Breaking Views: NZCPR Newsletter: Parallel Societies

After decades of rampant migration across Europe, governments are finally confronting a problem they have ignored for far too long: the rise of “parallel societies”. These are enclaves of immigrant communities living under alternative cultural and authority structures that undermine social norms, weaken national cohesion, and challenge the ability of the State to govern.

Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and France are amongst the growing number of countries that now realise that once parallel authority takes root, it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.

Denmark has taken the most forceful approach. After years of rising concern about immigrant neighbourhoods, the Danish government introduced its controversial “ghetto laws.” These allow the state to reduce social housing in designated areas, demolish or sell apartment blocks, and even forcibly relocate residents to prevent ethnic majorities from becoming dominant and entrenched. The authorities are cracking down on crime committed within these zones by imposing harsher penalties and they are requiring children to attend mandatory daycare to ensure early exposure to Danish language and culture.

Denmark’s strategy is blunt and uncompromising, reflecting a political consensus that parallel societies threaten national unity and must be broken up before they become irreversible.

Sweden, once known for its liberal immigration policies, has also undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. Authorities now openly acknowledge the existence of “vulnerable areas” – neighbourhoods where criminal networks exert control, emergency services face intimidation, and state authority is weakened. In response, Sweden has strengthened police operations, created special intervention units, and targeted clan‑based organised crime. Immigration rules have been tightened, integration requirements strengthened, and oversight of independent and religious schools increased to prevent the development of parallel social norms.

Sweden’s political debate has moved from denial to urgency, driven by a growing recognition that parallel societies undermine social cohesion and must be dismantled.

Germany has spent more than two decades confronting immigrant enclaves where integration has failed and alternative norms have taken hold. German authorities now realise that parallel societies threaten the rule of law and weaken national cohesion. Their response includes mandatory integration courses combining language training with civic education, targeted neighbourhood interventions in areas where informal authority structures arise, and the strong enforcement of legal norms to ensure that cultural or religious practices do not override German law. Political leaders regularly reinforce the message that Germany must remain a single civic community under one legal system.

Germany’s strategy is preventative and education‑focused, aimed at stopping parallel societies from forming rather than dismantling them after they emerge.

France faces a different form of parallel authority: Islamist separatism. In some neighbourhoods, religiously motivated groups have established alternative social norms and informal justice systems that conflict with French values. In response, an Anti‑Separatism Law was introduced in 2021, which tightened the oversight of religious associations, restricted homeschooling to prevent the establishment of parallel schooling systems, increased scrutiny of foreign funding for religious institutions, and strengthened state powers to shut down organisations promoting separatism.

The French approach unapologetically prevents the division of society along racial, ethnic or tribal lines through the strict enforcement of ‘colourblind’ laws. Assimilation is proactively promoted in the belief that state secularism and French national values must apply universally. No group may operate outside the authority of the state, and officials are required to intervene wherever alternative governance structures emerge.

Europe’s experience shows that governments that fail to defend the principle that all citizens live under one system of law, one set of rights, and one national authority, will ultimately suffer a backlash from voters. As a result, administrations are being forced not only to alter their approach to open borders, but also to clamp down on those who are attempting to change their nation’s culture instead of assimilating into it.

New Zealand is not immune to the pressure for parallel societies, but the situation here is perverse – and constitutionally, far more dangerous.

Our country has one of the highest immigration rates in the developed world. While ethnic communities of Chinese, Indian, Pacific, Middle Eastern, and African migrants have emerged in our larger cities, unlike in Europe, they are not the source of the pressures that are now challenging New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements.

In this country, the pressure for parallel authority is being driven by iwi leaders, who, thanks to the appeasement policies of successive governments and generous taxpayer funded Treaty settlements, now preside over vast tax‑free business empires. Not only are they replacing “Kiwi culture” with iwi culture – enriching themselves in the process – but they are now attempting to gain constitutional control of New Zealand.

Through endless cultural, historical, and Treaty‑based demands, they are reshaping governance, weakening social cohesion, and diluting the authority of the Crown.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, the former National MP and Thames-Coromandel Mayor Sandra Goudie, raises serious concerns about the whole Treaty settlement process:

“Who knew that as we all went about our daily lives the government was quietly taking our rights, freedoms and democracy apart through Treaty Settlements. Some people did know, but for many, probably not the extent of the enforcement of co-governance. Parliament betrayed its own people to introduce tribalism, force culture and spiritualism upon people, and undermine freedoms and democracy in the process…

“There is no credible accounting of the deeper economic and social impacts of the coercive nature of what the Treaty Settlements have imposed. New Zealand cannot afford to keep funding iwi, at either local or government level. It is money people cannot afford, produces nothing, and would be better spent on roads and infrastructure.

“The current government has not done enough to stem this bullying tide of constant claim, cost and enforced cultural and spiritual paradigms.”

The reality is that as the result of a combination of judicial, legislative, administrative, and ideological developments spanning decades, a constitutional environment has been created in which tribal authorities exercising public power are expanding their influence without democratic mandate.

Through state sector decision-making, a proliferation of co‑governance arrangements across water, conservation, education, health, and local government have been created, with the result that tribal authority has been embedded as race-based parallel governance inside the State itself.

At the same time, external parallel governance has emerged in the form of Maori‑only health and social service providers, education frameworks, advisory boards, funding streams, and justice initiatives, all operating alongside mainstream State agencies.

So, while Europe worries about parallel societies emerging outside of the State, New Zealand’s situation is uniquely dangerous because parallel authority is being built inside the machinery of government as well.

The impact on our country has been profound.

What it means is that democratic accountability in New Zealand has been progressively replaced by tribal authority that is fragmenting national identity, creating two systems of law, and accelerating a constitutional transformation that has never been publicly debated nor publicly consented.

And once embedded – as Europe has found – parallel authority structures become almost impossible to reverse, which is why this drift towards tribal control is so dangerous.

The reality for New Zealand is that a series of developments have taken place over the years that have fundamentally reshaped our constitutional landscape to create a system in which tribal power is continuing to expand, without public consent.

What began as symbolic recognition has created a parallel society where tribal authority is undermining social cohesion and threatening the sovereignty of Parliament itself.

The re-definition of public resources as tribal property is accelerating the process. From freshwater and geothermal reserves to conservation land, National Parks, rivers, lakes, mountains, fisheries, and the entire coastline under the Marine and Coastal Area Act, a profound shift in authority has occurred creating parallel jurisdiction over assets that were once held by the State on behalf of all New Zealanders.

Parallel schooling has also become entrenched. While successive governments have long promoted Maori immersion schools as a means of ensuring the survival of Maori language and culture, questions are now being raised over the extent to which these schools are radicalising a new generation with a worldview that regards New Zealand as two nations instead of one, entrenching division across generations.

What’s even worse, is that some of the tribal authority assertions that are having the greatest impact on our country – such as the claim that the Treaty created a “partnership” between Maori and the Crown – are based on fiction, not fact.

Invented by the Courts in the 1980s, the ‘partnership’ concept has been thoroughly discredited – including by former Prime Minister David Lange who explained:

“Democratic government can accommodate Maori political aspiration in many ways. What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government, or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both.”

In fact, he ridiculed the notion, quipping that he really didn’t believe Queen Victoria would sign a treaty of equality and partnership with “500 thumbprints”.

Yet, in spite of there being no legitimate foundation for the “partnership” fabrication, it has become a powerful constitutional lever for delivering race-based authority. Used to justify veto rights, special consultation processes, and separate regulatory systems, this judicially‑created doctrine has embedded a form of constitutional dualism that mirrors the parallel authority concerns seen in Europe – but, ironically, with more formal legal force.

But if we dig deeper, we find that at the heart of the problems New Zealand faces is the fact that tribal authority is built on a discredited concept of “race”, which was “captured” by powerful vested interests long ago.

“Maori” were historically defined in our Statutes as “belonging to the aboriginal race of New Zealand; and includes a half-caste and a person intermediate in blood between half-castes and persons of pure descent from that race.”

But by the mid‑20th century, with the number of people legally classified as Maori in decline due to rapid intermarriage, Maori activists led the charge to change the law from blood quantum to self-identification in order to ensure the numbers continued to grow: “Maori means a person of the Maori race of New Zealand; and includes any descendant of such a person”.

While modern genetics and anthropology have now rejected the concept of “race” altogether, by clearly showing there is only onehuman race, unlike many other countries, New Zealand has not removed the old definition from our Statutes.

This means our legislative framework not only legitimises a false biological concept, but it is allowing a ‘political construct’ that has been weaponised by iwi interests to deliberately fragment society, distort public policy and, through the creation of parallel authority, undermine our constitutional framework and sovereignty itself.

If the integrity of New Zealand’s democratic system is to be protected, we need to learn from the experience of those countries that are successfully dealing with problems similar to those we face, and not only remove all references to “race” from our Statutes, but also dismantle all forms of parallel authority.

The point is that while governments in Europe are proactively removing the threat of parallel societies, New Zealand has been going in the opposite direction and entrenching it: embedding division in law through discredited racial categories, fabricated cultural authority, and unconstitutional parallel governance that is endangering our democracy.

What New Zealand now needs is a clear political vision for a united country – one in which democracy is fully restored, constitutional authority rests with Parliament alone, and all citizens are equal before the law.

Looking forward, Coalition parties face a big decision as they finalise their election manifestos. Do they allow the constitutional drift toward parallel systems of authority to continue — with all the consequences that carries for democracy, accountability, national unity, and the sovereignty of Parliament – or do they take a stand, as other nations have done when confronted by competing sources of political authority, to dismantle them and reaffirm New Zealand as one democratic nation, governed by one Parliament, under one law, with equal rights for every citizen?

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