Ivan Barnett: Te Arawhiti issues the policy templates

Te Arawhiti is the Māori Crown relations agency in New Zealand.

Te Arawhiti issues the policy templates, the Treaty‑principles definitions, and the partnership expectations that now shape the entire public service. These frameworks are already embedded across government departments, councils, and regulatory agencies. They influence how officials interpret the RMA, how councils conduct consultation, and how infrastructure projects are assessed. They operate quietly, without public mandate, and without meaningful parliamentary oversight.

Geoff Parker: Who Really Governs New Zealand?

Voters between a rock and a hard place

As the 2026 election approaches, many politically engaged New Zealanders find themselves in an uncomfortable position.

The polls are neck and neck. The country appears deeply divided. Yet for a growing number of voters, the choice is not between two inspiring visions for New Zealand. It is a choice between two parties they believe have both failed to confront the same underlying issue.

Guest Post: Notice To The New Zealand First Parliamentary Caucus

Guest Post by Ivan Barnett on New Minister

Ref: Immediate Legislative Action Required to Halt Ongoing Iwi Entrenchment in Local Government

To the Members of the New Zealand First Caucus,

This notice is issued to express the deep concern of New Zealanders who have watched the steady erosion of democratic authority through the appointment of unelected iwi representatives to council committees with full voting rights. The Government’s recent announcement claiming to “restore democratic accountability” is not action. It is not reform. It is not protection of the principle of one person, one vote. It is a political cover‑up for continued inaction.

Geoff Parker: Why Hipkins’ Treaty Romanticism Divides New Zealand

Chris Hipkins’ Waitangi Day sermon in the New Zealand Herald is a carefully constructed exercise in political reassurance: warm words, borrowed Māori concepts, and a curated sense of moral superiority. What it is not, however, is a serious account of how a modern liberal democracy actually holds together — or why New Zealand is becoming more fractured, not less.

Let’s start with the basics. The country is called New Zealand. It is a civic nation with a settled name. Prior to European contact there was no Māori concept of a single nation, and no name for the country as a whole. The name New Zealand dates back to 1643, when it was formally named Nieuw Zeelandt by the Dutch. It was later anglicised to New Zealand by the British, and has remained the country’s recognised name for nearly 380 years. “Aotearoa,” by contrast, is a modern substitute, absent from the Treaty of Waitangi itself.

Geoff Parker: The symbolic coup of New Zealand

New Zealand is witnessing a striking revival of Māori iconography (symbolism) - tattooed faces or chin, bone/greenstone pendants used as identity markers, the flag of the Māori sovereignty movement flying at public events and governmental buildings, carved posts (pou) appearing in places where no such markers ever stood before and Māori carved gateway entrances (waharoa) installed at school entrances. Supporters call this a cultural renaissance. But there is a deeper political message woven through these symbols, one that goes beyond cultural pride: a deliberate statement of rejection of European civilisation and the legitimacy of the country’s colonial foundations.

Geoff Parker: Tribalism Is Creeping Into New Zealand....

Tribalism Is Creeping Into New Zealand — And It Threatens Centuries of Hard-Won Democracy 

Democracy didn’t fall from the sky. It was built through blood, rebellion, struggle, and centuries of ordinary people refusing to live under systems where power belonged only to the few. It took generations to overcome monarchy, class hierarchy, feudal obligation, and tribal rule. What replaced them was the revolutionary idea that every individual is an equal citizen, and that government answers to all the people — not to clans, castes, or inherited elites.

Today, New Zealand risks sleepwalking backwards.

Geoff Parker: Kiwis need to be more forthright - Silence is Surrender

For too long, New Zealanders have watched in silence as governments of all stripes have chipped away at the principle that every citizen should stand equal before the law. The steady advance of race-based governance, special rights, parallel systems, and political power granted on the basis of ancestry has gone virtually unchallenged by the everyday New Zealander. That era has to end. This country won’t fix itself, and it certainly won’t return to democratic equality if the public continues to whisper their frustrations privately while remaining silent publicly.

John Robinson: Are we two peoples - are ‘indigenous’ Maori a race apart?

The current (2022) government policy of co-governance calls for the racial separation of New Zealanders in an apartheid state with separate, race-based parliaments – when we will all come under Maori tribal rule.  Equality and democracy will be gone.  This must not be allowed; this is our country, it is our future to decide – see HERE.

However, there are plans for separate parliaments and a constitution enshrining apartheid under the control of ‘indigenous’ Maori – see HERE. 

This must be stopped - and reversed.

Here, in the third of a series of articles, I ask why Maori should be considered a people apart, and given such power.

Don Brash: Absolutely no logic in a separate Maori Health Authority

Not many months after the 2020 election freed the Labour Party from the constraints which New Zealand First had placed on them between 2017 and 2020, the Government admitted to commissioning the most radical plan for over-turning New Zealand’s constitution since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840.

It was called He Puapua, and I have written about its quite extraordinary implications previously. In short, it envisages New Zealand’s moving away from being a Parliamentary democracy in which all adult citizens have an equal vote to one in which those who chance to have some Maori ancestry – always now with some non-Maori ancestry – have a much larger say in how things are run. The ultimate aim was to put the small minority with some Maori ancestry on a par, politically, with those without such ancestry.

“Not Government policy”, the Prime Minister declared, but continued with policies designed to achieve exactly that goal.