Geoff Parker: The NZ Herald's Cherry-Picked History.

The facts the Herald left out

The Weekend Herald's article (26 Sep 2026) “Horse trading: The troubling history of Māori-Pākehā land deals” presents a highly selective account of New Zealand's land history. It takes readers through disputed purchases, confiscations, the Native Land Court and Treaty settlements, while giving far less attention to the events that preceded those grievances.

That matters because history is chronology. If the beginning of an episode is removed, the events that follow can be made to look entirely different.

The Herald has published its version. Here are the facts it leaves out.

John McLean: Unlikely Doctor Te Moke

I’ve just read The Unlikely Doctor, a book about a man who now goes by the name of Timoti Te Moke. The book is written in the first person (“I”), but was in fact written for Te Moke (and the publisher, Allen & Unwin) by a fella named Eugene Bingham. Being a full time medical doctor, Te Moke made it plain, “I ain’t got the time [to write a book]”.

Geoff Parker: New Zealand’s Land History - Beyond the ‘Stolen Land’ Slogan.

Few political slogans in New Zealand are repeated as confidently — and examined as rarely — as the claim that the country was built on “stolen land.”

The claim that Māori land in New Zealand was simply “stolen” has become a common slogan in modern political debate. It appears frequently on social media and in activist rhetoric, and is often used to support calls for co-governance, special political status.

But slogans are not history.

The reality is that Māori land passed out of tribal ownership through several very different legal processes over nearly two centuries.

Geoff Parker: Race-based land laws

A recent letter to a Northland newspaper protested that land acquired for Maori schools had not been returned to iwi when these facilities were closed. Similarly, there’s yet another Maori occupation of private land in the region, claiming it should be returned because it had once been a school property. Unfortunately, these claims lack both context and fact, which is something this article aims to rectify.