Graeme Spencer: The CCO That Put Culture Before Consumers

Timaru District Council after a suspect consultation process have finally formed a CCO (Council Controlled Organisation) with MacKenzie District Council.

The result - a subscale entity, too small to deliver real efficiencies but big enough to add cost and distance from accountability. The worst of both worlds.

Pee Kay: A mirror can only reflect what is standing in front of it!

New Zealand society is as divided on the issue of race as never before. From the 23rd of September 2017 until the 14th of October 2023 we were encumbered with a Labour government that for 6 years, set about dividing the country along lines based on ancestry.

To criticise was to be labelled racist. Critical analysis of the government by the MSM became a long forgotten process. Academics, they who rode extremely high horses, were free to revel in perpetrating the Treaty partnership myth and condemning anyone who questions the magnificence of Te Ao Maori.

Matua Kahurangi: The PPTA’s political circus

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) used to represent educators. Today, it’s a political pressure group masquerading as a union, and its latest stunt confirms just how far it’s drifted from neutrality.

The PPTA is now selling Toitū Te Tiriti merchandise through its website - complete with slogans, banners, and talking points straight from political activism. This isn’t about education. It’s about ideology.

Graham Adams: Compulsory Treaty courses tip of the iceberg

Last week, David Seymour enthusiastically welcomed the recommendation by Auckland University’s Senate to make the compulsory first-year courses on the Treaty and te ao Māori voluntary after Act had publicly campaigned on the issue.

He described the Senate’s “two to one” vote in favour of voluntary enrolment as a “massive victory for people… to make up their own mind”.

Judy Gill: Are Our Schools Teaching NZ Values — Or The UN Agenda?

New Zealand’s education system has shifted far beyond teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Increasingly, it mirrors the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), embedding international agendas into the classroom. The result is that our children are being shaped by global policy frameworks rather than by the values of a free and secular society.

Three themes dominate: the climate apocalypse, Te Tiriti principles, and Te Ao Māori spirituality. Each aligns neatly with UN education targets.

Gary Judd KC: Politicised lawyers

Who become politicised judges

David McGrogan says

I am a legal scholar and writer.

I was born and raised on Merseyside, and lived for the better part of a decade in Kanagawa Prefecture, in Japan, where I was a legal translator. I have a PhD in Law from the University of Liverpool, and I am currently Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School.

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.

Professor Jerry Coyne: Another desperate but failed attempt to show that indigenous “science” improves modern science

This article at The Conversation, by a climatologist at the University of Wellington and a lecturer in design (?) at the University of Auckland, is a desperate attempt to buttress Māori “ways of knowing” by showing how they align with modern science conducted in Antarctica. It is purely performative, meant to sacralize Māori “science,” but in fact adds nothing to modern science. Its only aim is to show that if you twist Māori lore sufficiently, and squint hard enough, you can sort of see some similarities with modern science.

Sean Plunket: On The Fire & Emergency Services' New Kaupapa Māori Proposal

Sean Plunket at The Platform had this information dropped into him anonymously, he talks that the fire service, a Crown agency, is being maorified despite Chris Luxon’s promise to wind back maorification in New Zealand.

Pee Kay: What Is It Going To Be, Law Or Lore?

Law should be fairly simple to understand, shouldn’t it? It is simply there, written in black and white and based on what has gone before.

 
But sometimes it is not that easy to interpret. That is why we have learned judges who we need to and should be able to interpret the law fairly and justly on our behalf.

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.

Peter Williams: Will education legislation really change?

The Minister seems keen on teaching spiritual matters

The legislative relationship between New Zealand education and the Treaty of Waitangi is a recent one.

Up till 1989 there was no reference to it at all in the prevailing Education Act. It was taught as part of the history curriculum, although most classroom experiences will be of it being glossed over under three headings – Māori chiefs said Britain could take over New Zealand, they could keep their own land unless they sold it to the Crown, and everybody who lived in New Zealand had the same rights.

Michael Laws: On Treaty Rules That Will Destroy New Zealand's Education System

Michael Laws > "This is very possibly the most important interview in the history of The Platform because the exposure of the sabotage or intended sabotage of the government's educational objectives by senior public servants within the Ministry of Education, as contained in the 'Education and Training Amendment Bill number two'....."

Professor John Raine: Ancestry-Defined Enthnostate or a Working Democracy

The Treaty of Waitangi should be a unifying document but instead it seems to consign New Zealand society to a future of categorisation and determination of rights by race. Look no further than countries such as Malaysia, India or Iran to see how damaging this is to societal harmony. Can we avoid a further drift towards becoming an ethnostate?

Peter Williams: Is this really our country?

The line on the official Parliament website is stark.

“Te ao Maori competencies and approaches are key considerations in our recruitment practices.”

This is not a stock exchange listed or privately held company, or a small or medium sized enterprise. It is the Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. They are the organisations which administer our Parliament to ensure its smooth operation in the interests of every citizen and resident of this nation.

Yet here, buried deep in an extraordinary document called “He Ao Takitaki: The stars that guide us” is a staff hiring policy which says that unless you have competencies in te ao Maori and an approach to life through te ao Maori you’re unlikely to get a job at Parliament.

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:

Zoran Rakovic - A Bureaucratic Blueprint: Woke Architecture Meets Soft Totalitarianism

The NZRAB’s latest Schedule NZ Consultation Briefing Paper arrives not with the dignity of an architectural manifesto but with the hesitant shuffle of a government department having just discovered adjectives. Drenched in the warm bathwater of consultation rhetoric and spiritual deference, it proposes the introduction of new “performance criteria” that would see architecture in New Zealand surrender its compass to a cultural worldview—Te Ao Māori—not as a complementary influence, but as a central moral axis. The tone is more missionary than managerial. The intent? Ostensibly noble. The implications? Chilling, if we still take the Bill of Rights Act even half-seriously.

Yvonne van Dongen: Woke Surgeons Only Need Apply

If you had impacted wisdom teeth requiring surgery, would it comfort you to know the consultant surgeon was competent in te ao Māori?

Or, say, if you needed oral cancer surgery, is it a bonus if the person operating on your mouth has had experience in projects and initiatives which give effect to Te Tiriti principles?

Rodney Hide: Schooling Through a Te Ao Maori Lens

Last week my 13-year-old at Wakatipu High studied in English “An introduction to culture and identity in literature”.

The class guide was as follows:

Bob Edlin: Yes, the beach is better protected....

Yes, the beach is better protected, but an iwi went to court to preserve its customary rights (to do what is unclear)

Keen to broaden my horizons, I have been finding the answer – a part of the answer, at least – to the question: What is the Māori world view?