Wendy Geus: Seymour must demand Luxon 'incinerate' te mana o te wai or appears to support it

Whilst the Middle East crisis rightfully leads the headlines, race based issues bubbling away continue to be ignored by the media and Luxon, as his trusty mouth pieces implement plans quietly behind the scenes whilst noone's looking.

Seymour's Treaty Principle's bill would have eliminated all this. His flawless and indefatigable fight for his Bill fell on the public's confused ears due to an activist media fighting for the other side, corrupt select committee feedback practices and appalling indifference and opposition from NZ First and National.

Graham Adams: Maori nationalism takes a hammering in 2025

At the end of 2024, Māori nationalists were riding high in their quest to assert a special place in the nation’s laws and policy.

In November, the video of Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clark leading a haka in Parliament and ripping up a copy of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill racked up hundreds of millions of views worldwide.

Clive Bibby: A snapshot in time - should it mean more than that?

As a history junky, nothing gives me more pleasure than either watching the History Channel on Sky TV or rereading the volumes of books written by those who were there - most of whom are long dead.

Although we have to rely almost exclusively on the testimony of those who were involved in the most poignant moments in history, it is important that we establish the truth of what actually happened on the day.

Barrie Davis: Divisive Matariki Propaganda

There was an article in The Post on 20 June – Matariki - “Treaty Principles Bill debate has seen top NZ business leaders recommit to inclusion” by Antonia Watson, chief executive of ANZ, and Roger Gray, chief executive of Port of Auckland (here).

They are business leaders and write in support of promoting diversity and inclusion in their organizations and others. They outline our changing demographics and claim: “We have a choice to either lean in and face our new future together collectively as a nation or be left behind.”

Penn Raine: It’s not the economy, stupid

Clinton’s ‘90’s strategist James Carville must have resented how often his quip is ascribed to his boss, and worse, that he is ever only partially quoted. Like so many memorable pronouncements that come in threes, the rest of his 1992 successful campaign message was that the electorate cares about healthcare, and that ‘more of the same’ policies might not cut it.

Chris Lee: Oral Submission Treaty Principles Bill

Thank you Mr Chairman. 

I support the intent of this bill because separatism has metastasised into sedition which aims to create tribal sovereignty in place of our sovereign liberal democracy. 

Radical Maori and their non-Maori fellow travellers have been emboldened by the success of their ahistorical revisionist treaty education programs and white privilege workshops.

Clive Bibby: Opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill is motivated by a false sense of entitlement - little to do with historical fact

There was a dramatic difference in presentation at the first round of Committee hearings into submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill.

What appeared most obvious to even casual observers was the number of critics with nothing more to offer than outdated emotional rhetoric slamming the perceived quashing of indigenous rights that had been obtained simply by nature of their ancestry - ie: being amongst the first immigrants to settle in this land.

Barrie Davis: The Maori Magna Carta

The claim of partnership in the Treaty of Waitangi as the basis of co-governance, sits at the centre of the debate on the Treaty Principles Bill. At face, a partnership for governing the country seems an unlikely possibility. The Treaty is an agreement between Queen Victoria and about five hundred Maori Chiefs regarding the sovereignty of New Zealand. Partnership is not specifically mentioned and given the far greater power and authority of Queen Victoria a hierarchical arrangement is far more plausible.

Wendy Geus: Social justice takes precedence over law in census investigation

Revealing dire need for Seymour's Treaty Principles Bill

David Seymour obliquely referred to the pervasion of a social justice agenda in New Zealand in his first interview of 2025 on The Country, with words to the effect, Government officials (and universities) have gone rogue implementing identity ideology (with private enterprise following suit!)

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Luxon has made the right call re Waitangi

Christopher Luxon’s made the right call not going to Waitangi next year. 

He's probably going to cop it from the press gallery for being a wuss but most of us have been around long enough to see the logic in this. 

We know by now that Waitangi is volatile and unpredictable at the best of times. You can cop a dildo in the face for doing nothing. 

Perce Harpham: Letter from 42 King’s Counsel

Dear All,

This open letter is written in response to the RNZ article of 14 November “Senior lawyers call for the Treaty Principles bill to be abandoned.” 

 

I respond with the authority  of my age and experience. Search the Internet for “perce.harpham.nz” to see something of my experience. I have now lived more than half the time since the Treaty was signed. My various visits to the USA add up to about nine months. Similarly with China. We have a child born in each of  England, Australia and NZ.

A.E. Thompson: Dr Duncan Webb’s Creative Reasoning Regarding Treaty Principles

I don’t agree a referendum is a sensible way of determining what, if any, principles underlie Te Tiriti or were believed to exist by the signatories. That’s a bit like voting to decide whether it rained yesterday or not. Better to find, or commission unbiased people to find, evidence and decide one way or another. Unfortunately, that wasn’t  done properly by the Waitangi Tribunal, as Ewen McQueen (author of ‘One Sun in the Sky: The Untold Story of Sovereignty and the Treaty of Waitangi’) discovered when he looked for, but was unable to find, evidence to support the Tribunal’s claims regarding principles.

Derek Mackie: For what it's worth

There's something troublin’ here 

Sure ain't good, that's exactly clear 

Activists, playin’ with our minds 

Trying to shame us, to keep us in line 

  It's time we stop 

   Kiwis, what's that sound? 

    Everybody look, we’re going down 

Barry Soper: The hīkoi was Māori Party's crowning glory

The Māori Party will be well pleased with the hīkoi this week. 

There was the long-planned haka in Parliament’s debating chamber last week, for which they’ll be slapped on their wrists with a wet bus ticket, but the hīkoi was their crowning glory. 

This was all about politics, grievances aside, and they’ve got what they craved, publicity. The march could easily have turned ugly with a good representation of bikies, legally showing their patches for the last time before they’re made illegal on Thursday. 

Gerry Eckhoff: In response to Anne Stevens - KC

Members of the public who have a long standing interest in civic affairs will be astonished and somewhat bewildered to be described as being exploited by the Treaty Principles Bill. Adding insult to this injury, Dunedin lawyer Anne Stevens (Kings Council) also described the public - in the same breath – as having their ignorance and prejudice exploited when it comes to matters pertaining to the Treaty of Waitangi. Really? Whatever Ms Stevens personal view of this bill is, her role as a KC is surely compromised by her pre-emptive strike against the Bill and her use of a totally emotive and inaccurate descriptive term of the Bill as “evil.”

Clive Bibby: Behind the headlines - the truth about race relations in this country

Anybody watching Parliament debating the Treaty principles bill or the headlines on TV covering the Hikoi heading for Wellington - most of the traveling aboard buses with only predetermined stops at big centres where the cameras were waiting eager to get comment from hand picked protestors - would have gained the impression that the country was in revolt against proposed legislation that is already condemned to die in the committee stages. So what is the point these seemingly disaffected groups are trying to make? 

Because, if it is as we are led to believe that democracy is in danger, then the protestors had better make a better job of producing the evidence that we are on the brink of a movement that will have serious consequences for race relations in this country.

Barry Soper: The hīkoi organisers already lost the argument

Any Māori grievance you could ever think of will be embraced by the hīkoi, which is winding its way from the far north and the deep south to converge on Parliament next Tuesday.

We're told by the organiser Eru Kapa-Kingi that the Treaty Principles Bill, which is about to receive its first and last debate in Parliament today, is a minor part of the hikoi. That's surprising, given the large number of placards that are being lugged across the country denigrating the bill.

Derek Mackie: When I like nothing at all

Luxon’s outright rejection of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, describing it as “divisive”, has struck many New Zealanders as irrational at best, and at worst a “dereliction of duty”. 

 There certainly seems nothing divisive about any of the proposed principles in my view. Principles One and Three could not be clearer that the NZ Government has full power to make laws in the best interests of everyone and which maintain a free and democratic society. 

And, everyone has the same rights and we are all equal before the law. 

Principle Two specifically confirms that Maori will continue to enjoy the same rights, as set out in the original Treaty. 

 What’s not to like about that? Well, according to our PM, everything! 

 There is NOTHING he likes about the Bill - absolutely NOTHING!!!! 

 Using Ronan Keating's hit song - When You Say Nothing at All - for inspiration, I desperately tried to find some semblance of logic in Luxon’s bizarre position. But ultimately, I’m left grasping at straws….as he seems to be. 

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Disrupting people won't make us sympathetic to your cause

I've actually been surprised at the level of anger I've heard expressed today at that Treaty Principles Bill hīkoi crossing over the Harbour Bridge - and I don't think it's a good thing for this particular cause.

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I got an email from a mum I know complaining about the impact it will l have on kids trying to get to their NCEA exams on time.

John Robinson: Recovering the social contract; Government and public together

Take back control of the narrative

A revolution in accepted, established thinking in government, media and amongst officials has taken New Zealand deep into racism (described as ‘Jim Crow racism’ in the first of these three articles).  Many see the damage and want to re-establish key principles, central for a counter-revolution.  That revival of community values, the re-capture of ‘hearts and minds’ (feelings, beliefs, knowledge and understanding), emphasising facts over myths, has been described as the return to an egalitarian ‘social contract’ in the second of these articles.