If the “Deep State” is defined as a power-based network within a government that operates in pursuit of its own agendas and goals instead of those of the country’s democratically elected leaders, then New Zealand has a serious problem.
Land Information New Zealand typifies the problem. A visit to their website shows that two years after the Coalition Government was elected with a clear commitment that public service agencies will have their primary name in English, they still promote themselves as “Toitu Te Whenua”.
One could argue that the problem lies with the Public Service Minister for leaving it to individual ministers instead of issuing an across-the-board name change directive.
But the prioritisation of Maori names under the Ardern administration was not done through Ministerial decree by, but through voluntary decisions taken by individual agencies to comply with their policy objectives: “LINZ decides to lead with its te reo Maori name, Toitu Te Whenua, to reflect its deepening commitment to its partnership with Maori.”
While the switch to a Maori name occurred within a few months of Labour’s election, two years after the Coalition was elected with an English-name-first policy, the department is still refusing to comply.
In fact, when recently challenged by an NZCPR reader as to why their English name wasn’t listed first, they replied: “Te Reo Maori is an official language of New Zealand and until we have been advised otherwise, we will remain committed to promoting its place in New Zealand.”
The Internal Affairs Minister, Brooke van Velden, explains her approach: “Kiwis told us that they wanted their Government Departments to be easier to engage with by putting English names first, as it is the language that the vast majority of the country speaks. What I have done with the Department of Internal Affairs is to strike a balance between ensuring people can clearly understand the name of the Department, without spending heaps of time or money on it. In fact, when officials suggested changing digital branding for DIA would require external consultants and 50 hours of staff time, I suggested I could flip the text myself with Photoshop. As expected, they did drop the cost estimate after that.”
An analysis of Government agencies listed in the directory compiled by the Public Service Commission – which astonishingly, given its role to “support the Government to implement its policies” still calls itself “Te Kawa Mataaho” – shows that of the 33 main Government Departments, 19 display their English name first, while the rest are still operating in defiance of government policy. In addition, hundreds of other State agencies are listed, some of which comply, but many do not.
With voters becoming increasingly frustrated at the Coalition’s seeming inability to rein in public service activism, wouldn’t it make sense for a simple amendment to be included in the Public Service Amendment Bill that’s currently before Parliament directing public sector agencies to prioritise their legal English name – and specifying that official communications should be provided in English or Maori, not a mix of the two?
It turns out that it is the Crown’s strategy for Maori Language Revitalisation 2019-2023,“Maihi Karauna”, that underpins the state sector’s prioritisation of the Maori language. The brainchild of former Maori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta, the document states that this strategy, which also promotes Te Tiriti o Waitangi ‘partnerships’, “remains in place until it is replaced by an updated strategy”. Since the Coalition has not bothered to update the strategy, it is Nanaia Mahuta’s radical agenda to prioritise the Maori language that still guides the operation of the public sector.
This is symptomatic of a wider malaise.
As the refusal of government agencies to comply with Coalition objectives shows only too clearly, New Zealand’s public institutions have been captured by a form of cultural Marxism that embraces race-based identity politics and Te Tiriti social justice.
Driving this radical agenda to advance Maori supremacy instead of democracy is a “Deep State” network of bureaucrats and academics, who, along with a vast array of private sector advocates including the legacy media and the unions, promote race-based compacts that resist reform.
Auckland University’s Professor Elizabeth Rata has long warned about this development, explaining that the Maori tribal ‘renaissance’ was spearheaded by academics in the seventies, who believed activists should be ‘brought into government institutions to change things from within’: “The bicultural, Maori-Pakeha movement in New Zealand has been a mistake. It is subverting democracy, erecting ethnic boundaries between Maori and non-Maori and promoting a cultural elite within Maoridom. Biculturalism has led to separatism. It also led to the belief that somehow our ethnicity was our primary identity – more basic than any other identity we could choose.”
While political rights in most liberal democracies are grounded in citizenship and equality, in New Zealand the adoption of a bicultural framework gave political weight to ethnic identity, elevating Maori ethnicity into its own political class with distinct rights and status. This led to the development of parallel power structures requiring co-governance and iwi consultation.
As a result of biculturalism, ‘ethnicity’ has now become a political power base that undermines the democratic principle of equal representation, allowing unelected tribal authorities to gain decision-making power without public scrutiny.
In a more recent manoeuvre, the “Treaty of Waitangi” has been replaced in our statutory framework by a weaponised alternative: “Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. Described simply as the ‘Maori version of the Treaty’, Te Tiriti embodies constitutional rights that give rise to co-governance, partnership, and race-based entitlement.
Through this sinister sleight of hand, ideological goals are being widely embedded under the guise of ‘Treaty compliance’ without Parliamentary oversight. And the problem unsuspecting New Zealanders now face is that wherever Te Tiriti has been adopted – whether by government agencies or private sector organisations – tribal leaders are commandeering power-sharing co-governance roles.
As a result, iwi now call the shots in a vast array of ‘official’ circumstances where they are able to operate in their own self-interest outside of democratic scrutiny, boosting their self-worth and billion-dollar balance sheets.
This ideological capture is most visible in our cultural institutions. Museums – once guardians of our shared history – now promote a separatist narrative of dual sovereignty and racial entitlement. George Orwell’s warning in his dystopian novel 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future”, is now a reality, as tribal interests reshape New Zealand history to legitimise race-based power.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, Dr Brian Gill, a former curator at Auckland Museum, outlines the situation:
“New Zealand is too small for separate natural history or ethnographic museums. Instead, the four largest museums – in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin – are encyclopaedic general museums where science and culture must co-habit. Among their duties these museums must prominently promote their science half. Science museums have ‘an ethical responsibility to safeguard scientific integrity’ and need ‘loyalty to facts and evidence’.
“Te Papa disrupted this traditional arrangement, when in 2019 it unveiled a new principal natural history gallery – Te Taiao/Nature. Instead of devoting it exclusively to science, as in the natural history galleries it replaced, Te Papa incorporated Maori cultural material throughout, to contrive a novel science-culture gallery. Spiritual beliefs now sit alongside scientific knowledge. Te Taiao/Nature explains the natural world ‘through matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) alongside science’.
“By putting the Maori view of nature in the single science gallery, Te Papa seems to promote the postmodernist ideas that there are no universal truths and that all knowledge is culturally derived. This confused and simplistic ideology seeks to undermine science and other narratives construed as Eurocentric and colonial. By shrinking its science contribution in this way, Te Papa wavers from its truth-seeking mission.”
This Maori cultural takeover of our museums and the undermining of their political neutrality is symptomatic of the wholesale capture of public institutions – including our Courts. This can be seen only too clearly in the debacle over the Marine and Coastal Area Act.
Introduced by National in 2011 to allow a minority of tribal claimants in remote parts of the coast to gain Customary Marine Title, the law was re-written by the Courts to allow all virtually all claimants to succeed. With almost 600 opportunistic claims covering the entire coastline of New Zealand many times over, Judges in the High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court aimed to deliver control of the coast to Maori by over-riding the intent of Parliament.
Fortunately for New Zealand, the Coalition stepped in to reverse the takeover. Customary Title tests have been strengthened and the decisions of judges nullified through an Amendment Bill that was passed into law last week. But with Labour promising to repeal the new law once elected, the Coalition now needs to go further if it is to prevent a tribal takeover of the coast.
In light of rising geopolitical tensions and increasing national security risks, the Coalition should return control of the country’s coastline and Territorial Sea to the Crown, by repealing the Marine and Coastal Area Act and restoring Labour’s 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act.
At the heart of the controversy over the Marine and Coastal Area Act was the inclusion of “tikanga” or Maori custom in the legislation. Since it means whatever Maori want it to mean, Judges were able to use it to redefine the law in favour of claimants.
With tikanga now being entrenched in New Zealand law – not as a result of government authorisation but through the institutional machinery of the State – yet another weaponised power base is being created, which not only bypasses democratic scrutiny, but undermines the Rule of Law.
Fortunately – the Coalition is now raising concerns about these developments.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has warned that incorporating tikanga into the law risks creating a “bespoke” legal system that’s “hard to replicate and understand”. With the potential to deter investment and undermine confidence in New Zealand law, he’s now leading a push to reassert Parliamentary sovereignty and redefine its role in order to protect democracy and economic stability.
And to see where the empowerment of tikanga is heading, we need only reflect on yet another example of state activism – the outrageous decision of the Broadcasting Standards Authority to expand their mandate from radio and TV into digital media in order to prosecute The Platform’s Sean Plunket for calling tikanga “mumbo jumbo” – which it is!
With the Prime Minister describing the BSA’s actions as “overreach” and the Broadcasting Minister now questioning whether this regulator needs to exist at all, it appears that the agency’s attempt at a power grab could result in its own demise.
While the weaponisation of ethnicity, of tikanga, and of Te Tiriti are undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg, continuing down this path of racial division, where a small elite thrive by fostering resentment against other New Zealanders, cannot end well.
Since no nation prospers when its people are divided, it is time to take our country back.
To strengthen our democratic system and restore equal rights in New Zealand, we must follow other OECD countries and remove race and ethnicity from the government sector – not only overhauling legislation, but also policies, agency mandates, service delivery models, data systems, public communications, and constitutional frameworks.
Furthermore, since cultural constructs that promote separatism and superior rights, including tikanga, matauranga Maori, and Te Tiriti, have also been embedded and empowered, they too must be removed with related programmes defunded.
While it may be more convenient to turn a blind eye and dismiss these matters as unimportant, the reality is that those influential activists embedded deep within the institutions of government, are relentlessly driving an agenda to replace our democracy with tribal rule by 2040.
Unless a Government steps in and removes the separatist framework upon which they are building their success, they will succeed.
Doing nothing, is no longer an option.
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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
*Should an amendment be included in the Public Service Amendment Bill directing public agencies to prioritise their legal English name?
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