Category: Maori Issues

The Prime Minister and the government coalition partners have opened the classroom door to vested interest groups to spread their propaganda. One of those groups is the Maori sovereignty movement. Another is the Greens.

2019 was to be the year of delivery for Labour. We were told this new government would be transformational, and their policies would have a wellbeing focus. Reality has not lived up to the expectations.

One of the “key outcomes” of the new prison strategy was to humanise and heal inmates, the Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis said. “An important part of that involves staff treating people with respect and dignity to uphold their mana.”

A new radicalised narrative now claims that Maori have been oppressed since colonial times and their over-representation in disadvantage is the fault of the descendants of the colonisers. Meng Foon, Labour’s new Race Relations Commissioner is promoting this propaganda.

The Race Relations Commissioner demanded Andrew Hollis’s immediate resignation after posting on social media the Treaty is “a joke”. Point of Order sought clarification about the implications for the freedom of speech which should be cherished in a healthy democracy.

The question for the new council is whether they will revoke the anti-democratic decision their predecessors made - with no public consultation - that unelected and unaccountable iwi would sit at the council table with the same voting rights as elected councillors. With the committee the Ngai Tahu representatives joined dealing with the allocation of freshwater, their conflict of interest is plain to see.

Local democracy may look like its working, but council rules of engagement virtually prohibit any public conflict of opinion between councillors. Codes of Conduct and the demand for “group speak” preclude vigorous debate. It is wrongly viewed that dissent around a council table is seen as dysfunctional. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ability to speak against and vote 'no' in the face of majority support is an all too rare attribute in politics.

Through the unprecedented denigration of Captain Cook and other historical leaders as “white supremacists”, and the malicious vilification of the colonisation process, the scene is now being set for the next phase of this power grab: the indoctrination of children through fake history.

What Maori nationalism seeks is a reversal of political fortunes: the creation of an Aotearoa-New Zealand in which Pakeha will no longer call the shots. A radical revision of New Zealand and, indeed, of global history, is crucial to achieving this political reversal.

Speculative technology is no substitute for an established and lucrative industry that is being destroyed by government policy. Like the oil industry, the justification for their attack on farmers is the Prime Minister's fixation with being seen as a global leader in climate change.