One of the requirements demands that IKEA invite representatives from seven different mana whenua groups at every major stage of earthworks. Seven. For one site. It’s not “optional engagement” or “friendly consultation”. It is compulsory attendance, compulsory notice, compulsory involvement, and compulsory ceremonial participation. That isn’t cultural respect. That is policy-mandated racial gatekeeping.
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The forced karakia requirement is even worse. Karakia is personal. It is spiritual. It belongs to individuals who choose to practise it. Somehow, in modern 2025 New Zealand, the government has decided that private companies must take part in it as part of their legal obligations to the state. There is nothing respectful about turning someone’s spiritual practice into a bureaucratic checkbox. It cheapens the ceremony and burdens the people forced to perform it.
Then you get to “cultural monitoring”. Mana whenua must be given the opportunity to carry out monitoring “as deemed required by them”. In other words, they get to decide when it happens, how often it happens, and how much it will cost. There is no limit, no definition, and no accountability. This is not partnership. This is not stewardship. This is the state handing a racially-defined group the power to dictate the terms of a private development.
To top it off, mana whenua must also be given access to the site at their discretion. Not at agreed times. Not with notice. Their discretion. That kind of access would never be granted to any other group, anywhere, under any other circumstance. Yet here, it is written into the rules, stamped as policy, and treated as normal.
New Zealand now operates two legal systems. One for everyone, and one in which an ancestry-based group is given authority, veto power, and ceremonial control over private land use. That is the literal definition of structural racism. It is not an insult. It is a statement of fact. When the rules change based on who your ancestors were, the system itself is racist.
And the consequences are enormous. Construction costs balloon. Projects stall. Investors walk away. People shake their heads and ask why everything here is so expensive. Yet the answer is sitting right in front of us. Every additional consultant, every ceremonial requirement, every monitoring process, every site visit, every meeting, every layer of cultural bureaucracy pushes the cost higher and higher. This is why New Zealand can’t build anything anymore.
Worse still, all of this dividing, categorising, separating and elevating people by race is tearing the country apart. Ordinary people feel like strangers in their own land. They feel unheard. They feel dismissed. And they feel exhausted by a political class that refuses to acknowledge the obvious truth that separatism is government policy now.
New Zealand did not become this way overnight. But it has become this way. And many New Zealanders are reaching the point of asking whether this is a place they can stay much longer.
If you want an example of how broken the system is, look no further than a consent form for a bloody IKEA store. When a flatpack warehouse requires ancestral clearance rituals and round-the-clock cultural chaperones, you know the country has lost the whākn’ plot completely.
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced
Click to view
The forced karakia requirement is even worse. Karakia is personal. It is spiritual. It belongs to individuals who choose to practise it. Somehow, in modern 2025 New Zealand, the government has decided that private companies must take part in it as part of their legal obligations to the state. There is nothing respectful about turning someone’s spiritual practice into a bureaucratic checkbox. It cheapens the ceremony and burdens the people forced to perform it.
Then you get to “cultural monitoring”. Mana whenua must be given the opportunity to carry out monitoring “as deemed required by them”. In other words, they get to decide when it happens, how often it happens, and how much it will cost. There is no limit, no definition, and no accountability. This is not partnership. This is not stewardship. This is the state handing a racially-defined group the power to dictate the terms of a private development.
To top it off, mana whenua must also be given access to the site at their discretion. Not at agreed times. Not with notice. Their discretion. That kind of access would never be granted to any other group, anywhere, under any other circumstance. Yet here, it is written into the rules, stamped as policy, and treated as normal.
New Zealand now operates two legal systems. One for everyone, and one in which an ancestry-based group is given authority, veto power, and ceremonial control over private land use. That is the literal definition of structural racism. It is not an insult. It is a statement of fact. When the rules change based on who your ancestors were, the system itself is racist.
And the consequences are enormous. Construction costs balloon. Projects stall. Investors walk away. People shake their heads and ask why everything here is so expensive. Yet the answer is sitting right in front of us. Every additional consultant, every ceremonial requirement, every monitoring process, every site visit, every meeting, every layer of cultural bureaucracy pushes the cost higher and higher. This is why New Zealand can’t build anything anymore.
Worse still, all of this dividing, categorising, separating and elevating people by race is tearing the country apart. Ordinary people feel like strangers in their own land. They feel unheard. They feel dismissed. And they feel exhausted by a political class that refuses to acknowledge the obvious truth that separatism is government policy now.
New Zealand did not become this way overnight. But it has become this way. And many New Zealanders are reaching the point of asking whether this is a place they can stay much longer.
If you want an example of how broken the system is, look no further than a consent form for a bloody IKEA store. When a flatpack warehouse requires ancestral clearance rituals and round-the-clock cultural chaperones, you know the country has lost the whākn’ plot completely.
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced
11 comments:
How can you have seven different tribes who are "mana whenua"? Mana whenua are supposed to be the local tribe who lived on an area of land in 1840. So how can seven different tribes fit into that category? Also, how can anyone have control over land that they sold and that no longer belongs to them? The answer seems to be that privately owned land has already been confiscated from all non-Maori NZers, and this current government is as supportive of Maori governance of NZ as the last.
Unbelievable.
How do these white ants within Councils get away with writing in these Maori demands into binding documents ??
Luxon , National, find out who is responsible for this and sack them with a ban on them ever being employed in a governing role again.
How much is it costing to get the approval of mana whenua? Many who wouldn’t have a clue what they are there for. The Government needs to stop these charades.
Imagine how many groups would have their cultural hands out if you wanted to open a new chain of supermarkets.
Our Council's have fully embraced this approach with their 'partnerships' with mana whenua around the country, all aided and abetted by those other public teat suckers, LGNZ. How else can the reputed $120+Billion Maori economy grow, let alone be sustained, without these rorts?
What a corrupt little backwater we've become and, as we decline, will there be any surprise when civil unrest eventually erupts?
There was a time when such comment could be found in the msm. Now just a nostalgic memory.The greater public now bumble along largely in a state of ignorance.
I was talking to a construction company CEO recently. He told me local iwi require them to have two on-site "with cultural consultants " at all times. Cost $75/hrs each. So two blokes hang around all day, smoking cigarettes and playing on their cell phones but getting upset if some ground is broken before they have OKed it. I would bet the switch pay them rock bottom minimum pay of $23 or so per hour, so a nice tidy profit of $50/hrs for the iwi. This is a fortnight. All power to Bishop and co get stuck into it.
APARTHEID here and now !!
Everyone buying IKEA furniture will be effectively paying taxes to all these Maori tribes.
The cost of all IKEA goods will have a number associated with paying off these tribes.
Just think about that.
Then ask yourself why you are not protesting to the Auckland Council that they are so gullible to allow this travesty be perpetuated in their name ?
It has been said before many times over, if this Coalition wants to make its mark on the economic wellbeing of New Zealand (not some mythical place beginning with "A") then it needs to focus on getting rid the grift, all forms of co-governance and stop the pandering to the "cultural BS". IKEA has come to NZ but I bet under their breath they are wondering why they bothered.
Are the bureaucracy and politicians in this country entirely mad? Who in their right mind would establish conditions like this and expect any rational organisation to comply? The flow on effect is obvious. The rational younger people will steadily depart for stable nations. NZ will grow poorer by the decade until, 3rd world, here we are. Ah well, we all get the govt we deserve.
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