New Zealand has a government problem, and it’s not taxes or crime—it’s obsession. They’ve become fixated on reviving Maori, not through natural interest or genuine demand, but through brute force. And the tool of choice? Legislation. The Maori Language Act has turned into a bottomless pit of taxpayer cash, all to keep a dead language staggering around like a zombie.
A living language doesn’t need government life support. English didn’t. Mandarin didn’t. Hindi didn’t. They spread because people wanted them—because they were useful. Maori is the opposite. It is being stapled into schools and government offices because left to its own devices, it wouldn’t survive. And deep down, everyone knows that.
Kids are already overloaded. Many are bilingual at home—Chinese, Indian, Samoan, Tongan, take your pick. Forcing a third language on top of that? Completely unnecessary. It doesn’t open doors; it slams them shut. The world runs on English, and if we’re serious about preparing kids for success, that’s where the focus should stay. Not on a language that’s little more than a political vanity project.
Of course, the defenders trot out the same tired line: “But Maori children were once forced to speak English!” Yes—and a hundred years later, English is what gives them access to the world. That argument collapses under its own weight. Today’s children need skills that will feed them, house them, and give them futures. Pretending that resurrecting a language solves historical grievances is nothing more than emotional blackmail.
Mandatory Maori isn’t about education—it’s about control. When people won’t pick something willingly, politicians make it compulsory.
That’s what the Maori Language Act exists for: to force-feed the country something it would never choose on its own. Strip that Act away, and the entire revival project crumbles to dust overnight.
And let’s deal with the inevitable smear: “If you oppose mandatory Maori, you’re racist.” Nonsense. Refusing to waste time on something irrelevant isn’t racism—it’s reality. The “racism” card is nothing but a silencer, waved around by people who can’t win the debate any other way.
The truth couldn’t be simpler: if you want to learn Maori, go for it. Optional classes, clubs, cultural programs—fine. But mandatory? No. Mandatory is theft. Mandatory is politicians using children as pawns. Mandatory is the state hijacking education to prop up its pet project.
This whole scheme is a fraud. It drains money, time, and energy from things that actually matter—healthcare, housing, infrastructure, literacy, technology. All sacrificed on the altar of a language revival that nobody asked for and nobody needs.
Repeal the Maori Language Act. Stop pouring millions into this fantasy. Give people the freedom to choose. Maori should be optional—always optional. Anything else is a waste of everyone’s time and a betrayal of the country’s future.
Source: Facebook
Kids are already overloaded. Many are bilingual at home—Chinese, Indian, Samoan, Tongan, take your pick. Forcing a third language on top of that? Completely unnecessary. It doesn’t open doors; it slams them shut. The world runs on English, and if we’re serious about preparing kids for success, that’s where the focus should stay. Not on a language that’s little more than a political vanity project.
Of course, the defenders trot out the same tired line: “But Maori children were once forced to speak English!” Yes—and a hundred years later, English is what gives them access to the world. That argument collapses under its own weight. Today’s children need skills that will feed them, house them, and give them futures. Pretending that resurrecting a language solves historical grievances is nothing more than emotional blackmail.
Mandatory Maori isn’t about education—it’s about control. When people won’t pick something willingly, politicians make it compulsory.
That’s what the Maori Language Act exists for: to force-feed the country something it would never choose on its own. Strip that Act away, and the entire revival project crumbles to dust overnight.
And let’s deal with the inevitable smear: “If you oppose mandatory Maori, you’re racist.” Nonsense. Refusing to waste time on something irrelevant isn’t racism—it’s reality. The “racism” card is nothing but a silencer, waved around by people who can’t win the debate any other way.
The truth couldn’t be simpler: if you want to learn Maori, go for it. Optional classes, clubs, cultural programs—fine. But mandatory? No. Mandatory is theft. Mandatory is politicians using children as pawns. Mandatory is the state hijacking education to prop up its pet project.
This whole scheme is a fraud. It drains money, time, and energy from things that actually matter—healthcare, housing, infrastructure, literacy, technology. All sacrificed on the altar of a language revival that nobody asked for and nobody needs.
Repeal the Maori Language Act. Stop pouring millions into this fantasy. Give people the freedom to choose. Maori should be optional—always optional. Anything else is a waste of everyone’s time and a betrayal of the country’s future.
Source: Facebook
13 comments:
All too true and obvious. No wonder the country is in a mess.
Hear, hear! And definitely, no pun intended.
My understanding is that Maori parents use to want their children educated in the English language. They were not forced. That is only an Activist's phony view on the subject. A view to be completely ignored,
In support of Fred H. Wiremu Parker says in a chapter essay “The Substance that Remains” (in Wards, Thirteen Facets, 1978, p. 187):
Maori Language
Those who say that the suppression of Maori culture in schools was a deliberate pakeha device to do away with Maori culture would be well advised to do a little research. The truth is that well-intentioned, but as we now know misguided, Maoris and pakehas were convinced that they were acting in the best interests of the Maori people. Mr Takamoana, one of the first newly elected Maori members of Parliament said in Parliament in 1871 ‘that the whole of the Maoris in this Island request that the Government should give instruction that the Maoris should be taught in English only.’9 Another petition by Renata Kawepo and 790 others, and also one from Piri Ropata and 200 others asked for every endeavour to have schools established throughout the country so that Maori children could learn the English language.
As early as 1876 a petition to Parliament from We Te Hakiro and 316 others, asked that all children of two years of age, when just able to speak, should be taught the English language, so that their first language should be English. The petition also asked that not a word of Maori be allowed to be spoken in the school, and that the schoolmaster, his wife, and children be altogether ignorant of the Maori language.
For years the leaders of the Young Maori Party preached up and down the country what both A. T. Ngata and Dr Maui Pomare believed that ‘the first subject in order of priority in the school curriculum was English, the second most important subject was English, the third most important subject was English and then arithmetic and other subjects.’
It's well documented that wise Maori leaders requested in writing that the Maori children were to be taught English only at school - they got their te reo at home.
All kids suffered corporal punishment, not just the Maori kids.
Thank you Barrie for your definitive quote from history.
The Maori language enforcement is pure Marxism which always has to find an oppressor and the oppressed. It seems if you can't find an oppressor make one up!
Well now our entire population is being oppressed by fraudulent claims and forced to pay in taxes for this self destruction. What nonsense that a language which used to have a vocabulary of a few thousand words is elevating itself by paying people to make up thousands of words.
Another absurdity is the belief , we are supposed to accept that this synthetic made up te reo is sacred. There is nothing sacred about the word utu . It is totally evil causing death and misery.
I too severally got the strap at school for talking in class, in English. One would boast of it in the playground, pretty much as I'm doing now.
Barrie, I totally agree with you. Good trusting NZers [fools, I say] allow Mori language promotion not fully understanding what a STUPID exercise it is. Hard enough now to get teachers with enough understanding of English to teach that.....
PS..... "UTU" on-going historical revenge - blood killing. When Rome invaded Britain, the locals were in "wode" - ie covered in Tatts. That went out of fashion with the efficiency of Roman "colonisers". Then later the Danes arrived with the DANELAW, and revenge killing/utu was stopped. Result - a country under a rule of law, refined in time by Magna Carta. Not enough history taught today....
The education system is plagued and always has been, by individuals eager to be seen to grasp the latest fashion and so improve their standing (or so they assume). In the 70s and 80s te reo surfaced as the "in" cause. The advocates are now mature. Assuming they take some interest in the real world beyond education, I wonder how many now question their actions of old. Incidentally the judgement of the same advocates professed sycophantic support for the Clay reading method.
In addition to facility with English there needs to be a history syllabus that provides an ACCURATE picture of this country's development and the CORRECT view of how maoris were treated, always to their own benefit.
"The truth is that well-intentioned, but as we now know misguided, Maoris and pakehas were convinced that they were acting in the best interests of the Maori people". The Maori elders and many Europeans in the 1800's were NOT "misguided" in their desire that Maori learn English in NZ schools. They clearly understood that the ability to speak and write English allowed Maori to engage in the wider world of commerce, the arts, science, literature, and European knowledge in general. It gave them the ability to move beyond a limited stone-age insular culture. Te Reo is a dead end and useless in the wider world outside New Zealand. Promoting it is a vanity project, especially when only a small percentage of Maori speak it.
A primitive stone-age verbal only language with various dialects and a very limited vocabulary, all reinvented with a great many new words and now formalised in writing with diacritics. Culture - really, or just very expensive virtue signal? Our politicians have again failed us by not giving us a choice.
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