ACT Resources spokesman Simon Court has called it exactly what it is. Documents and meetings show iwi representatives pointed to a previous seven-figure payout for a hydro project as the benchmark. Pay up or face opposition. The company calculated the lifetime “contribution” at around $180 million. Kā Rūnaka say $180 million has not been their “focus,” but they have not denied the report.
This is textbook rent-seeking. The Resource Management Act and its successors have given certain groups effective veto power over development. “Cultural impact” and “partnership” have become polite words for a toll gate. Developers pay for endless hui, reports and “benefits” or watch their projects die in the queue. Environmental effects take second place to ancestry.
Thomas Sowell warned us about this in *Affirmative Action Around the World*. Race-based preferences do not deliver justice. They create corruption, mismatch and resentment. Politicians and bureaucrats hand out power in the name of equity. Insiders game the system. Merit collapses. New Zealand’s planning regime proves him right every single day.
I fail to see how this advances the environment or Treaty justice. It advances opportunism. Projects with the right ethnic branding move forward. Projects without stall. Costs are passed on in higher power bills, more expensive housing and infrastructure that never gets built. We all pay the price -- Maori included -- in lost jobs and forgone wealth.
Parliament has known this for years. Successive governments expanded race-based planning while pretending it was partnership. The Fast-track Approvals Bill and Spatial Planning reforms were supposed to cut red tape. Instead they kept the poison pills — Treaty principles, iwi partnerships and Māori-specific tracks. The result is predictable. Public infrastructure is delayed, investment flees and taxpayers foot the bill for the legal warfare.
This is not environmentalism. It is state-enabled graft wearing a Māori cloak. The abuse of power is remarkable.
The free-market solution is simple and overdue: strip every racial preference from planning law. One set of clear rules. One standard of consent. Property owners decide what happens on their land. Councils enforce objective environmental standards — nothing more. No vetoes by ancestry. No “pound of flesh” for every sod turned.
New Zealand was built on secure property rights and equal treatment under law. Race-based planning has corrupted that foundation. Scrap it. Restore one law for all. Anything less is not justice — it is institutionalised corruption. Kiwis deserve better. Our economy and our future demand it.
Thomas Sowell warned us about this in *Affirmative Action Around the World*. Race-based preferences do not deliver justice. They create corruption, mismatch and resentment. Politicians and bureaucrats hand out power in the name of equity. Insiders game the system. Merit collapses. New Zealand’s planning regime proves him right every single day.
I fail to see how this advances the environment or Treaty justice. It advances opportunism. Projects with the right ethnic branding move forward. Projects without stall. Costs are passed on in higher power bills, more expensive housing and infrastructure that never gets built. We all pay the price -- Maori included -- in lost jobs and forgone wealth.
Parliament has known this for years. Successive governments expanded race-based planning while pretending it was partnership. The Fast-track Approvals Bill and Spatial Planning reforms were supposed to cut red tape. Instead they kept the poison pills — Treaty principles, iwi partnerships and Māori-specific tracks. The result is predictable. Public infrastructure is delayed, investment flees and taxpayers foot the bill for the legal warfare.
This is not environmentalism. It is state-enabled graft wearing a Māori cloak. The abuse of power is remarkable.
The free-market solution is simple and overdue: strip every racial preference from planning law. One set of clear rules. One standard of consent. Property owners decide what happens on their land. Councils enforce objective environmental standards — nothing more. No vetoes by ancestry. No “pound of flesh” for every sod turned.
New Zealand was built on secure property rights and equal treatment under law. Race-based planning has corrupted that foundation. Scrap it. Restore one law for all. Anything less is not justice — it is institutionalised corruption. Kiwis deserve better. Our economy and our future demand it.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
15 comments:
It's interesting how the mainstream media reports this. According to them the Iwi are protecting the supposedly unique world heritage qualities of this piece of tussock and the thousands of lizards who live there. Naturally the media are totally silent about the extortion and how the environmental qualities of the tossock will go away if Ngai Tahu receive enough money. Welcome to co-government.
Reminds me of just how badly NZ has messed up commercialising natural resources. We do ok in tourism, but compared to Norway with how they manage oil and gas profits, we have sold ourselves down the river. I dunno why politicians don’t want NZ to get a cut if that wealth. Seems more than a little suspicious how Shane Jones is costing up the the pillagers.
Good to see the iwi with a bit of commercial nouse! We have a lot to learn!
Cargo cult Maori mindset created and nurtured by successive governments to the detriment of jobs and opportunities for future generations - what a disgrace.
"Treaty Justice". What exactly is that?
The Treaty of Waitangi has morphed into something "which can be anything people want it to mean".
A simple document which declared us "one people" has been truly expropriated. It is true Maori were early settlers and occupied the land, but it is also true the British and other colonists built the country.
Indigenous has taken on a whole new meaning. From the Latin: indigena, sprung from the land or native to.
Early settlers does not mean indigenous. Who is indigenous to Britain? The Romans, The Celts or the Anglo Saxons or whoever? See how absurd this all becomes when you divide by race or ethnicity?
Scrap any reference to race and any race based privileges. Better still, voters vote for that.
The greatest opportunity the National party has to turn its flagging fortunes around before the next election is to physically round up the Ngai Tahu gang and deliver a 14 year jail sentence for blackmailing a law abiding company, Santana Minerals. The cheering around NZ would be clearly audible in Australia. This would immediately erase all past references of being spineless and deliver a new form of respect positioning them well for the next election.
When are we going to reach a tipping point in NZ? The chosen ones always have their hands out for more money, more power more influence. It's always take and never give.
Maori fatigue is real.
Kevin
IWI = I Want It...
NZ is starting to look more and more like PNG. You come to an agreement with a local tribe about using a natural resource and pay them, then after they've boozed it all up they come back for more and if you try to hold them to the agreement they start wrecking the show.
Luxon probably sees this as standard business practice in NZ these days.
Trust me that if Santana accede to this this standover tactic that the Tax Office will not see one cent of it !
One law for us, and another for elite Maori.
Strip all mention of race or ethnicity from all legislation & policies as a true democracy demands. Politicians, bureaucrats & lawyers have created this corrupt society & it’s well past time the current lot fixed it.
The NZ taxpayer is held to ransom in perpetuity by these grifters. NZ will never get ahead until this stuff is stomped out.
Absolutely, Rodney. And since when did public consultation automatically involve payment? As each day goes by, it just proves New Zealanders are, indeed, stupid - for putting up with these rorts and, our elected representatives are totally failing in protecting us, by permitting them to continue.
Further to K at 8.45Am ... and HAPU = Hurry and Pay Up
I read the Otago Daily Times report regarding this part of the goings on in the Santana gold mine application (Otago Daily Times 22nd April).
The report refers to minutes of a meeting between Santana and Ngai Tahu. The minutes were Santana’s record of a meeting between Santana and Ngai Tahu held at Dunedin airport a month earlier. The minutes report was presented to the hearings commission seemingly without Ngai Tahu’s knowledge.
This action got right up Ngai Tahu’s nose and their response was that the minutes did not represent their position, nor what had transpired at the meeting. I think this is what might be known as old fashioned damage control. Or what is more politely known as reframing the narrative.
The ODT report refers to Ngai Tahu’s original desire to be gifted a substantial ownership stake in the proposed scheme. This was later amended to participation as a part owner, on a paid basis. Santana asked Ngai Tahu for specifics and an indication of what Ngai Tahu might be prepared to pay.
I would leave the last word to Santana. Quote ex ODT: “He said it would be grossly disappointing if a project that offers so many socioeconomic and fiscal benefits to so many, is denied due to oppressive negotiating tactics”.
Ngai Tahu has for years relied on its own exclusive Treaty Settlement Act. Ngai Tahu claimed and was granted absolute ownership of every ounce and gram of greenstone above and below ground in the South Island. Are they kicking themselves for not claiming the gold also, or better still every square kilometre of the outfit? Could gold be redefined as greenstone?
Santana should offer them $0. Why are all Ngai Tahu's lawyers white? Or maybe I'm wrong. Zero iwi members are law graduates? Again, maybe I'm wrong.
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