The Spinoff published a piece this week by Eru Kapa-Kingi titled “Mana over Money: The Need for Ngāpuhi Tiriti Justice.” On the surface, it looks like a heartfelt plea for fairness and this is certainly how the mainstream media will be content to frame it, if they ever get around to reporting on the radicalisation of Parliament’s smallest party. But read closely and it becomes clear this is not just about grievance redress. It is a call to reshape New Zealand’s constitutional order, to carve out areas of separate governance, and to take steps toward a future where Māori and non-Māori live under completely separate systems.
This is not even a conversation about co-governance anymore. This is a manifesto for secession. And if we are not honest about what it means, we are sleepwalking into the complete fracturing of our country.
Click to view
Eru Kapa-Kingi is not a random activist shouting into the void. He is the leader of Toitū te Tiriti, the movement that orchestrated the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, the protest march to Parliament, last year. He is a law lecturer at the University of Auckland, a former staffer for Te Pāti Māori, and the son of Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, the Te Pāti Māori MP for Te Tai Tokerau.
He is politically connected, academically legitimised, and strategically placed to influence the next generation of lawyers and activists. His writing is not just a personal opinion. It is a roadmap for the movement that is inextricably connected to Te Pāti Māori.
It is undeniable that in his Spinoff piece Eru Kapa-Kingi rejects the Treaty settlement process altogether describing it as a “money game” that trades cash for sovereignty. He calls for restoring Māori authority over whenua rangatira1, creating hapū-based systems of decision-making outside of Crown control.
This is not the “partnership” that New Zealanders have been told must exist for the past several decades. This is not collaborative nor inclusive. It is parallel sovereignty with the Crown ejected. It is constitutional revolution, internal secession, ethno-national partition, annexation, balkanisation.
Toitū te Tiriti is the activist movement at the heart of the new push for Māori sovereignty. It emerged in 2023 as a coalition of iwi leaders, activists, and academics opposing the Government’s Treaty Principles Bill, and quickly became the most organised expression of resistance to Crown authority in recent memory.
Toitū te Tiriti is not merely “aligned” with Te Pāti Māori, it is stitched into the party’s very fabric. Its registered director and sole shareholder is Christina Tamihere (better known publicly as Kiri Tamihere-Waititi). She is married to Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi and her father is John Tamihere, the President of Te Pāti Māori. In other words, the party president’s daughter runs the company that leads the most radical activist push for constitutional change in New Zealand. This is not a loose affiliation. It is a party–movement–family nexus designed to put maximum pressure on the Crown from both inside and outside Parliament. Its kaupapa goes far beyond repealing specific legislation or opposing the Treaty Principles Bill. It calls for a complete constitutional reset and the recognition of tino rangatiratanga as an independent source of authority. In effect, Toitū te Tiriti is building the intellectual, legal, and activist framework for Māori self-government that operates separately to the Crown.
John Tamihere with daughter Kiri Waititi-Tamihere
So while Toitū te Tiriti operates outside Parliament (organised and led by family members of party leadership), its influence inside Parliament is unmistakable. Te Pāti Māori MPs routinely echo its language in the House, and key figures, including Eru Kapa-Kingi and Kiri Tamihere-Waititi, have worked as staffers or candidates for the party. This creates a feedback loop where the most radical demands of the activist wing set the baseline for political negotiation. Te Pāti Māori then uses its position in Parliament to normalise those demands and extract concessions from other parties, the media, and ultimately the Crown, shifting the political centre of gravity toward separatism. In this way, Toitū te Tiriti functions as both the conscience and the shock troops of Te Pāti Māori, pulling the Overton window toward a future where Crown authority is eroded piece by piece.
The strategy is pretty sophisticated. But it isn’t new.
This inside/outside approach is eerily reminiscent of Sinn Féin and the IRA during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin played the political game; the IRA destabilised British authority through armed struggle. I am not suggesting that Kapa-Kingi advocates for violence similar to that of the IRA (although Tamihere-Waititi has called for an overthrow of the Government) but the dual-pressure model is the same. One wing pushes from inside the system, the other pulls from outside, and the combined effect is to delegitimise the existing constitutional order.
West Belfast during The Troubles, 1976.
Toitū Te Tiriti’s vision for New Zealand would result in a complete fracturing of our country and systems. I tweeted about this using the term “balkanisation” and someone asked me to write an explainer on it. This is that explainer. I apologise I can’t remember who asked me, but I hope he finds this.
The term balkanisation comes from the bloody history of the Balkan Peninsula, where the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries left a patchwork of small, competing nation states. Rather than ushering in an era of peace and self-determination, this fragmentation unleashed a century of instability. Rival nationalisms clashed violently. Borders were drawn and redrawn in blood. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (a direct consequence of Balkan nationalist politics) sparked World War I although it was simply the final straw setting fire to a tinder box of European tensions. The region became synonymous with chronic conflict: the Balkan Wars, two world wars, and later the brutal Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s that saw ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, and genocide in Bosnia.
Bodies of people killed in April 1993 around Vitez, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, during the Bosnian conflict.
An ex-girlfriend of mine is half-Serbian, half-Croatian, and her family home is in what is now Bosnia. Her family was torn apart by the war. Caught on different sides at times. Her father was killed, dying slowly from a gunshot wound over the course of months in a makeshift hospital. She was two years old. Her older siblings had been sent to Cyprus as refugees, but she was too young to leave her mother. The stories I heard from her and her family members over the course of our relationship were horrific. Tales of warning about communism, armed conflict, and carving up land into sovereign states. The problem is that the populations dissected by new borders do not neatly fit. Identities, commerce, culture, lives split.
Thirty years later, the region remains in dysfunction.
In political terms, balkanisation describes the process of a previously unified state breaking up into smaller, often ethnically or tribally defined territories each with its own governance, loyalties, and legal systems. The result is not simply “local control” or Kapa-Kingi’s idyllic vision of mana motuhake2. It is a deep, structural division of sovereignty that makes coherent and cohesive governance very difficult, weakens national identity, and fuels resentment between groups.
In New Zealand, balkanisation would not necessarily look like drawing new international borders. Instead, it would look like hapū-controlled jurisdictions where Crown law no longer applies, separate justice systems for Māori and non-Māori, and separate governing authorities operating independently within the same geographic territory.
The practical effect would be “states within a state,” where the government’s ability to make and enforce laws is removed. Over time, this leads to fragmented citizenship where rights, obligations, and even access to services depend on which territory you are in and whether you belong to the group that holds authority there.
Balkanisation does not produce harmony. In Bosnia, Cyprus, and Kashmir, the creation of divided jurisdictions has led to entrenched grievance, mutual suspicion, and an inability to function as a single polity. Just recently conflict broke out again between India and Pakistan over Kashmir as competing claims from independence movements leave the region in a permanent state of instability. Cyprus is a divided island where the Turkish-controlled north and Greek-controlled south operate as de facto separate countries. The “Green Line” buffer zone has existed for half a century, and reunification remains a pipe dream.
Far from a solution for reconciliation, balkanisation risks creating a country locked in permanent negotiation, where national unity and equal citizenship are traded away piece by piece. When you start creating ethnic or tribal enclaves with their own rules, you set in motion a process that is very hard to stop.
“What about Quebec?” I hear proponents of this model cry. Well, Quebec is a case study in “soft” balkanisation. It is a prime example of what happens when a region develops a strong ethno-national identity and begins asserting autonomy within a larger state. French-speaking Quebec has its own language laws, immigration policies, and cultural protections that are distinct from the rest of Canada.
Twice in the last 40 years (1980 and 1995) Quebec have held referenda on independence. The second referendum came within a hair’s breadth of succeeding with 49.4% voting to leave Canada. Since then, Canada has spent decades bending over backwards to accommodate Quebec’s demands to prevent outright secession including granting it special constitutional status and enormous fiscal transfers.
The result? Canada is not fully broken apart, but it is in a state of permanent constitutional negotiation, where every national debate is refracted through the question of “What will Quebec accept?” This has created resentment in other provinces, who see themselves as second-class partners in a federation beholden to Quebec’s demands.
Quebec shows that balkanisation is not always violent. It can be slow, bureaucratic, and exhausting. But it still has profound consequences.
An ex-girlfriend of mine is half-Serbian, half-Croatian, and her family home is in what is now Bosnia. Her family was torn apart by the war. Caught on different sides at times. Her father was killed, dying slowly from a gunshot wound over the course of months in a makeshift hospital. She was two years old. Her older siblings had been sent to Cyprus as refugees, but she was too young to leave her mother. The stories I heard from her and her family members over the course of our relationship were horrific. Tales of warning about communism, armed conflict, and carving up land into sovereign states. The problem is that the populations dissected by new borders do not neatly fit. Identities, commerce, culture, lives split.
Thirty years later, the region remains in dysfunction.
In political terms, balkanisation describes the process of a previously unified state breaking up into smaller, often ethnically or tribally defined territories each with its own governance, loyalties, and legal systems. The result is not simply “local control” or Kapa-Kingi’s idyllic vision of mana motuhake2. It is a deep, structural division of sovereignty that makes coherent and cohesive governance very difficult, weakens national identity, and fuels resentment between groups.
In New Zealand, balkanisation would not necessarily look like drawing new international borders. Instead, it would look like hapū-controlled jurisdictions where Crown law no longer applies, separate justice systems for Māori and non-Māori, and separate governing authorities operating independently within the same geographic territory.
The practical effect would be “states within a state,” where the government’s ability to make and enforce laws is removed. Over time, this leads to fragmented citizenship where rights, obligations, and even access to services depend on which territory you are in and whether you belong to the group that holds authority there.
Balkanisation does not produce harmony. In Bosnia, Cyprus, and Kashmir, the creation of divided jurisdictions has led to entrenched grievance, mutual suspicion, and an inability to function as a single polity. Just recently conflict broke out again between India and Pakistan over Kashmir as competing claims from independence movements leave the region in a permanent state of instability. Cyprus is a divided island where the Turkish-controlled north and Greek-controlled south operate as de facto separate countries. The “Green Line” buffer zone has existed for half a century, and reunification remains a pipe dream.
Far from a solution for reconciliation, balkanisation risks creating a country locked in permanent negotiation, where national unity and equal citizenship are traded away piece by piece. When you start creating ethnic or tribal enclaves with their own rules, you set in motion a process that is very hard to stop.
“What about Quebec?” I hear proponents of this model cry. Well, Quebec is a case study in “soft” balkanisation. It is a prime example of what happens when a region develops a strong ethno-national identity and begins asserting autonomy within a larger state. French-speaking Quebec has its own language laws, immigration policies, and cultural protections that are distinct from the rest of Canada.
Twice in the last 40 years (1980 and 1995) Quebec have held referenda on independence. The second referendum came within a hair’s breadth of succeeding with 49.4% voting to leave Canada. Since then, Canada has spent decades bending over backwards to accommodate Quebec’s demands to prevent outright secession including granting it special constitutional status and enormous fiscal transfers.
The result? Canada is not fully broken apart, but it is in a state of permanent constitutional negotiation, where every national debate is refracted through the question of “What will Quebec accept?” This has created resentment in other provinces, who see themselves as second-class partners in a federation beholden to Quebec’s demands.
Quebec shows that balkanisation is not always violent. It can be slow, bureaucratic, and exhausting. But it still has profound consequences.
The last rally of the 'Yes' campaign for Quebec independence
before the referendum in 1995.
If New Zealand follows a similar path granting hapū or iwi semi-autonomous jurisdictions, separate legal systems, or veto powers, we would likely end up in a Quebec-style scenario where every government, no matter its mandate, is forever renegotiating the state’s very existence. The risk is that, rather than closing the book on Treaty grievances, this would entrench them forever because each enclave has a perpetual incentive to demand more autonomy, more recognition, and more concessions from the Crown.
In short, once you create a separate constitutional identity for a region or group, you don’t move toward reconciliation you move toward permanent grievance and instability. And here is the heart of the problem for us in New Zealand: How can we ever reach “full and final settlement” when one side’s stated objective is not settlement at all, but sovereignty?
No financial settlement, no apology, no co-governance model will ever satisfy a movement whose ultimate goal is to dismantle Crown authority. That is why the demands will always escalate, why each settlement is declared inadequate the moment the ink is dry, and why reconciliation remains forever out of reach.
If the Crown continues down this path of concession without clarity, we face an existence of perpetual negotiation, de facto partition, and a constitutional crisis. Every government will be forced to renegotiate, re-settle, and re-apologise, creating permanent political instability. Hapū-controlled jurisdictions would cause a crisis of the rule of law with one set of rights in Auckland, for example, and another in the Far North; rights determined by ancestry and rohe, not by citizenship. Eventually the Crown will find itself in a position where it simply must either assert its sovereignty (risking being branded oppressive) or concede it (effectively ending New Zealand as a unitary state).
None of this looks like the “Treaty partnership” that many well-meaning New Zealanders imagine when we talk about the Treaty of Waitangi.
“But Ani, this is all just activist pipe dreams!” Is it? I certainly used to see it that way. But our Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) political system enables small parties to wield considerable power and effect significant change.
It is no small detail that based on current polling Labour would require Te Pāti Māori’s support to form a government in 2026. That means at the next election the very party pushing hardest for dismantling Crown authority could hold the balance of power and with it, the future of New Zealand’s constitutional order.
How can a party committed to the weakening, if not outright dismantling, of the New Zealand state be part of its government? It is a contradiction so stark that it should alarm every New Zealander, regardless of political stripe. When the objective of a partner is not to govern effectively but to transfer power away from Parliament, from the courts, from the very structures that hold our country together then that partner is not a coalition ally but a constitutional saboteur.
Chris Hipkins and the Labour Party have a duty to the country to draw a bright, clear line here. They must rule out any form of annexation or separate sovereignty as part of any coalition deal. They cannot continue to mumble vague assurances about “honouring the Treaty” without explaining whether they believe that means creating hapū-run autonomous jurisdictions or maintaining a single legal framework for all citizens.
Even the Greens, who so often position themselves as champions of justice, must front up and tell New Zealanders whether they support a future where the Crown’s authority stops at arbitrary boundaries within our existing state. Are they prepared to tell the public, openly, that their vision includes separate justice systems and separate citizenship obligations and rights? If so, let them say it plainly before the election so voters can decide whether they want that future.
Labour must outline what the future of Treaty settlements and Māori–Crown relations would look like under their leadership. Will they commit to full and final settlements that actually close the book? Will they insist that there is a single, unified New Zealand legal system? Or will they continue down this path toward permanent grievance and partition? Is balkanisation on the table in the Labour Caucus room?
These questions cannot be kicked down the road any longer. Particularly with rumours rife that Hipkins is on the way out and off to the UK, with Peeni Henare named as one of the front runners to take over. The public deserves clarity before we enter another three years of government by coalition compromise. New Zealanders are entitled to know whether Labour intends to protect the integrity of the state or trade away parts of it for the numbers it needs to sit on the Treasury benches.
If New Zealand follows a similar path granting hapū or iwi semi-autonomous jurisdictions, separate legal systems, or veto powers, we would likely end up in a Quebec-style scenario where every government, no matter its mandate, is forever renegotiating the state’s very existence. The risk is that, rather than closing the book on Treaty grievances, this would entrench them forever because each enclave has a perpetual incentive to demand more autonomy, more recognition, and more concessions from the Crown.
In short, once you create a separate constitutional identity for a region or group, you don’t move toward reconciliation you move toward permanent grievance and instability. And here is the heart of the problem for us in New Zealand: How can we ever reach “full and final settlement” when one side’s stated objective is not settlement at all, but sovereignty?
No financial settlement, no apology, no co-governance model will ever satisfy a movement whose ultimate goal is to dismantle Crown authority. That is why the demands will always escalate, why each settlement is declared inadequate the moment the ink is dry, and why reconciliation remains forever out of reach.
If the Crown continues down this path of concession without clarity, we face an existence of perpetual negotiation, de facto partition, and a constitutional crisis. Every government will be forced to renegotiate, re-settle, and re-apologise, creating permanent political instability. Hapū-controlled jurisdictions would cause a crisis of the rule of law with one set of rights in Auckland, for example, and another in the Far North; rights determined by ancestry and rohe, not by citizenship. Eventually the Crown will find itself in a position where it simply must either assert its sovereignty (risking being branded oppressive) or concede it (effectively ending New Zealand as a unitary state).
None of this looks like the “Treaty partnership” that many well-meaning New Zealanders imagine when we talk about the Treaty of Waitangi.
“But Ani, this is all just activist pipe dreams!” Is it? I certainly used to see it that way. But our Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) political system enables small parties to wield considerable power and effect significant change.
It is no small detail that based on current polling Labour would require Te Pāti Māori’s support to form a government in 2026. That means at the next election the very party pushing hardest for dismantling Crown authority could hold the balance of power and with it, the future of New Zealand’s constitutional order.
How can a party committed to the weakening, if not outright dismantling, of the New Zealand state be part of its government? It is a contradiction so stark that it should alarm every New Zealander, regardless of political stripe. When the objective of a partner is not to govern effectively but to transfer power away from Parliament, from the courts, from the very structures that hold our country together then that partner is not a coalition ally but a constitutional saboteur.
Chris Hipkins and the Labour Party have a duty to the country to draw a bright, clear line here. They must rule out any form of annexation or separate sovereignty as part of any coalition deal. They cannot continue to mumble vague assurances about “honouring the Treaty” without explaining whether they believe that means creating hapū-run autonomous jurisdictions or maintaining a single legal framework for all citizens.
Even the Greens, who so often position themselves as champions of justice, must front up and tell New Zealanders whether they support a future where the Crown’s authority stops at arbitrary boundaries within our existing state. Are they prepared to tell the public, openly, that their vision includes separate justice systems and separate citizenship obligations and rights? If so, let them say it plainly before the election so voters can decide whether they want that future.
Labour must outline what the future of Treaty settlements and Māori–Crown relations would look like under their leadership. Will they commit to full and final settlements that actually close the book? Will they insist that there is a single, unified New Zealand legal system? Or will they continue down this path toward permanent grievance and partition? Is balkanisation on the table in the Labour Caucus room?
These questions cannot be kicked down the road any longer. Particularly with rumours rife that Hipkins is on the way out and off to the UK, with Peeni Henare named as one of the front runners to take over. The public deserves clarity before we enter another three years of government by coalition compromise. New Zealanders are entitled to know whether Labour intends to protect the integrity of the state or trade away parts of it for the numbers it needs to sit on the Treasury benches.
Perhaps most disturbing in all of this is the absolute disinterest and, in some cases, deliberate avoidance our mainstream media shows when it comes to reporting on the radicalisation of the activist movement orbiting Te Pāti Māori. These are not fringe social media influencers yelling into the void; they are well-organised, well-funded, and increasingly emboldened campaigns that openly question the legitimacy of the New Zealand state.
It is negligent and a complete dereliction of duty. I can’t decide how much of it is because journalists and editors support the Toitū Te Tiriti vision and how much is that they are chronically uncurious, lazy, and incapable of political analysis deeper than a puddle.
The refusal to scrutinise Māori sovereignty activism is not journalistic neutrality, it is complicity. When the media treats these ideas as normal and uncontroversial, it actively partakes in shifting the Overton window. It tells the public that the dismantling of the state is simply part of a righteous march toward justice. It frames the debate so that anyone who asks questions is painted as reactionary or racist.
I will be called these things for writing this. Every time I attempt a respectful but robust critique of these issues I am peppered with threats and abuse online. I have had to decide to accept that activists will call me racist even though I know I am not. I am not anti-Māori; I am concerned about the tensions ramping up in New Zealand and a future looking more and more likely to contain conflict.
Imagine, for a moment, if a group on the far-right called for separate, white-only governance structures, or announced it would no longer recognise the authority of Parliament. It would lead the 6pm news. There would be breathless coverage about “rising extremism” and panel discussions about de-radicalisation. Yet when similar rhetoric comes from Te Pāti Māori, we are fed glowing features about mana motuhake and human interest stories.
This double standard does not merely distort public perception, it actively prevents New Zealanders from grasping the stakes. How can the public give informed consent to constitutional change when they are being fed a steady diet of one-sided coverage?
The result is a dangerously uninformed electorate. Many Kiwis still think this is a debate about better outcomes in health or education or life-expectancy, when what is actually being proposed is the withdrawal of the Crown from significant parts of the country. By the time they realise, it may be too late to undo. That is the explicit aim of radical sovereignty activists.
Journalism is meant to be the first line of defence for democracy. Right now, it is acting like the welcoming committee for separatism.
Kapa-Kingi’s Spinoff piece is more than an academic argument; it is a shot across the bow of the New Zealand state. We can either confront the reality of what is being demanded or continue marching toward balkanisation, hoping it will somehow, against the odds, lead to reconciliation.
But the Crown cannot build unity on a foundation of permanent separation. It cannot deliver equality by creating separate sovereignties. And it cannot settle the Treaty if one side does not believe settlement is even possible or even want it at all.
This is the fork in the road. We either re-affirm that New Zealand is one nation under one law or we start the process of becoming something very different, and far more divided.
1 Whenua rangatira translates to “chiefly land” or “paramount land.” In context, it refers to land that is considered ancestrally significant, collectively owned, and central to the mana of an iwi or hapū. When activists or scholars refer to whenua rangatira, they are usually talking about land that should remain in collective Māori control (not sold off or alienated under Crown law) and that carries a spiritual and political significance, not just economic value.
2 Mana motuhake is often translated as “separate authority,” “autonomy,” or “self-determination.” It refers to the right of Māori to determine their own destiny (socially, politically, economically) without being subsumed by Crown authority. It’s closely tied to the idea of tino rangatiratanga.
Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.
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