The claim that Māori rights are “under serious threat” relies almost entirely on two assertions: that Māori-specific institutions and funding streams are inherently protective of Māori wellbeing, and that scaling them back constitutes discrimination. Neither claim withstands scrutiny.
Disestablishing the Māori Health Authority did not remove healthcare from Māori. Māori remain fully entitled to publicly funded health services - exactly as all New Zealanders are. What changed was the rejection of a parallel bureaucracy organised by ethnicity rather than need. Universal provision is not racism; it is the foundation of a liberal democracy.
Likewise, funding reprioritisation is being misrepresented as “cuts to Māori”. The Government has not abolished Māori language, culture, education, or housing. It has questioned whether ring-fenced ethnic programmes - many with weak accountability and mixed outcomes - are the best way to improve results. Pointing to persistent disparities while defending decades of targeted spending is an argument against the status quo, not for it.
The invocation of the United Nations adds drama, not clarity. UN committees do not govern New Zealand, nor do they determine the constitutional meaning of Te Tiriti. Their reports are advisory, often informed by activist submissions, and routinely criticised for treating race-based policy as a human right rather than a political choice. New Zealand remains one of the world’s most generous funders of Indigenous programmes - by any objective measure.
Most telling is the repeated conflation of Treaty partnership with permanent political veto. Te Tiriti guaranteed equal rights under the Crown, not separate systems of governance indefinitely insulated from democratic review. Re-examining how the so-called Treaty principles (1974/1986-87*) are applied in law is not “erasure”; it is constitutional housekeeping long overdue.
New Zealand is not at a crossroads between justice and betrayal. It is navigating a necessary correction - away from race-based administration and toward equal citizenship, transparency, and outcomes that actually work.
Disagreement is not oppression. Accountability is not hostility. The Crown’s obligation is to govern for all New Zealanders - not to preserve separatist institutions.
* https://sites.google.com/site/treaty4dummies/home/treaty-principles
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
Likewise, funding reprioritisation is being misrepresented as “cuts to Māori”. The Government has not abolished Māori language, culture, education, or housing. It has questioned whether ring-fenced ethnic programmes - many with weak accountability and mixed outcomes - are the best way to improve results. Pointing to persistent disparities while defending decades of targeted spending is an argument against the status quo, not for it.
The invocation of the United Nations adds drama, not clarity. UN committees do not govern New Zealand, nor do they determine the constitutional meaning of Te Tiriti. Their reports are advisory, often informed by activist submissions, and routinely criticised for treating race-based policy as a human right rather than a political choice. New Zealand remains one of the world’s most generous funders of Indigenous programmes - by any objective measure.
Most telling is the repeated conflation of Treaty partnership with permanent political veto. Te Tiriti guaranteed equal rights under the Crown, not separate systems of governance indefinitely insulated from democratic review. Re-examining how the so-called Treaty principles (1974/1986-87*) are applied in law is not “erasure”; it is constitutional housekeeping long overdue.
New Zealand is not at a crossroads between justice and betrayal. It is navigating a necessary correction - away from race-based administration and toward equal citizenship, transparency, and outcomes that actually work.
Disagreement is not oppression. Accountability is not hostility. The Crown’s obligation is to govern for all New Zealanders - not to preserve separatist institutions.
* https://sites.google.com/site/treaty4dummies/home/treaty-principles
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
15 comments:
Excellent short and to the point article, Geoff. Should be Item 1 on the agenda of the first cabinet meeting of 2026.
The screams from the elite are very loud. They can see the money stream they have become used to being eroded, that is the real problem. Just hope national have the guts to face the facts.
PM Luxon must convince voters (supporters or not) that he is bound to govern for all NZs... he has a long way to go in a short time.
Indeed. Race-based administration and funding are fundamentally 'racist' and unquestionably anathema to democracy and equality. Despite what some may believe or claim, there is no justification for this practice in the Treaty of Waitangi; it flies in the face of the intent of the Human Rights Act 1993 [viz. sec 5 (1)(c) sec 21(f)]; and, it also conflicts with the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (viz. Affirmation and Articles 2, 9, & 46 - not that tangata Maori are 'indigenous' in any event).
As time inevitably marches on and those with Maori ancestry become ever more interwoven and diluted with the ancestry of others, we should be seeking to unify, not divide.
If we know and understand little else, we should know and truly advocate Hobson's intent with his words, "He iwi tahi tatou." Those that seek otherwise are either fundamentally naive, or are intent on personal advantage and the lining of their own pockets.
Excellent article, Geoff. And the whole point is that SEPERATE DEVELOPMENT/ FUNDING DOES NOT WORK, EVER.
IT IS APARTHEID pure and simple.
Dear NZ Herald editors, how about printing opinion pieces like this?????? Give me a good reason why you dont
Also - Thanks Peter (above) for your very good, relevant points.
Well put , Geoff.
To add:
What Waatea News is producing here is not analysis of 2025. It is a maintenance narrative — a story designed to protect institutional arrangements at the point they are being democratically wound back.
The structure is familiar and closely follows the He Puapua road map, as articulated by Claire Charters and advanced in practice by Lady Tureiti Moxon.
First comes the assertion of existential threat. Ordinary policy changes — funding reprioritisation, institutional reform, legislative review — are framed as “betrayal”, “erasure”, or an unprecedented attack on Māori rights. Evidence is secondary. Once reform is cast as a rights violation, disagreement itself becomes illegitimate.
Second, democracy is reframed as conditional. Electoral mandate and universal provision are treated as inferior to Treaty “partnership”. Authority is no longer derived from votes or outcomes, but from identity. This is not participation; it is a claim to ongoing co-governance, regardless of public consent.
Third, policy preferences are inflated into rights. Māori-specific institutions, funding streams and media protections are described not as political choices but as safeguards of identity. To question them is to cause cultural harm. This is precisely the juridical logic Lady Moxon has promoted: once identity is framed as vulnerable, courts and international bodies are invited to arbitrate domestic policy.
Fourth, the remedy is always entrenchment. The answer is never temporary support, review, or improved performance, but permanent embedding — treaty-based governance, protected funding, mandated consultation, and insulation from future democratic change. This is He Puapua in motion.
Waatea’s role in this ecosystem is not incidental. It is closely aligned with Willie Jackson and John Tamihere through Māori-first political and social organisations such as MUMA and the Waipareira Trust. Its function is not to interrogate this ideology, but to normalise and defend it — especially when political momentum turns against it.
Most revealing is what goes unquestioned. Taxpayer support is treated as a given right, not a contested public choice. There is almost no discussion of standing on one’s own feet, of audience demand, of performance, or of whether publicly funded Māori media should be expected to adapt and compete like everyone else. Funding is assumed; scrutiny is framed as hostility.
That is why the narrative of perpetual betrayal persists. What is being lost is not rights, services, or citizenship. It is institutional influence and insulation from review.
The story must therefore continue, because its purpose is not to describe reality, but to preserve authority.
—PB
PS To previous comment on the urgency of a referendum on citizen equality. Given the elements of this strategy ( funding assumed, no disagreement or scrutiny etc): what would PB suggest as the best tactics to counter or challenge this ?
PB @ 9.56 Scrutiny is not only framed as hostility, it is always also (apparently) racist to boot.
The drive for ethno-superiority doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There is a template, and it’s been in plain sight for years.
He Puapua set out a strategy not of persuasion, but of institutional embedding — advancing a contested constitutional vision by lodging it inside media narratives, academic orthodoxy, bureaucratic practice, and, increasingly, judicial interpretation. The point was never to win a public argument. It was to make the argument unnecessary.
That’s why taxpayer funding is spoken of as a right rather than a choice; why scrutiny is reframed as hostility or racism; why disagreement is treated as bad faith; and why democratic review is cast as betrayal. These are not random complaints. They are pressure points.
The role of sympathetic media is to normalise the claims. Academics supply the moral language. Bureaucrats implement by guidance rather than statute. Courts are then asked to recognise these arrangements as settled principles. By the time voters are consulted — if they ever are — the ground has already shifted.
Calling this out is not inflammatory.
It is civic hygiene. He Puapua did not require universal consent; it required quiet uptake. The proper response is not silence or deference, but exposure: insistence on process, evidence, accountability, and democratic authority.
Disagreement is not oppression. Scrutiny is not racism. And constitutional change should not be smuggled in under the cover of grievance.
And let’s push the government MPs over and over until Luxon listens, or we move to use our votes tactically.
—PB
Of course, while the above is all fair comment and appropriate, what’s not mentioned is the behind ‘closed doors’ conflabs one of our influential politicians is having with members of the Iwi Chairs. That MP is simply not interested in the views of the populous – the very same public that enfranchised him to call the shots on their behalf.
No, PM Luxon is without a backbone, but is a seeker of the path of least resistance and appeasement to his coveted prize – that of a knighthood. Like his mentor (who coveted and received the same from the anointed few - i.e. not with the blessing of the general public), he is more than happy to sell us all short in seeking that end.
Totally agree with Anonymous at 8.45 am. There is huge scope fro objective editiorials but we never get them in the msm.There is very little representing the objective, the middle, or the somewhat right leaning.
To EA 7. 58pm: Yes - major scope but little result from Goldsmith's tweaking (Crump, Joyce and co). Speaks volumes re. intent.
To PC at 6.26am: "Closed door talks in plain sight" suggests breathtaking hubris - or,
desperation.
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