Missing in Action

In the past week we have seen Sir Russell Coutts accusing the Government of Dictatorship and we have seen headlines in the Wairarapa Times-Age of: “A deceitful lying pack of bastards” in relation to the Three Waters Reform.

Three Waters reforms will now be mandated. And one elected member in Wairarapa has come out swinging, calling the government “a deceitful, lying pack of bastards” for
the move.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta confirmed yesterday that four publicly-owned water service entities [WSE] would be created, legislation would be introduced to progress the establishment of the entities, and that “legislation is a mandated decision”.

She said the “voluntary opt-in approach” had changed because the case for change was “compelling”.

The problem with that statement is that the only “compelling” case for change is the one where Iwi get 50% of management control and power of veto over all decisions through the stated 75% majority requirement for all decision making.

There is no need for the level of urgency that has been promoted for this decision making other than to ensure that the government has implemented a hidden strategy before the voters can stop them.

Where was our leader Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern? As is the norm when there is bad news around, the PM is missing in Action, leaving her ministers to carry the can. She really only seems to want centre stage when she can impart good news and project her kind & empathetic image (which seems to be indelibly tarnished now) and unfortunately for her this is now starting to become quite obvious. The wheels are definitely starting to wobble and look very likely to come off soon.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, when she was elected, promised to govern for all New Zealanders yet since the 2020 election when the current Labour Government was re-elected with a simple majority, she has been acting like a dictator, passing authoritarian laws and trashing our democracy.

The government has been making race based decisions that effectively hand control of basic functions over to (Maori) a minority of New Zealand’s population (approximately 16%) purportedly on the basis that Maori have a right of partnership granted under the Treaty of Waitangi. There is no mention anywhere in the Treaty documents of a partnership between the Crown and Maori.

Yet based on this and the other false claim that Maori are indigenous to New Zealand and therefore are covered by the UN declaration on Indigenous people’s rights, they are being given control over basic functions of government on race alone.

The Cambridge dictionary definition of indigenous is as follows:

Indigenous

Adjective

used to refer to, or relating to, the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else :

used to refer to plants and animals that grow or live naturally in a place, and have not been brought there from somewhere else:

not foreign or from outside an area:

A couple of classic examples of this are:

1. “He Puapua” Report of the Working Group on a Plan to Realise the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand which was commissioned by Cabinet in 2019, produced by Te Puni Kōkiri, and sets out a 20-year plan to bring the UN declaration into effect.

It envisages that by 2040 - the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi - the nation will be ruled under an equal power-sharing arrangement between Māori and non-Māori leaders.

This report was only released (in a highly redacted form - being 34 out of a total of 123 pages) by the government last October. The report had been completed almost a year before the highly redacted version was released last October. And;

1. The Three Waters Reform Project: The Three Waters Reform Project is stated as the Government proposing to build a better system for New Zealand’s drinking water, wastewater and stormwater—our three waters—networks, but what it actually seems to be about, is giving control of our three waters assets to Maori as was suggested in the He Puapua report.

These two examples alone have the ability to change the whole system of government in New Zealand by replacing free democratic principles of government with a race based tribal led brand of socialism, and the majority of decisions around both issues have been taken behind closed doors and deliberately kept from the public of New Zealand. In fact most were also kept from the government’s coalition partner in the previous government.

They were not mentioned in any way throughout the last election campaign yet now that the government has been returned with an absolute majority they have become the subject of urgency within government, with many of the decisions being forced through the house under urgency.

Many of the decisions around the Three Waters Project (which follows the blueprint set out in the He Puapua Report) have not been publically consulted or have had very short time frames for consultation that have precluded the public from indulging in meaningful consultation.

He Puapua recommended making it easier to set up Māori wards - and in February the government did just that by overturning the law that meant voters could petition for a referendum to veto a council decision to introduce them.

Labour made no mention of such a law change in its election manifesto, but Ardern pushed the Māori wards legislation through Parliament under urgency, allowing less than 48 hours for public submissions.

He Puapua calls for a Māori-centric version of New Zealand's history in schools, and there is currently a move to rewrite the history curriculum in line with this recommendation.

He Puapua calls for public education programmes, including conscious and subconscious bias training to deal with structural racism, and this is already being promoted by the Public Service Commission.

He Puapua recommends exempting some Māori land from rates, a notion reflected in the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Act 2021 passed in April.

Government critics say these moves are confirmation He Puapua is functioning as an undeclared separatist agenda they believe the government has secretly endorsed.

The Ihumātao settlement last December, when protesters forced Fletcher Building to sell 33 hectares to the government for $30 million, is cited as an example of the same agenda, particularly since the deal was made explicitly outside the Treaty of Waitangi process.

This deal over privately owned land is now being used as a precedent for a claim to have government return privately owned land at Taipa Point in Northland which is for sale, to Ngati Kahu iwi.

Overall, the impression that the Government is intent on subverting the nation's institutions and constitutional arrangements by stealth risks severely damaging the government’s long trumpeted virtues of openness and transparency.

The foundation of our democracy is the law applied equally to us all to ensure justice and fairness in a just and fair society as granted to all the subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.

In the run-up to the election in 2020 no party campaigned that they wanted the country to move from being a democratic freedom based society and move to centralised control of all aspects of our lives.

Yet we have seen the removal of our right to hold referenda in relation to appointment of Maori seats on local councils; Maori effectively being given control of Health NZ by the power of veto; the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, announced in February which requires journalists to report favourably on "this Treaty partnership agenda"; suggested changes to hate speech laws which will remove existing rights under the NZ Bill of rights, requirements for race based ownership quotas in government supply contracts etc.

He Puapua has never been publicly announced, but a number of recommendations, such as the Māori Health Authority and Māori council wards, have been implemented already without any acknowledgement from government that they are part of a wider plan.

The Prime Minister needs to explain why her government has been implementing He Puapua's recommendations one by one, without sharing any such wider plan with New Zealanders.

The implementation of the He Puapua recommendations by stealth will only create two systems based on racial division and this will be nothing short of disastrous for New Zealand and its population.

Attempts to racialise New Zealand, is bound to provoke significant public complaint. Government has a duty to uphold the Rule of Law and protect the democratic rights of all New Zealanders.

The implementation of parts of the He Puapua report raises vital issues about what inferences the Crown is allowing and/or encouraging Māori to draw from its recommendations.

Any failure to uphold the equal application of the laws, on the grounds that a separate Māori Health or Justice system will soon replace the long-established principle of “one law for all”, will be taken as proof that this government intends to change profoundly the constitutional arrangements of the New Zealand state.

Such a fundamental change to the manner in which New Zealand is administered, especially one predicated on ethnic and cultural considerations, could have no legitimacy without having first secured the endorsement, by way of referendum, of a majority of New Zealand citizens.

The Prime Minister’s silence on these matters is indefensible. A clear statement of her government’s determination to uphold the Principle of One Law for all is long overdue.

She may be missing in action at present but you can be assured that with the unrest and distrust that is being fermented by this Three Waters decision and the ongoing lockdowns around Covid vaccination rates etc, she will be forced to front the electorate to explain her government’s decisions.

The Ardern administration is attempting to distance itself from its legacy of failed pandemic management - leaky borders, never-ending lockdowns, the slowest vaccine rollout in the OECD, critical health sector staff shortages, and one of the lowest ratios of intensive care beds per head of population in the Western world.

Should she fail to adequately explain her government’s decisions then she can expect to feel the effects of that at the ballot box in the next election. The transfer of the democratic control of essential public resources to unaccountable Maori governance may well prove to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back - the point at which New Zealanders turn against her Government.

The government has this week announced a plan to spend $15 billion on tunnelling and building light rail between Auckland City and the Auckland Airport, this coming on top of our current debt crisis brought about by the Covid pandemic. Government debt levels are now approaching 50% of GDP and the only reason I can see that government would want to make an announcement like this is to take the attention off their other bad decisions as listed above.

This proposal being made at this time is nothing short of ridiculous and in my opinion is equivalent to the other equally ridiculous decision to build the $785 million Skypath Bridge across Auckland Harbour for Cyclists and pedestrians which has recently been cancelled at a cost of more than $50 million dollars. Both of these decisions show a government that has no connection to reality and definitely a very poor understanding of economics.

What the country needs at this time is a credible strategic plan than sets out a clear path for managing the current Covid crisis, not unaffordable headline grabbing projects or a divisive race based system of decision making that promotes socialism at the expense of our democracy.

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