Geoff Parker: Godfery’s Great Omission

Morgan Godfery’s claim that New Zealand’s latest “race relations crisis” will “almost certainly resolve in favour of Māori” is a political prediction dressed up as historical inevitability.

A political prediction — resting on remarkably convenient omissions and unexamined assumptions.

Godfery tells us that Māori power has grown. He does not properly explain how it grew.

Bruce Moon: The Treaty Debate - again!

With some recent correspondents raising again an article in the Guardian by Morgan Godfery, dated 23rd April 2022, it becomes necessary to look once again at that article and identify again the manner in which it is so blatantly wrong.

There Godfery claims that “the Māori language version reaffirming Māori sovereignty” which is profoundly the most utter nonsense.  The entire point of the activities of early February 1840 was to ascertain whether the assembled Maori chiefs assented to the transfer of such sovereignty as each possessed to the Queen in return for the undoubted benefits to the Maori people of becoming British subjects.

Bruce Moon: Response to Godfery

“Memories of emotional events are stamped on running water” - Aristotle

And now we have it ‒  in his view anyway ‒  from Morgan Godfery who has got himself a job as a senior lecturer in the law faculty at Victoria University of Wellington as reported by “The Post” for 30th November 2023.

While I emphatically do not identify with either the “radical left” or “libertarian right” to which he refers, I do agree with the point on which, Godfery says, they “probably agree”: emphatically the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are a sham.

Roderick Mulgan & Patrick Winkler: Chilling effects of outlawing hate speech

About a year ago, the Government proposed new laws to control "hate speech".

Various spokespeople, including the Prime Minister, struggled to say how their own legislation would work - before tactically retreating. The traditional position is that speech should only be illegal if it advocates someone is actually harmed. Merely being offensive is not enough. The distinction is workable in practice and vital in principle, as being "offensive" can mean many things.

Mike Butler: ‘Co-governance’ coup confirmed

Commentator Morgan Godfery has confirmed what the Government has been denying for the past year, that the He Puapua plan for two governments in New Zealand, one for Maori and one for everyone else, is under way and that the people of New Zealand will never have a referendum on it.

This confirmation came in an article by him that was published today in The Guardian, titled “In New Zealand, Maori co-governance is already underway – referendum or not”. (1)

The term “co-governance” is a weasel word, ambiguous and misleading and probably intended to be so. A Maori supremacist quite likely sees no “co” when “co-governance” is mentioned.

Bryce Edwards: A polarising co-governance decision for Parliament

Co-governance is currently the most polarising issue in New Zealand politics. There’s something of a culture war over the concept of giving Māori voters or leaders a mandated equal political influence in public affairs. It’s an issue that has the potential to be socially explosive as plans are being developed and debated for how far the co-governance concept should be introduced in different areas of public life.

The co-governance issue of the day is whether local government elections could be altered so voters on the Māori electoral roll have the power to elect exactly the same number of councillors as those on the general role. The council in question is the Rotorua District Council, which has asked Parliament to give it legislative permission to introduce a new system for this year’s elections, allowing voters on the Māori and general rolls to elect three councillors each.

Critics point out that there are 22,000 voters on the Māori roll in Rotorua and 56,000 voters on the general roll, and that means voters on the Māori roll will have 2.5 times the electoral power as voters on the general roll.

Mike Butler: Couple blow treaty cash

Two Tauranga marae trustees admitted stealing at least $20,000 of treaty settlement cash and blowing some of it at casinos - but no-one told police, according to a report in the Sunday Star Times.

The couple have admitted spending the money, meant for renovations at the Waimapu Marae in Tauranga, at SkyCity Casino in Auckland, Riverside Casino in Hamilton and bars around Tauranga.

Mike Butler: Koha alarm for treatyist govt

A Serious Fraud office inquiry into kohanga reo-related spending should ring alarm bells for a government committed to giving billions upon billions of state dollars and assets to private tribal entities for social services, housing, and as an “economic base”.

Allegations of the misuse of public funding by the Kohanga Reo National Trust Board’s subsidiary Te Pataka Ohanga last October prompted an audit of Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust’s financial controls over public funding by Ernst & Young.(1)

Mike Butler: Taupo tribe loses $29m

“Bad investments and bailouts” have wiped almost half the value off Taupo tribe Tuwharetoa’s $66-million share of the “Treelord’s” treaty settlement, the Dominion Post reported today. (1) Ngati Tuwharetoa is the second tribe to admit to losing millions in settlement spoils. About a year ago, Taranaki's Ngati Tama reported it lost its $14.5-million payout it received in 2003, also in “bad investments”.