But if the vision set out in He Puapua were fully implemented, the country beneath those familiar symbols would be fundamentally altered — not by revolution, but by steady, bureaucratic redesign across education, law, land, media, health, and government itself.
He Puapua is not a vague discussion paper. It is a roadmap commissioned by government officials to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) by the bicentenary of the Treaty of Waitangi. Its direction of travel is clear: to re‑order New Zealand’s institutions so that governance, resources, and authority are increasingly allocated on the basis of ancestry - This is about the transfer of power to tribalism.
From One Democracy to Two Authorities
At the heart of He Puapua is a constitutional shift away from the principle that political power flows from individuals as equal citizens.
Instead, it advances a dual‑authority model: kāwanatanga (Crown governance) alongside rangatiratanga (Māori authority). By 2040, Māori entities would not merely advise governments, but co‑govern or independently govern large areas of public life.
Decision‑making over water, land use, conservation, health, education, justice, and local government would increasingly sit with co‑governance bodies — often structured to give iwi entities parity or dominance regardless of population size.
Elections would still matter. They would simply matter less.
Education: Rewriting the National Story
By 2040, education would no longer simply teach New Zealand’s history — it would actively reinterpret it.
School curricula would emphasise a narrow Treaty‑centred narrative while downplaying or omitting inconvenient facts: pre‑Māori history, the Musket Wars, and recorded observations of Māori society by early European explorers that conflict with modern ideological framing.
Critical Race Theory concepts — racial bias, structural oppression, and collective guilt — would be introduced at increasingly young ages. Children without Māori ancestry would be encouraged to view themselves as beneficiaries of inherited injustice, while Māori identity would be framed primarily through grievance and victimhood.
Education would no longer unify. It would sort children into moral categories before they are old enough to question them.
Land, Conservation, and the End of Neutral Stewardship
Few changes would be more visible than those affecting land.
Under a fully realised He Puapua vision, ownership and control of the entire Department of Conservation estate — national parks, forests, reserves, and coastline — would be transferred to tribal authorities. DOC itself has already established internal groups examining pathways to Māori governance.
Private land would not be immune. Through rezoning and regulatory powers, councils and central government could grant iwi rights over privately owned farms and land without ownership changing hands — hollowing out property rights while preserving legal fictions.
This would mark the end of the Conservation Estate as a shared national inheritance. Stewardship would no longer be neutral; it would be ancestral.
Business, Rates, and Unequal Obligations
By 2040, economic equality before the state would be largely gone.
Māori land would remain exempt from local authority rates. Iwi corporations — now worth many billions of dollars — would continue to enjoy preferential tax treatment.
A previous Government procurement rule that required at least five per cent of contracts to be awarded to Māori businesses - a policy removed in 2024, but one that could readily be reinstated or expanded by 2040 under a fully realised He Puapua framework.
Taxpayers would fund marae upgrades, while competing businesses face rising compliance and shrinking opportunity. Economic advantage would be embedded not through merit or need, but through identity.
Local Government Without Local Consent
Local democracy would be profoundly weakened.
Iwi representatives would hold decision‑making and veto rights within councils, regardless of electoral mandate. Reviews now point toward a future where Māori hold up to half of council seats by statutory allocation.
Communities would still vote — but outcomes would increasingly be predetermined.
Media: Narrative by Permission
By 2040, the media landscape would be recognisable — and constrained.
Government funding packages already impose content expectations. Coverage that challenges race‑based policy risks exclusion from financial support. Predictably, news increasingly reflects an approved narrative, while dissenting views are marginalised or labelled extremist.
Te reo and Māori symbolism would be mandatory across government departments, councils, and state‑funded media — not as organic cultural exchange, but as enforced conformity.
A free press would exist in name, not in spirit.
Justice: Equality Replaced by Ancestry
Perhaps the most consequential change would be in the justice system.
By 2040, New Zealand would operate effectively with two legal tracks. A Māori justice system would sit alongside the general system, where offenders with Māori ancestry are treated differently in sentencing, process, and incarceration.
Separate Māori prisons, justified as culturally appropriate, would entrench differential treatment. Tikanga Māori would displace common law principles of equality, certainty, and precedent. Legal rights would expand or contract depending on whakapapa.
Justice would no longer be blind — it would be genealogical.
Health: Two Systems, One Taxpayer
Health would follow the same path.
A taxpayer‑funded Māori health system would operate in parallel with the general system, wielding decision‑making and veto powers across the entire sector. Māori patients would be prioritised explicitly on the basis of ancestry.
Need would become secondary to identity. Universal care would become conditional care.
Water: Ownership of Life Itself
Control of fresh water would be among the most far‑reaching changes.
Māori would be granted rights over all fresh water. Councils would pay iwi for its use. Rates and water charges would rise accordingly.
A resource essential to all life would become a leased commodity.
Foreshore and Seabed: New Zealand’s Border to the Outside World
One of the least understood — and far‑reaching — implications of a fully realised He Puapua framework lies offshore.
The foreshore and seabed are not just beaches and coastal waters. They are New Zealand’s physical border with the outside world, containing immense economic, strategic, and environmental value. Under current legal arrangements, they are held for the benefit of all New Zealanders. Under the trajectory now underway, that would change.
Iwi claims seek control of the foreshore and seabed — initially through mechanisms such as customary title and mana tuku iho (inherited right), but ultimately extending far beyond symbolism. The wealth contained in these areas — minerals, aquaculture, energy, infrastructure access — would be transferred from public ownership into tribal coffers.
Customary title would confer sweeping powers. Iwi would gain the right to bypass the Resource Management Act, to veto activities, and to extract payment for virtually anything that occurs on beaches or at sea. Development rights would include mining of seabed minerals, control over all new aquaculture ventures, and the imposition of iwi resource plans — and their associated costs — on both central and local government.
Mana tuku iho status would further entrench preferential treatment. Iwi would receive priority access through the Department of Conservation for marine reserves, whale‑watching operations, ferry routes, and other coastal concessions.
In practical terms, iwi could charge for almost every form of coastal or marine activity: boat ramps, moorings, wharves, marinas, aquaculture farms, mining operations, oil and gas wells, tourism ventures, pipelines and cables, offshore wind farms, and tidal power installations.
Public access — long taken for granted — would no longer be guaranteed. By 2040, access to many of New Zealand’s most loved beaches could exist only at the discretion of tribal authorities.
This shift is already being underwritten by the state. Tribes receive generous public funding to pursue foreshore and seabed claims out to twelve nautical miles, while those who oppose such claims must fund their own legal defence.
What is presented as recognition of customary interests would, in effect, redraw New Zealand’s coastline — not as a shared national inheritance, but as a privatised, ancestry‑controlled frontier.
Two Governments, One Country
Taken together, these changes amount to something unprecedented: two overlapping governments operating within one state.
A new written constitution — grounded in a revised interpretation of the Treaty — would formalise this division. Authority would no longer flow uniformly from citizens, but through parallel ethnic channels.
The Question New Zealand Must Face
None of this denies history. None of it denies injustice. None of it denies the need to lift New Zealanders, including Maori, who are struggling.
But He Puapua demands an answer to a question our current elected politicians appear to be avoiding: should political power, legal rights, and economic privilege be allocated by ancestry?
By 2040, that question may already be answered — not by referendum, but by incremental change too complex, and too polite, to stop.
The danger is chaos — social, legal, and constitutional — followed by a country that may still look democratic on the surface, but no longer functions as one in practice, or equally.
That is the future New Zealanders deserve to debate openly, honestly, and urgently before it is decided for them.
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
From One Democracy to Two Authorities
At the heart of He Puapua is a constitutional shift away from the principle that political power flows from individuals as equal citizens.
Instead, it advances a dual‑authority model: kāwanatanga (Crown governance) alongside rangatiratanga (Māori authority). By 2040, Māori entities would not merely advise governments, but co‑govern or independently govern large areas of public life.
Decision‑making over water, land use, conservation, health, education, justice, and local government would increasingly sit with co‑governance bodies — often structured to give iwi entities parity or dominance regardless of population size.
Elections would still matter. They would simply matter less.
Education: Rewriting the National Story
By 2040, education would no longer simply teach New Zealand’s history — it would actively reinterpret it.
School curricula would emphasise a narrow Treaty‑centred narrative while downplaying or omitting inconvenient facts: pre‑Māori history, the Musket Wars, and recorded observations of Māori society by early European explorers that conflict with modern ideological framing.
Critical Race Theory concepts — racial bias, structural oppression, and collective guilt — would be introduced at increasingly young ages. Children without Māori ancestry would be encouraged to view themselves as beneficiaries of inherited injustice, while Māori identity would be framed primarily through grievance and victimhood.
Education would no longer unify. It would sort children into moral categories before they are old enough to question them.
Land, Conservation, and the End of Neutral Stewardship
Few changes would be more visible than those affecting land.
Under a fully realised He Puapua vision, ownership and control of the entire Department of Conservation estate — national parks, forests, reserves, and coastline — would be transferred to tribal authorities. DOC itself has already established internal groups examining pathways to Māori governance.
Private land would not be immune. Through rezoning and regulatory powers, councils and central government could grant iwi rights over privately owned farms and land without ownership changing hands — hollowing out property rights while preserving legal fictions.
This would mark the end of the Conservation Estate as a shared national inheritance. Stewardship would no longer be neutral; it would be ancestral.
Business, Rates, and Unequal Obligations
By 2040, economic equality before the state would be largely gone.
Māori land would remain exempt from local authority rates. Iwi corporations — now worth many billions of dollars — would continue to enjoy preferential tax treatment.
A previous Government procurement rule that required at least five per cent of contracts to be awarded to Māori businesses - a policy removed in 2024, but one that could readily be reinstated or expanded by 2040 under a fully realised He Puapua framework.
Taxpayers would fund marae upgrades, while competing businesses face rising compliance and shrinking opportunity. Economic advantage would be embedded not through merit or need, but through identity.
Local Government Without Local Consent
Local democracy would be profoundly weakened.
Iwi representatives would hold decision‑making and veto rights within councils, regardless of electoral mandate. Reviews now point toward a future where Māori hold up to half of council seats by statutory allocation.
Communities would still vote — but outcomes would increasingly be predetermined.
Media: Narrative by Permission
By 2040, the media landscape would be recognisable — and constrained.
Government funding packages already impose content expectations. Coverage that challenges race‑based policy risks exclusion from financial support. Predictably, news increasingly reflects an approved narrative, while dissenting views are marginalised or labelled extremist.
Te reo and Māori symbolism would be mandatory across government departments, councils, and state‑funded media — not as organic cultural exchange, but as enforced conformity.
A free press would exist in name, not in spirit.
Justice: Equality Replaced by Ancestry
Perhaps the most consequential change would be in the justice system.
By 2040, New Zealand would operate effectively with two legal tracks. A Māori justice system would sit alongside the general system, where offenders with Māori ancestry are treated differently in sentencing, process, and incarceration.
Separate Māori prisons, justified as culturally appropriate, would entrench differential treatment. Tikanga Māori would displace common law principles of equality, certainty, and precedent. Legal rights would expand or contract depending on whakapapa.
Justice would no longer be blind — it would be genealogical.
Health: Two Systems, One Taxpayer
Health would follow the same path.
A taxpayer‑funded Māori health system would operate in parallel with the general system, wielding decision‑making and veto powers across the entire sector. Māori patients would be prioritised explicitly on the basis of ancestry.
Need would become secondary to identity. Universal care would become conditional care.
Water: Ownership of Life Itself
Control of fresh water would be among the most far‑reaching changes.
Māori would be granted rights over all fresh water. Councils would pay iwi for its use. Rates and water charges would rise accordingly.
A resource essential to all life would become a leased commodity.
Foreshore and Seabed: New Zealand’s Border to the Outside World
One of the least understood — and far‑reaching — implications of a fully realised He Puapua framework lies offshore.
The foreshore and seabed are not just beaches and coastal waters. They are New Zealand’s physical border with the outside world, containing immense economic, strategic, and environmental value. Under current legal arrangements, they are held for the benefit of all New Zealanders. Under the trajectory now underway, that would change.
Iwi claims seek control of the foreshore and seabed — initially through mechanisms such as customary title and mana tuku iho (inherited right), but ultimately extending far beyond symbolism. The wealth contained in these areas — minerals, aquaculture, energy, infrastructure access — would be transferred from public ownership into tribal coffers.
Customary title would confer sweeping powers. Iwi would gain the right to bypass the Resource Management Act, to veto activities, and to extract payment for virtually anything that occurs on beaches or at sea. Development rights would include mining of seabed minerals, control over all new aquaculture ventures, and the imposition of iwi resource plans — and their associated costs — on both central and local government.
Mana tuku iho status would further entrench preferential treatment. Iwi would receive priority access through the Department of Conservation for marine reserves, whale‑watching operations, ferry routes, and other coastal concessions.
In practical terms, iwi could charge for almost every form of coastal or marine activity: boat ramps, moorings, wharves, marinas, aquaculture farms, mining operations, oil and gas wells, tourism ventures, pipelines and cables, offshore wind farms, and tidal power installations.
Public access — long taken for granted — would no longer be guaranteed. By 2040, access to many of New Zealand’s most loved beaches could exist only at the discretion of tribal authorities.
This shift is already being underwritten by the state. Tribes receive generous public funding to pursue foreshore and seabed claims out to twelve nautical miles, while those who oppose such claims must fund their own legal defence.
What is presented as recognition of customary interests would, in effect, redraw New Zealand’s coastline — not as a shared national inheritance, but as a privatised, ancestry‑controlled frontier.
Two Governments, One Country
Taken together, these changes amount to something unprecedented: two overlapping governments operating within one state.
A new written constitution — grounded in a revised interpretation of the Treaty — would formalise this division. Authority would no longer flow uniformly from citizens, but through parallel ethnic channels.
The Question New Zealand Must Face
None of this denies history. None of it denies injustice. None of it denies the need to lift New Zealanders, including Maori, who are struggling.
But He Puapua demands an answer to a question our current elected politicians appear to be avoiding: should political power, legal rights, and economic privilege be allocated by ancestry?
By 2040, that question may already be answered — not by referendum, but by incremental change too complex, and too polite, to stop.
The danger is chaos — social, legal, and constitutional — followed by a country that may still look democratic on the surface, but no longer functions as one in practice, or equally.
That is the future New Zealanders deserve to debate openly, honestly, and urgently before it is decided for them.
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
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