Penny Marie: Five Prayers a Day - And Nobody Asked Your Permission

When cultural activity becomes religious imposition, it's time for New Zealanders to start asking hard questions.

A parent in New Zealand recently discovered that their child had been reciting prayers (karakia) to Māori gods five times a day at a standard state school. Not a kura. Not a Māori immersion school. A regular taxpayer-funded school that is, by law, supposed to be secular.

When that parent tried to have their child excused, they were made to ask - repeatedly - before being granted what should have been an obvious right from the start.

John Robertson: The New Zealand Army Has Been Hijacked...

.....quietly, structurally, and without democratic consent. What should be a disciplined, secular fighting force has drifted into something else entirely: an institution requiring its personnel to participate in a belief framework they may not share. This isn’t about language or symbolism; it’s about compelled conduct.

Gary Judd KC: Karakia and judicial neutrality.....

Karakia and judicial neutrality: A principled examination of the demands of judicial office

I am pleased that, with limited exceptions, the practice of court‑initiated karakia appears to have been discontinued. I previously raised this issue in correspondence with the Chief Justice Dame Helen Winkelmann, describing the proposal as a serious departure from judicial neutrality, inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the rule of law.

Bob Edlin: Two bodies blessed by kaumatua at crash scene (presumably in partnership with Police) were tourists

Another day has passed without an explanation from the Police Media Centre about the assistance provided by iwi at the site of a helicopter crash near Battle Hill.

A press release last Thursday, issued in the name of the Kāpiti-Mana Area Commander, Inspector Renée Perkins, said “a significant recovery operation” had taken place the previous day to recover both the pilot and passenger from the crash site.

It said:

Graham Adams: Councillor Refuses To Kowtow To Marae Protocol

Hastings politician won’t compromise his values.

At first glance, you wouldn’t guess that Mark Carney’s much-lauded speech to the World Economic Forum last month in Davos had any relevance to a councillor in New Zealand refusing to attend an official meeting at a marae.

However, the theme of the Canadian Prime Minister’s speech was the importance of being open and honest about widely accepted beliefs we all know to be at least “partially false”. He urged middle-nations to call out the cosy view of the “rules-based international order” which is routinely abused by the powerful.

Bob Edlin: Health workers are kicking off their day with a karakia....

Health workers are kicking off their day with a karakia, but Act MP ensures it is in their own time and not compulsory

The National Public Health Service has been getting along – it seems – on a wing and a prayer.

The Platform’s Tina Nixon drew PoO’s attention to the spiritual side of the service’s daily rituals and routines in an interview with Act MP Todd Stephenson.

Matua Kahurangi: Seven tribes, one furniture store – The absurd racism of NZ’s consent regime

ACT MP Simon Court recently posted IKEA’s 2023 Resource Consent Requirements, and the document is a masterclass in how far New Zealand has drifted into full-blown, bureaucratised separatism. The whole thing reads like a cultural compliance manual rather than a straightforward building approval. If this is what a global company must wade through just to put up a furniture store, no wonder this country is falling apart.

Geoff Parker: Courtesy Becomes Control

New Zealanders have a fatal flaw: we’re too polite for our own good. We don’t like conflict. We don’t like awkwardness. And we certainly don’t like being the one person in the room who says, “No thanks, I’m not doing that.” That national instinct - to keep the peace at all costs - is now being used against the public in a way few fully appreciate.

Polite New Zealanders quietly sit through public gatherings while an opportunistic orator addresses the audience in a language few understand. This isn’t about culture — it’s about control.

Graeme Spencer: New Zealand Once Produced World Class Achievers......

New Zealand Once Produced World Class Achievers - Now We Can’t Keep Kids In Class 

It’s remarkable, isn’t it?

New Zealand, somehow produced world-leading scientists, engineers, explorers, aviators, and athletes - all before schools were required to open every lesson with ceremonial chanting and a Treaty compliance checklist.

Bob Edlin: Public bodies in NZ embrace karakia.....

Paganism has been enshrined in Latvian law – but public bodies in NZ embrace karakia without being mandated by Parliament

Our Cambridge Dictionary defines the word “pagan” as


… a person who belongs to a religion that worships many gods, especially one that existed before the main world religions:

We checked the meaning of “pagan” after reading an article in The Critic headed

The return of the strong gods?

Ani O'Brien: It's just a passport cover... except it's not

The battle over the words on our passports says a lot more about New Zealand than we’d like to admit.

So, they’re flipping the words on the cover of the New Zealand passport… again. New Zealand is to return to sit above Aotearoa. Cue the headlines. Cue the outrage. Cue the proverbial dick measuring. Cue the race-baiting.

Judy Gill: A Sacred Lie - The Rise Of Spiritual Politics In NZ Education

I am not a political figure. I have never stood for office, never joined a party, never published in any mainstream outlet until recently. I am simply a parent living on Waiheke Island, trying to raise my son in peace, in reason, and in freedom. I do not want my son to attend a Christian school, nor do I want to homeschool him. I want what used to be normal in NZ: a secular, neutral education free from religious or spiritual instruction.

And yet, today, that is no longer available to my child.

Matua Kahurangi: David Seymour is right

ACT Leader David Seymour is standing up for common sense and individual rights by challenging the forced use of karakia in public and professional life. Speaking to the press gallery, Seymour made it clear that spirituality should be personal, not political, and certainly not compulsory.

Judy Gill: OPEN LETTER - Stop Indoctrinating Our Children

Why are toddlers being taught to worship gods from a political mythology, under the guise of “culture”? Why are teachers preaching belief in atua — Māori gods — to children who still believe in Santa Claus?

This letter takes on Jessie Moss of NZEI, one of the ideologues behind the push to replace academic excellence with emotional ideology and religious instruction in New Zealand schools and kindergartens.

Read what’s really happening in early childhood centres.

Tui Vaeau: Fluency for the Few, Cost for the Many

Why You’re Paying for a Language Almost No One Uses - or Understands

“We’re all forced to echo small words that make big noise and mean nothing to most of us.”

Indeed. Small words, big noise. That, in essence, is what te reo Māori has become in modern New Zealand: a disproportionately celebrated state hobby enforced by bureaucrats, virtue-signallers, and treaty-industrialists under the pretext of national identity. Te reo is not our national language. It is not widely spoken, understood, or requested. It is being rammed down our collective throat by Wellington’s bureaucratic caste and the Māori elite, a partnership more obsessed with symbolism than with service.

John Robertson: Make New Zealand Secular - The Fight Against State-Sanctioned Spiritual Bullsh*t

2025 edition: where your kid might get a morning prayer to Māori gods, your government job may come with a compulsory haka, and if you question any of it, you’re a racist. That’s the country we’re living in—where forced cultural rituals are the norm, not the exception, and where secularism is now just a dusty concept buried under a pile of race-based laws and bureaucratic guilt.

So here’s a little mission I’ve cooked up: Make New Zealand Secular. That’s right. No more institutionalised spiritual theatre, no more taxpayer-funded tribalism, and no more guilt-tripping the entire population into pretending we’re all spiritually connected to a goddamn tree because the Ministry of Ethnic Cosiness said so.

Insights From Social Media

Steven Mark Gaskell writes > Let’s Rebuild New Zealand with Flax and Wairua What Could Go Wrong?

Just when you thought navigating New Zealand’s building code couldn’t get any more complicated, here comes a call to “weave tikanga and wairua” into your next resource consent application. Because, obviously, what our housing sector really needs isn’t fewer regulations it’s spiritual guidelines and indigenous architecture footnotes from 1823.

Gary Judd KC: Racist policies in Parliamentary precinct

High officials striking dagger through democracy's heart

We acknowledge the celestial entities

We acknowledge our guiding stars

The coursing of the stars is invoked

Inspiring the path we follow through our world

In this endeavour, heaven and earth come together

Let it be

That's the karakia with which the Chief Executive of Parliamentary Services and the Clerk of the House end their statement of strategy 2022-2025. It outlines the programme for Te Ao Maori and tikanga within the work they and their officials do. It begins with:

Gary Judd KC: It never rains, but it pours

Two days ago, lawyers in the North were sent details of a proposal to commence and end each court sitting day with a karakia. They have been asked for comments. One of the readers of my piece explaining why freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief is so important in the email, from the courts administration, to me, together with the comments he had sent. I decided I should enter the fray and sent this email.

I endorse [my reader's] response to your request for comments, “New Zealand is a secular country and as such there is no place for a Karakia, or any other sort of prayer, in any State activity.”

Centrist: Broad funding guidelines for Rongoā Māori, while other alternative therapies remain uncovered by ACC

What is Rongoā Māori?

Rongoā (also known formally as Rongoā Māori), a traditional healing practice, is officially recognised by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) in rehabilitation programmes, but loose guidelines regarding its definition raise concerns. Anyone can access this service equally under ACC.