Pee Kay: A Democratic Defikcit

It was like a cancer, disguised, undisclosed and incrementally it grew. Insidious in its reach we now witness the infection of people in places of authority.

It was, the proponents say, the misunderstood political hot potato in the 2023 general election and it played a significant role in the election of our current coalition.

As we headed towards the 2023 General Election, one topic that dominated debates and the airwaves alike was co-governance. A term of many layers but of real potency, co-governance is a descriptor frequently distorted and misrepresented when used to drive agendas across the political spectrum.

Bob Edlin: Have Councils ceded to iwi the power to tell you (without explanation) to stay away....

Prayers and prohibitions – how councils have ceded to iwi the power to tell you (without explanation) to stay away

Police officers, fire fighters and ambulance staff were not the only people called in when one person died and another was seriously injured after a vehicle fire in the Lower Hutt suburb of Taitā a fortnight ago. People granted the power to impose a “keep out” prohibition for cultural and spiritual reasons were brought in, too.

A Lower Hutt Council spokesman was quoted as saying:

Bob Edlin: No, it’s not the Treaty which grants privileges to Māori – it’s politicians

Politicians eagerly do what the Treaty of Waitangi does not: they dispense favours and privileges to Māori.

They want to establish “partnerships” not because the Treaty demands them, but because they claim to be invoking “principles” established more than 100 years after the treaty’s signing.

The treaty’s role in treating Māori and non-Māori equally is mentioned on the Human Rights Commission’s website:

Gary Judd KC: Schedule to Submission on Treaty Principles Bill

Schedule

1. The “principles” were introduced as a concept by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. They were not defined. Commencing during the 1980s, governments started promoting legislation referring to the principles of the treaty and requiring varying degrees of adherence to the principles — e.g., not inconsistent with, take into account, have regard to, give effect to, et cetera.

Graham Adams: Media chiefs struggle to understand democracy

News outlets compromised in the Treaty principles debate.

Listening to Sinead Boucher speak last week at a parliamentary hearing on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, it was easy to be captivated momentarily by her rhetoric about democracies requiring a strong and free media.

Addressing the select committee MPs, she said: “A strong, independent news media is essential… As elected representatives in a democracy, I know you really understand the necessity for a strong, free press… that helps inform and educate New Zealanders on the issues that are really important to them.”

Then you remember suddenly she is talking about Stuff.

Point of Order: Don’t accept Human Rights Commission reading of data on Treaty partnership

Wellington is braced for a “massive impact’ from the new government’s cutting public service jobs, The Post somewhat grimly reported today.

Expectations of an economic and social jolt are based on the National-Act coalition agreement to cut public service numbers in each government agency in a cost-trimming exercise “informed by” head counts in 2017.

National campaigned on a 6.5% reduction in spending across the public service.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 5/10/23

Six new marine reserves to be established (all going well on October 14) and local iwi will become management partners

Willow-Jean Prime and Rachel Brooking have struck another blow for conservation, in the last-gasp days of the 2020-23 Labour Government. Whether they have successfully struck a blow for their job conservation will become plain on October 14.

They have announced plans for six new marine reserves between Timaru and the Catlins – and for the establishment of another Crown-iwi partnership. The new marine reserves will be managed by Kāi Tahu in partnership with the Department of Conservation.

Graham Adams: Co-governance smoulders in election run-up

Polls on October 14 will be a verdict on race-based policy in New Zealand — and Australia.

In New Zealand, the general election on October 14 will be to some extent a judgment on the extensive co-governance policies implemented by the Ardern-Hipkins administration across a broad array of policy including water management, planning standards, health and education.

In an odd coincidence, it looks likely that October 14 will also be the day Australians vote in a referendum on the proposed Voice to Parliament, which will decide whether Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders win a constitutional right to a permanent body advising the government on matters affecting Indigenous peoples.

Point of Order: Local government and the “Treaty partnership”.....

......Kiwiblog tells you what the news media missed or downplayed

Point of Order was alerted by Kiwiblog’s David Farrar to the shape of local government which is being recommended in its final report by Labour’s hand-picked panel.

Farrar particularly noted the proposal from this government-appointed body to dismiss the principle of equality of suffrage.

His article drew attention to these proposals:

Point of Order: Mahuta heads overseas...

......(but have non-Maori been left out of her delegation?) while Luxon gushes about Nats’ Three Waters plans

Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s latest travel plans have been posted on the Beehive website today, advising she is packing her bags to travel to Japan and Singapore tomorrow “to strengthen Aotearoa New Zealand’s connections with Indo-Pacific partners”.

But it seems she is strengthening the connections only for some New Zealanders.

The press statement says:

The Platform chats with Don Brash about co-governance and treaty partnership

Don Brash says New Zealand is undergoing a cultural coup

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.

Mike Yardley: Fluoridation shows Government lacks respect for local councils' independence

Forcing local councils into toothless submission via far-reaching national policy directives and rushed legislative change is becoming a familiar refrain.

The “takeover” of council water assets under the Three Waters reform model has been the most explosive lightening rod to date.

But the government’s increasing propensity to throw its weight around and relegate local authorities to bit-player status, while it cultivates its centralisation agenda, is unmistakeable.

The Christchurch City Council is currently grappling with a fistful of big state decrees, including the imminent prospect of being ordered to fluoridate the city’s water supply.

Karl du Fresne: Pssst ... don't mention the iwi

From disgrace to sham to travesty and back again – that pretty much sums up the Three Waters project so far. (I won’t use the government’s preferred term “reform”, because reform means a change for the better.)

When it became clear last year that Nanaia Mahuta’s pet ideological project faced concerted opposition across a broad front, the government sought to defuse it by setting up an “independent working group” to review the proposed governance arrangements.

The working group’s report is now in, and it has justifiably been slammed for merely tinkering at the edges – hardly surprising, given that the group was stacked with iwi representatives and people broadly sympathetic to the government. (One example is my own mayor, Lyn Patterson, a reliable friend of Labour who told the Wairarapa Times-Age that the report addresses local government’s concerns. Yet her own council recently joined 29 others in opposing Three Waters and looking at alternative proposals.)

Bob Edlin: Yes, the Dunedin City Council CEO has the power of censorship, but questions remain around talk of a Treaty Partnership

Recent happenings in Dunedin illustrate the extent to which “the Treaty partnership” has become a facile concoction of local and central government and is applied to justify whatever politicians or administrators want to justify when dealing with Maori rights and privileges.

In this case it has been applied to justify censorship and to inhibit an elected community representative’s attempt to foster discussion of the proposition that when te reo is spoken at public gatherings, a translation should be provided to enable the great majority of the country’s population who don’t speak that language to comprehend what was said.

Bob Edlin: Maori demand “partnership” in new cancer agency

A modern-day interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi – contentiously bringing “partnership” into considerations –  is encouraging Maori demands for equal representation on a new health agency.

The government has announced it will establish a national Cancer Control Agency by December as part of a 10-year strategy, which includes achieving cancer survival equity by 2030.

This triggered a Maori health leader’s insistence on equal representation within the new agency and her call for Maori to decide what this means in practice.

The Partnership Deception

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look into the deception that underpins race-based privilege including proposed exemptions from a capital gains tax, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Anthony Willy explains why the claims by Maori that a capital gains tax would breach the Treaty of Waitangi are based on a false premise, and our poll asks whether you support capital gains tax exemptions based on race.

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Michael Coote: Iwi plans push tribal supremacy

In its draft Unitary Plan (UP), Auckland Council slips in mention that it will, “Require [land] subdivision, use and development … to incorporate the outcomes articulated by mana whenua through consultation and within iwi planning documents.”

This statement would ordinarily be a recitation of basic legal obligations on Auckland Council under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), except that the UP is proposing an entirely political commitment to privilege and facilitate the interests of Auckland’s Maori tribes over the rest of the community.

Reuben Chapple: Partnership? What Partnership

Only in the last 25 years has anyone considered it an established fact that the Treaty of Waitangi created a partnership between Maori and the Crown. For almost 150 years, this view was largely unheard of. Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence that the British authorities intended to establish such a partnership, nor that the chiefs saw this as the Treaty’s object.