John McLean: The Do-Nothing Nats

How do we not love them? Let us count three ways…

At core, New Zealand Governments should be about orchestrating Parliament to pass new legislation.

Heated debates, hot air and empty promises change nothing. Enacted legislation is the only way Parliament can change New Zealand’s legal landscape. Enactments can comprise entirely new Acts of Parliament, or repeal or amend existing legislation.

Government Ministers of course exercise decision making powers and perform statutory functions under existing legislation. However, without passing legislation a Government is simply an administration rather than a fulfilment of promises of legal changes.

With majority support in Parliament, passing intended legislation is a fait accompli. Opponents of a Parliamentary law making can bleat all they like; they can screech that new legislation is defective or unhelpful, or hasn’t been passed after due process, or offends the sensibilities of the High Priest(esse)s of the Waitangi Tribunal, or…whatever. But with majority Parliamentary support for a legislative change, the change is inevitable and gets made.

This piece provides three examples of the National Party reneging on particular legislative commitments it made under its coalition agreements with the New Zealand First and ACT political parties. I then speculate on why the Nats have failed to honor these commitments.

Examination of Auckland & Otago Universities’ student doctor race preferences

The Nats/ACT November 2023 coalition agreement contains the following commitment:

“Examine the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) and Otago equivalent to determine if they are delivering desired outcomes.”

In essence, this commits the Nats and ACT to examining preferential admissions of individuals with Māori or/and Polynesian ancestry to the medical schools at the Auckland and Otago universities. The express purpose of the examination is to “determine if [the preferences] are delivering desired outcomes”.

While “desired outcomes” are undefined, a man by the name and title of Professor Warwick Bagg has his own conception of what “desired outcomes” should be.

Prof Bagg is the Dean (i.e., head honcho) of Auckland University’s medical school. He thinks that the desired outcome is (i.e., ought to be) to increase the number of medical doctors working in New Zealand who have some Māori or Polynesian ancestry. In an opinion piece published on Auckland University’s website on 4 September 2026, Bagg claims:

Increasing the number of Māori and Pacific health professionals is critical if the health system is to better reflect and serve the communities of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Bagg Man thinks that the overriding desirable outcome of the existing race preferences is to ensure that the proportion of New Zealand medical doctors who are Māori or Pasifika replicates the proportion of New Zealanders that those racial groups make up. In other words, Bagg wants to socially engineer a particular race-based mix of doctors for delivery of doctor-ish services in “Aotearoa New Zealand”.

Woke Yarpie Bagg is unconcerned whether the existing race preference system - under which non-Māori/Pasifika with higher secondary school marks lose out to Māori/Pasifika in getting into Med School (and therefore do not become New Zealand doctors) – will actually improve the health and longevity of Māori/Pasifika New Zealanders. For the pontificating Professor, it’s clearly only “the look” that counts.

Prof Bagg got his medical doctorate from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Johannesburg has been transformed into a crime-ridden hell hole, in large part because South Africa has a disgraceful history of treating people differently based on race, first under apartheid and now under the pervasive race-preference regime of the governing African National Congress political party. Under the ANC Autocracy, dark skinned people must be legally preferred in employment, Government contracts and – you guessed it – admission to universities and other tertiary institutions.

But I digress. In his piece, Bagg claims, “As Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, I have called on the responsible minister to release the MAPAS report so that the public can judge its findings for themselves”. I’m with Bagg on that, but almost certainly for very different reasons.

My suspicion is that the report will demonstrate that Auckland University is indeed churning out more Māori or Pasifika doctors (Bagg’s idea of the “desired outcome”). But I further suspect there’s no evidence that the blatant racial discrimination (which has existed for decades) has contributed at all to improved “health outcomes” for Māori/Pasifika New Zealanders – in which case the Māori/Pasifika medical schools race preferences clearly breach the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. That Convention only allows racial discrimination (so-called “special measures”) if the measures are:

• designed to advance a disadvantaged racial or ethnic group

• necessary to ensure that group can enjoy human rights and freedoms equally with others

• not leading to the maintenance of separate rights for different racial groups indefinitely

• discontinued if their objectives are not achieved

The report of the examination is said to be languishing with Associate Minister of Health, close friend of Prime Minister Luxon and Woke drip, Matt Doocey.

My guess is that the report fails to establish that the Medical School race preferences have done anything to improve Māori/Pasifika health, and that’s why Doocey will continue to feed it up his capacious arse until the November election. Matty D wants the racial discrimination to continue and to conceal that his National Party is happy for New Zealand to continue to breach the International Convention on Eliminating Racial Discrimination.

By not publishing the report on race preferences for entry into Med Schools, the Do-Nothing Nats have clearly breached their relevant Nats/ACT coalition commitment.

Treaty Principles Tweaks

The National-NZ First coalition agreement contains the following express commitment:

“Conduct a comprehensive review of all legislation ... that includes ‘the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’, and replace those references with specific wording on the Treaty’s relevance and application, or repeal them.”

The National Party has been prevaricating on fulfilling this commitment, for its entire current term in Government. I’ve covered the Treaty Principles debate in a previous Substack:

KING’S COUNSEL CALL FOR TREATY PRINCIPLES BILL TO BE ABANDONED
John McLean  14 November 2024

Forty-two of New Zealand’s King’s Counsel (KCs) yesterday (13 November) called for the current Government to abandon the Treaty Principles Bill. That Bill is ACT Party leader David Seymour’s brainchild and its introduction into Parliament is promised in ACT’s coalition agreement with the National Party.
Read full story

To summarize, the Nats orchestrated a protracted delay before even initiating its promised review of Treaty Principles references, then took ages to consider the results of the review, and then reduced the scope of the promised tweaks. Only now, in the twilight of the current Parliamentary term, has National introduced legislation to make Treaty Principles tweaks.

There is no realistic prospect of the tweaking legislation being passed before the current Parliamentary term ends….TODAY! Congrats, Nats.

Waitangi Tribunal Wing Clipping

The Nats’ coalition agreement with NZ First contains the following commitment:

“Amend the Waitangi Tribunal legislation to refocus the scope, purpose, and nature of its inquiries back to the original intent of that legislation.”

Enactment of that commitment, in its literal (words matter) form would’ve been a simple matter. The current Government could’ve simply amended the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 to say what it said back in 1975. But instead, National Party Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka initiated a review...in May 2025…already half way through the current Government’s term. In direct conflict with National’s coalition agreement commitment, the scope of the review apparently included consideration of:

• the Tribunal’s jurisdiction

• how different categories of claims are managed

• whether the legislation provides sufficient clarity about the Tribunal’s role

• whether the Tribunal’s current activities reflect the purpose of the Act

In announcing the review, Potaka bloviated:

The ITAG will engage directly with peak Māori and Iwi entities, Treaty law experts, and current and former Tribunal members to ensure that the right voices and perspectives are reflected in the recommendations they provide to ministers at the end of their review. The review will ensure the Waitangi Tribunal remains focused, relevant, effective and fit for purpose not just for today, but for the generations to come.

The review panel reported back to the Government in late August 2025. But as of today (more than a year later), the panel’s report has not been published, the Government has not responded to the report and no proposed legislation amending the Tribunal’s powers has been introduced into Parliament.

Meanwhile, the mad multitudes at the money-munching Waitangi Tribunal continue to vomit volumes of execrable word salad. On 16 September, the Tribunal released its report concluding that the Government’s proposed reforms to the schools’ curriculum breached Treaty of Waitangi Principles by:

• not consulting the Mystical Māori Monolith

• focusing the proposed reforms on a “knowledge-rich curriculum” informed by the “science of learning”, rather than undefined and undefinable Māori customs and Māori world view(s)

The “Presiding Officer” (main author, I guess…but who knows) for this latest Tribunal tome of tripe was Rachel Mullins, a flake (to coin Rexene Landy’s genius term) Māorish.

What’s going on here? None of the above trifecta of National Party failed commitments resulted from any lack of support from coalition partners NZ First & ACT. Together, those three coalition political parties have wielded absolute legislative power. And, with reasonable will and collaboration, none of the legislative initiatives was particularly complex to achieve.

Which all leaves one ineluctable conclusion. The National Party formally committed itself to legislative changes that it simply intended never to consummate. In short, the Nats have lied. That dumb duplicity could hand power to a Labour-led neo-Marxist Government after the next election.

You’ll notice a common theme in my three examples of National Party coalition commitment dishonor. They all involve Matters Māori. For the Pakeha involved in these political deceits, especially Dear Leader Luxon, the failures were probably principally prompted by that horror of white privilege - being labelled “RACIST!” Tama Potaka is another kettle of ika (fish).

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced