A Cultural Con

Dr Muriel Newman established the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. A former Chamber of Commerce President, her background is in business and education.

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On Monday, Roy Morgan, Australia’s longest-running independent market research company, published the results of its December poll of 967 Kiwi voters: “Now 50% of New Zealand electors, up 6% points since November, support a potential National/ Act NZ coalition government – its highest level of support since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern came to power in October 2017.”

Support for Labour continues to slide down 0.5 points to 35.5 per cent, with the Greens down 2 to 8.5 per cent, while National increased 5 to 31.5 per cent, ACT rose 1 to 18.5 per cent, and the Maori Party fell 2 to 1 per cent.

Confidence in the Government dropped 3.5 points to 98 to be in negative territory for the first time under Jacinda Ardern, with only 42.5 per cent of voters saying New Zealand was ‘heading in the right direction’ compared to 44.5 per cent saying ‘the wrong direction’.

The survey breakdown shows that while younger women favour Labour and the Greens, women over the age of 50 and men of all ages support National and ACT.

The results show the electorate’s love affair with Jacinda Ardern is over. In spite of pro-government media and intense propaganda, New Zealanders are recognising just how incompetent and dangerous her Government is.

When Parliament reconvenes next Tuesday, unless there’s a U-turn we should expect a relentless focus on He Puapua – Labour’s agenda for Maori supremacy.

The Pae Ora Bill to abolish our District Health Boards, establish a Maori Health Authority with veto powers over the entire health system, and prioritise health care on the basis of race is already being considered by a Select Committee. And a Bill to implement Three Waters to confiscate local body water infrastructure and deliver control to the tribal elite, is expected in March. 

These law changes are being driven by Labour’s Maori Caucus. They are part of an unprecedented transfer of power – an effective privatisation programme that will undermine democracy and pass control of New Zealand’s public resources and services to corporate iwi.

So, who are the MPs behind this alarming agenda?

Five are Cabinet Ministers: Kelvin Davis MP for Te Tai Tokerau is the Minister for Maori-Crown Relations, Corrections, and Children; Nanaia Mahuta MP for Hauraki-Waikato is the Minister of Local Government and Foreign Affairs; Willie Jackson List MP is the Minister for Maori Development; Kiri Allan MP for the East Coast is the Minister of Conservation; and Peeni Henare MP for Tamaki Makaurau is the Minister of Whanau Ora and Defence.

Two have Ministerial responsibilities outside of Cabinet: Meka Whaitiri MP for Ikaroa Rawhiti is the Minister of Customs; and Rino Tirikatene MP for Te Tai Tonga is an Under Secretary for Maori Trade.

The other eight Maori Caucus members are Adrian Rurawhe MP for Te Tai Hauauru; Arena Williams MP for Manurewa; Paul Eagle MP for Rongotai; Willow-Jean Prime MP for Northland; Jo Luxton MP for Rangitata; Shanan Halbert MP for Northcote; Louisa Wall List MP; and Tamati Coffey List MP and Chair of the Maori Affairs Select Committee.

These 15 Maori MPs operate as a separate caucus, with separate meetings away from the wider Labour caucus, and a separate goal – to empower the iwi aristocracy. 

With these MPs making up 23 per cent of Labour’s 65-strong Parliamentary team, and 25 per cent of Cabinet, radical Maori are now over-represented at the highest level of government and, when acting as a block to further their separatist agenda, they are having a disproportionate and dangerous influence on the running of the country.

It’s for this reason that the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System warned that the Maori seats needed to be abolished if New Zealand adopted MMP. They, correctly, believed fair representation would be achieved through the party list selection process. They, correctly, believed retaining the Maori seats would distort the democratic representation of the country and create race-based discrimination.

Given the clear evidence of racial bias, surely political parties will realise it is now time to abolish the Maori seats and the Maori electoral roll – and the Waitangi Tribunal, which has been radicalised and can no longer be trusted.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is clearly pandering to the demands of her Maori caucus to ensure Labour maintains a dominant hold on the Maori seats, even though, by acting as a collective to further their own self-interest, those MPs are dividing our nation and undermining our democracy and the Rule of Law.

Let’s be honest and call out this whole Maori rights agenda for what it really is – a cultural con.

The elitists pushing for control of the country try to argue that New Zealand is ‘bicultural’. But that’s a nonsense – we are a nation of many cultures from all over the globe.

They try to argue that Maori are Treaty partners with the Crown, but that’s also a cultural con since it is constitutionally impossible for a partnership to exist between a sovereign and the governed.

But unless we fight back, we risk New Zealand being turned into a disaster zone like Zimbabwe or South Africa, where cultural rights have been elevated above equal rights, and private land is taken without compensation.

When Labour was first elected to government in 2017, iwi leaders demanded a greater say in the running of the country. As a result, the Office for Maori-Crown Relations was established to enable unelected and unaccountable tribal representatives to influence government decision-making.

Little is known about the impact of this powerful Office, especially now that the mainstream media no longer investigates such matters. With the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund linked to a requirement for applicants to “actively promote” the Treaty partnership lie, journalists have largely abandoned their critical Fourth Estate role as watchdogs for the community holding governments to account, and are turning a blind eye to the dangerous agenda that is unfolding.

If we had an independent media, the membership of the interim Maori Health Authority would surely be investigated since it includes close relatives of Cabinet Ministers and executives of organisations that are expected to receive significant taxpayer funding.

With those pushing for the establishment of the Maori Health Authority insistent that the funding model should be based on Whanau Ora, shouldn’t that be examined too?

Whanau Ora, which receives around $200 million a year in taxpayer funding, operates three agencies with full commissioning powers to distribute funding allocated on the basis of Maori census data: Te Pou Matakana in the North Island with Merepeka Raukawa Tait as the Chair and John Tamihere as the Chief Executive, Te Putahitanga o Te Waipounamu in the South Island with Chair Mark Solomon, and Pasifika Futures.

When the Auditor General reviewed Whanau Ora in 2015, not only was almost a third of all funding being spent on administration, but the objectives were so vague that it was virtually impossible to ascertain whether the funding was being well spent.

At that time, the media still acted as public watchdogs, raising concerns about the scheme.

The ODT reported:

“Mongrel Mob used funding from Whanau Ora to buy cannabis for drug-dealing”.

Stuff reported:

“Rugby Club received $60,000 under Whanau Ora to undertake whanau development research”.

Radio NZ reported:

“Whanau Ora a waste of taxpayer’s money, after $3000 was paid towards the cost of a family reunion”.

And the NZ Herald reported:

“Former radio show partners Willie Jackson and John Tamihere were knocked back in a bid to handle distribution of taxpayer funding because they wanted too much money in overheads. The pair put the total cost of distributing the Whanau Ora funding in the North Island at $21 million. But that figure is almost more than was planned for the entire country.”

It wasn’t just the wasteful spending that was highlighted, but concerns over basic accountability, since the Whanau Ora commissioning agencies, as private contractors, are not covered by the Official Information Act.

As well as questions over funding accountability, the use of bullying tactics by Maori health advocates over treatment options, raises concerns about how the new Maori Health Authority will exercise its veto powers, since they cover the entire health system.

In particular, Pharmac has been accused of institutional racism, and a breach of the Treaty, as a result of its decision to fund Keytruda to treat advanced melanoma – a disease more common in people of fairer complexion – instead of lung cancer, which is more prevalent amongst Maori. And, as a result of a new report claiming “The burden of obesity has been disproportionately carried by Maori and Pacifica” allegations are now being made that inaction on obesity also amounts to a Treaty breach.

Such controversies signal major problems lie ahead as the radical Pae Ora reforms, which were hastily developed without any public mandate to prioritise healthcare on the basis of race – and rolled out in the middle of a pandemic – create unintended consequences that could be life threatening. 

This week’s Guest Commentator Dr Bryce Wilkinson, an economist and policy analyst for the New Zealand Initiative, is extremely concerned about what he describes as the Government’s ‘incoherent’ policy agenda:

“So, what is going on? Why is rigorous official analysis of policy proposals so uncommon? The only answer can be that decent analysis is dangerous for constituency politics. If enough people knew what outcomes could really be expected, they might thwart the policy.”

Dr Wilkinson has hit that nail on the head. If New Zealanders really understood the dangerous separatist agenda being implemented by Jacinda Ardern, they would be horrified and would rise up in opposition.

Just this week TV One reported on a Three Waters poll, which found that while 40 per cent of voters are opposed to the reforms, and only 26 per cent are in support, a massive 35 per cent didn’t know much about it.  

If they understood what’s at stake, it’s likely most would be opposed, and that weight of opposition may be enough to force the Government to back down on its proposal.

Another He Puapua goal – to teach Maori propaganda as history – has been delayed for a year following widespread opposition to the draft curriculum. A related proposal – to put matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) on an equal footing with science – was in danger of being slipped through, that is until seven academics wrote a letter to the Listener explaining that while indigenous knowledge contributes to our understanding of the world, “it falls far short of what we define as science”.

Their letter unleashed an extraordinary furore, with Covid modeller Shaun Hendy and microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles – along with more than 1,000 supporters – making ridiculous accusations of “scientific racism” against the academics.

To bring rationally back into the debate, one of the seven, Auckland University’s Professor Elizabeth Rata, has written an article explaining:

“New Zealand’s universities are at a defining crossroads. Do we remain a community of scholars developing knowledge according to the universal principles and methods of science or do we continue down the path of a racialised ideology?”

And that is the problem – under Jacinda Ardern’s Government, everything in New Zealand is now being defined and divided by race.

In spite of the fact that no successful, prosperous country has ever been built on racial division – our political leaders are attempting to take us down that path. It is truly appalling that New Zealanders are being subjected to the whole dishonest and racist He Puapua con job – at the behest of 15 self-serving Labour MPs.  

So, let’s turn 2022 into a year of action. Tell the Maori Caucus what you think of their separatist plans – including to racially segregate our health system through Pae Ora, and confiscate council water infrastructure through Three Waters – their email addresses are HERE.

And tell other Labour MPs that the separatist policy agenda they are allowing the Maori Caucus to force onto the country is responsible for their fall in the polls – and will likely result in the Party losing the next election and many of them losing their seats. 

This Week’s Poll Asks:

*Do you agree that it is now time for the Maori seats and the Maori electoral roll to be abolished?