-million in treaty settlements.
Kahungunu iwi members probably believe that they are entitled to exercise any authority given to them by the government over the region that extends from, you guessed it, Wairoa to South Wairarapa.
A map displayed in the lift-out shows the location of the tribe’s government-funded social service centres in Wairoa, Napier, Hastings, Waipukurau, Dannevirke, and Masterton.
Nowhere in the advert was the word “candidate” used, although a related article in the supplement says that Ngati Kahungunu is training and mentoring candidates to champion “kaupapa such as housing, environmental protection, education, economic development, and upholding the treaty partnership”.
Iwi-Maori infiltration of local councils is well under way. A quick visit to the online “Your Council” pages revealed that a number of the faces displayed in the advert have been on local councils since the 2022 election, and some much longer:
• The Hawke’s Bay Regional council currently has two Ngati Kahungunu members, the chair and the Maori constituency rep;None of these people openly ran as Ngati Kahungunu representatives in the 2022 elections, although tribal affiliation may or may not have been stated in the little blurb on each candidate included in voter packs.
• The Hastings District Council has four Ngati Kahungunu, two on the general roll and two Maori ward;
• The Napier City Council has one general roll Ngati Kahungunu councillor;
• The Wairoa District Council has one Ngati Kahungunu councillor, who is the deputy mayor;
• The Central Hawke’s Bay District Council has one Ngati Kahungunu councillor, filling the Maori ward seat;
• The Tararua District Council has two Ngati Kahungunu councillors, one on the general roll and the other on the Maori roll;
• The Masterton District Council has a Maori ward councillor from another iwi, and
• The South Wairarapa District Council, which as has one general ward Ngati Kahungunu councillor.
Maori ward representation is not the only way iwi-Maori assert political power.
The Hastings District Council in 2019 appointed four members of the Maori Joint Committee to the council’s four standing committees with voting rights.
And the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has a “co-governance” Regional Planning Committee to manage natural resources in Hawke’s Bay, with an equal number of regional councillors and treaty settlement entity representatives. All have full speaking and voting rights.
So, all that adds up to a substantial Ngati Kahungunu voting bloc on East Coast local bodies pushing for iwi-Maori housing, environmental control, education, economic development, while promoting the flawed treaty partnership ideology.
Meanwhile, ratepayers are facing double-digit rates hikes to pay the massive debt incurred by poor quality council decisions on both basic services and extracurricular follies.
Although Ngati Kahungunu has the third-largest Iwi population, it’s 95,751 affiliates or 9.7 percent of the Maori population is much less than the total voting population.
That population is spread all over New Zealand (and the world), is not confined to the Wairoa-to-South Wairarapa area, and includes children who, of course, are not voters.
The total number of enrolled voters in those eight council areas from Wairoa to South Wairarapa is 124,000 people.
Why, in a few weeks, some ratepayers get to vote on a Maori ward in their area is a long story that goes back to 2001, with two initiatives.
That year, a Maori constituency was set up on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, by an Act of Parliament, to mirror Maori roll seats in Parliament.
Also that year came the Local Electoral Act 2001, which among other initiatives, enabled any council to set up a Maori constituency (for regional councils, or Maori wards (for other councils), subject to a vote by affected residents.
In 2011, the then Human Rights Commissioner, Joris De Bres, asked 78 councils nationwide, to consider separate Maori seats.
The Nelson City Council, the Wairoa District Council and the Waikato District Council, proceeded, but all three proposals were voted down, mostly around 80 percent against.
In 2017, Kaikoura District, Western Bay of Plenty District, Manawatu District, Palmerston North City, and the Whakatane District councils, tried but were all were voted down, most with similar opposition.
Yet another round of proposals came in 2020, from nine councils in New Plymouth, Tauranga, Whangarei, Kaipara, the Far North (regional), Gisborne, Taupo, South Taranaki, and Ruapehu.
Tauranga was the first to have sufficient signatures validated, with Northland soon to follow suit, when the Ardern Government changed the law to outlaw binding referenda and that rendered the nine petitions null and void.
Once central government had removed the right for affected residents to have a say, 45 councils set up Maori wards or constituencies while knowing that most residents opposed them.
The current coalition government restored the right for affected residents to vote and required those 45 councils either to disestablish the Maori wards set up during the no-vote period, or, hold a referendum during this year’s local election.
Kaipara was the only council to disestablish its Maori ward. All 44 other councils are holding a referendum, the results of which would take effect in the 2028 election.
Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson said that continued grandstanding by the Maori ward councillor, initially over a demand to say a “karakia” prayer in Maori at the beginning of every meeting, impeded council function substantially.
What impact is Ngati Kahungunu’s bid to “advance rangatiratanga through political representation” and “dismantle colonising structures” having at a time when councils are struggling with massive debt and ratepayers with massive rates hikes?
One instance is at the Hastings District Council, which spent $70,000 rebranding the name of its council and city to “Heretaunga Hastings”. As a Hastings ratepayer, I have no recollection of a public submissions process on this.
That initiative was partly sold as aligning to the council’s Heretaunga [Maori language] Ararau Strategy (2020), which was “guided by a memorandum of understanding with Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated”, and introduced by then councillor Bayden Barber who is the current Ngati Kahungunu chair.
There were no public submissions of imposing Maori language on residents of Hastings.
But when that council faced the decision on whether to disestablish its Maori ward that was set up during the no-referendum period, or go to a referendum, it gerrymandered a submission process and claimed widespread support in the hope that the public will do the same in the October vote.
A karakia at the start of every meeting. Translating signs into Maori. Changing the name of a council and a city by stealth. All can be presented as innocuous, but all provoke in a certain demographic a sort of impotent rage.
Those short-sighted white councillors who possibly believe they are doing the right thing for their brown brothers and sisters by “letting them have their te reo”, and who seem happy to back-stab their rellies by staying silent when they are smeared as “pale, stale, and male”, are acting as enablers, the sort of people that Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin allegedly called “useful idiots”.
White councillor paternalism of the sort that I saw at a mayoral debate in Hastings a few days ago, is useful idiocy, useful for iwi Maori in accomplishing their quest for control, which is what the word “rangatiratanga” is all about.
No doubt, the other 106 income-tax-exempt-racial-financial-political entities that have collectively benefited from more than $4.6-billion in treaty settlements are pushing their candidates on both the general and Maori rolls all over New Zealand to enlarge to “iwi Maori” voting bloc to tighten control over us.
Don’t be a useful idiot.
When voting opens on September 9, don’t vote for a Maori ward.
And definitely don’t vote for those councillors who voted to impose a Maori ward, when voting on the issue was outlawed, while knowing that their constituents opposed racial voting.
Mike Butler wrote The First Colonist, Tribes, Treaty Money, Power, and The Treaty Basic Facts, available at Tross Publishing, and researched treaty settlements for NZCPR under Treaty Transparency.
6 comments:
Thank you Mike. Yes, it is white councillor paternalism which is our greatest weakness - If they are not voted out next month, then we are all to blame.
I signed the 5,000 strong petition opposing Maori wards in Tauranga only to have the process overturned by Ardern. I subsequently canvased council candidates on their Maori ward views. Some were afraid to speak openly for fear of reprisals. I totally agree it is the woke, liberal "whiteys" to blame as tribe "Whitey"(Pakeha is a word I don't use), has a huge majority of New Zealand citizens.
Most of us are not racist, we are very a-okay with Maori language and heritage where appropriate. However, most New Zealanders seem unaware where this is all heading. This is not about culture this is about a minority takeover. First the lakes, rivers and seashore are being portrayed as needing care and nurturing. Then, when all the land and water is secured the financial aspects will kick in I expect. When do part-Maori share their billions in settlement money with others?
Hastings Councillors are such a pathetic bunch .I want my Hastings back.
Anon 10.04
No, we are not to blame !
Blame the media for not publishing the underhand tactics of these white councilors.
Blame Luxon for his inaction and head in the sand attitude.
He is NZs biggest problem and has to be rolled before democracy can be restored.
Janine, you covered it well thank you.
Where are our Asian communities on this ?
Surely our new immigrants don't want to be controlled by a bunch of tattooed, barely civilized, Maori activists with a stated agenda of domination ?
I do hope that all these voters understand and reject the demands for Maori wards.
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