Dame Professor Elizabeth Rata: New Zealand's Public Culture

What is it to be a New Zealander? Who do we believe ourselves to be?

New Zealand has a public culture grounded in Enlightenment principles of universalism, secularism, freedom, and individualism. The exclusivity of ethnicity is rejected for this inclusive New Zealand identity.

Elizabeth Rata: SUBMISSION TO THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE COMMITTEE ON THE NEW ZEALAND–INDIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

Submitted by Professor Elizabeth Rata, University of Auckland

16 May 2026

MY POSITION

I oppose the inclusion of Article 13.2 of the New Zealand–India Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which expressly affirms the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Elizabeth Rata: Neotribal Capitalism and Co-Governance

In a Nutshell

Capitalism creates prosperity. But its relentless drive to accumulate must be controlled by democratic politics. Neotribal economic corporations (the 'neo' means they are different from the pre-modern tribal re-distributive economy) are like socialist ones. They merge the economy with politics. Dangerously, they institutionalise the merger in legislation, policy and practice. Because those combined interests are invisible, they are unchallengeable.

Graham Adams: Stanford’s sly Treaty move backfires

National on back foot over Education bill.

Among the welter of commentary surrounding the recent publication of Jacinda Ardern’s memoir, it was very noticeable that journalists avoided mentioning co-governance and race-based policy as a significant factor in her political demise. It’s a topic they mostly prefer to skirt if they can.

This is perhaps not surprising given she paid legacy media companies $55 million to promote co-governance by insisting the Treaty be treated as a “partnership” as a condition for receiving taxpayer money.

Elizabeth Rata exposes the Treaty sabotage being proposed for the education system.

Elizabeth Rata chats to Michael Laws on The Platform about the sneaky clause in the 'Education and Training Amendment Bill number two'.

Click to view

Kerre Woodham: Education shouldn't be left up to chance

Now we've known for some time that New Zealand's once world class education system is no longer – that it is failing. And I really, really feel for the teachers. Education has been hijacked by ideologues who want children to share their world view and care little for the fact that our kids have no idea how to spell world or view. Our literacy is bad, our numeracy is even worse.

Paul Brennan chats with Elizabeth Rata on the events at Waitangi and her research on the two Treaties

Director of the Knowledge in Education Research Unit at the University of Auckland, Professor Elizabeth Rata, discusses events at Waitangi and her research on the two Treaties of Waitangi and the arguments therein.

Click image to listen

Where should the Treaty of Waitangi sit within our law?

Thomas Coughlan is joined by University of Auckland sociologist Elizabeth Rata to discuss her views on the Treaty, where it sits as a legal document.

Click image to listen

Mike Butler: Treaty principles and threats

Those who have done well out of the invention of treaty principles “will object to their removal” and “use the loud voices and threatening tactics”, Auckland University Professor of Education Elizabeth Rata wrote last October.

So true. Once the ACT Party’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill became a reality, as soon as the government changed, those loud complaints rang out.

Elizabeth Rata: In Defence of the Liberal University and against Indigenisation

The suppression of individual thought in our universities spills over into society, threatening free speech everywhere.

Indigenising New Zealand's universities is well underway, presumably with the agreement of University Councils and despite the absence of public discussion. Indigenising, under the broader umbrella of decolonisation, involves incorporating the post-1975 principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, inserting the traditional beliefs and practices of matauranga Māori into all areas of university life, and including Māori nomenclature and observances in university operations.

Elizabeth Rata: Two Treaties of Waitangi: The Articles Treaty and the Principles Treaty

There are two versions of the Treaty of Waitangi. The first is the 1840 Treaty – the ‘Articles Treaty’. The second is what I call the ‘Principles Treaty’. It dates from 1986 when the principles were first included in legislation. Astonishingly the parliamentary representatives who inserted the word ‘principles’ did not know what they meant. To include a word estranged from its meaning into legislation is an egregious political failure. At the very least, a democracy requires words to have an agreed meaning otherwise rational communication is impossible. Autocracies that use ideologies to control how people think can dispense with accurate meaning. Democracies cannot.

Graham Adams: The PM pushes old-time religion

While Luxon is pilloried for his religious views, Hipkins is busy inserting Māori spirituality into science.

It is one of the ironies of this election campaign that Chris Luxon is being painted as a religious zealot who will allegedly force Christian beliefs on the nation even as Chris Hipkins is actually introducing mātauranga Māori into education — and most controversially into science.

Last week, Chicago University’s Jerry Coyne, one of the world’s pre-eminent evolutionary biologists, described mātauranga Māori as a mix of “religion, ethics, morality, tradition and superstition” with some “empirical, trial-and-error based knowledge that can be taken as part of science”.

“It is not a ‘way of knowing’,” the professor said, “but a ‘Māori way of living’.”

Elizabeth Rata chats to Rodney Hide on 'Reality Check Radio'

If you are worried about the education system, this interview is essential listening.

Professor Elizabeth Rata strongly believes it is long past time to bring back common sense into education: we must abandon the term 'learners' and revert to 'teachers', and stop children spending too much time on self-directed inquiry before they have the tools to understand what they are reading.

The discussion also touches on 'tribalism' and the 'Kura Kaupapa' movement...

Elizabeth Rata: The Curriculum, intelligence, and democracy

The intelligence of the New Zealand population increased during the 20th century. Nutrition played its part but so too did education. Young people were taught the abstract knowledge of academic subjects and in the process developed secondary intelligence. Since the 1990s, the emptying out of prescribed academic knowledge from the national curriculum is likely to reverse the trend. It’s a sobering thought that the population in the 21st century may be less intelligent than our 20th century predecessors.

Professor Elizabeth Rata: In defence of democracy

I gave this address ‘In Defence of Democracy’ to the New Zealand ACT Party Annual Conference, in Wellington and Auckland, July 2022. I want to thank David Seymour, Leader of the ACT Party, and like myself committed to liberal democracy, for inviting me to speak. Although the address was given at a political party event, I was a guest speaker so the ideas I present are my own.

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak today. My talk ‘In Defence of Democracy’ is for those of all political persuasions who are deeply worried about New Zealand’s descent from democracy into a tribal form of ethno-nationalism .

I want to talk about democracy – about what it is we are in danger of losing and what we need to do to retain our nation’s remarkable 170 year legacy of democratic governance.

Elizabeth Rata: The Road to He Puapua – Is there really a Treaty partnership?

The He Puapua Report proposes revolutionary change for New Zealand. The question of how we have arrived at a crossroads where New Zealanders will have to choose between an ethno-nationalist state — which He Puapua leads to — or a democratic-nationalist one has its origins in three events in 1985, 1986 and 1987.

It was in these years that the concept of a Treaty of Waitangi “partnership” was created. It is the foundational pillar for the Report’s goal of “transformative restructuring of governance to recognise rangatiratanga Māori”. Iwi self-determination includes the co-governance arrangements laid out in He Puapua. There is also the likelihood of claims for the ownership of up to 50 per cent of public assets such as water, sea territories, flora and fauna, and airwaves. Is this path to ethnic nationalism inevitable?

The first key partnership event is the 1985 Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act. While the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act was about the settlement of historical grievances, the 1985 Amendment Act was a very different matter. The recognition of iwi-Māori rather than pan-Māori as the inheritors of Treaty settlements established the reviving tribe as both political player and economic corporation.

Point of Order: Professors warn of constitutional change by stealth and of the dangers of protecting Maori knowledge against refutation

A radical makeover of the research and science sector is outlined in Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways Green Paper, which was launched on October 28 by Dr Megan Woods as Minister of Research, Science and Innovation. Submissions on the discussion paper closed on March 16.

At the launch of the discussion paper, the government did not disguise its intention to embed the Treaty of Waitangi in the design and delivery of science and research in this country and to provide more opportunities for “mātauranga Māori”.

What does this portend? Graham Adams warns that the inevitable conclusion of the changes proposed in the discussion paper – especially if it is read alongside Te Pūtahitanga: A Tiriti–led Science-Policy Approach for Aotearoa New Zealand (HERE) – is co-governance with iwi of universities and Crown Research Institutes.

In other words, constitutional change by stealth.

Elizabeth Rata: Science or ideology? The NZ university at the crossroads

No matter how intense or heated the discussion may be, NZ universities need to address the difference between ideology and science.

New Zealand’s universities are at a defining crossroads. Do we remain a universitas, a community of scholars developing knowledge according to the universal principles and methods of science or do we continue down the path of a racialised ideology?

The science-ideology battle is nothing new to universities. Dialectical materialism was the ruling ideology in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Christianity was the ideology in the pre-Darwinian centuries of English universities. In post-1980s’ New Zealand it is the racial ideology of two political categories of people defined by their ancestry.

Chris Trotter: The Choice

“INSULATION from the ravages of extreme opinion has been achieved. The settlements have become mainstream.” The words are those of former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer. The “settlements” he refers to are the Treaty settlements negotiated between the Crown and Iwi.

It is to Iwi, New Zealand’s officially recognised tribal entities, that the responsibility for reinvigorating Māori society has been entrusted. Palmer’s confidence that the process has been walled-off from the “ravages” of democratic interference is important. The critical political choice made by leading Pakeha politicians, jurists and bureaucrats in the 1980s and 90s was to halt the momentum of left-wing Māori nationalism by inserting a layer of elite Māori business-people between the Crown and the economically and culturally impoverished Māori working-class.

Only by fostering the rapid growth of a Māori middle-class could the Pakeha state avoid being compelled to negotiate with social, cultural and political forces with precious little to lose. Forces, moreover, whose lack of a meaningful stake in the capitalist system might encourage its leaders to contemplate sponsoring an entirely different set of economic arrangements.

Elizabeth Rata: The treaty is not New Zealand’s founding document

I was surprised to read in Deborah Coddington’s recent Herald column that the Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand’s founding document. Of course some New Zealanders mistakenly believe that is the case. Where the belief becomes a problem is when a member of the government appointed and funded Constitutional Advisory Panel such as Deborah Coddington states that this is so. In describing the treaty as our founding document she has jumped the gun somewhat in anticipating the Panel’s recommendations about the status of the treaty. And she is certainly premature in gauging New Zealanders’ opinions on the subject.