Pee Kay
No Minister
PART ONE: The Bolger/Shipley years
Labour may talk co-governance, but it’s actually National who cements it.
It’s bizarre, isn’t it. Labour often absorbs the loudest and most heated public condemnation for its Māori centred policies. For decades, political commentators have labelled Labour as the champion of Māori rights and National as its staunch opponent.
But is that, in fact, true?
There is a ‘back catalogue’ of where Labour’s approach and its initiatives regarding Māori rights and support have actually consistently resulted in high-profile failures. Labour proudly talks about the structural changes they are going to make for Māori, but frequently they seem to collapse under political pressure, leaving its Māori support base empty-handed.
Labour’s strategy relies heavily on central government mandates and symbolic gestures that naturally, trigger strong electoral backlashes. Because Labour’s policies are driven by top-down, heavy handed, government bureaucracies, they are easily dismantled by subsequent governments.
On the other hand, National regularly campaign on universal voting rights, yet, over time, have quietly entrenched massive, Māori-beneficial, race-based legislation once in power.
I’m saying the greatest threat to the foundation of democracy, ‘one person, one vote’, does not come from political adversaries on the left, but from the very party we elect to protect those principles.
I believe there is a distinct historical paradox at play, because the National Party have habitually advanced Māori specific political, financial, and legal frameworks far more regularly than Labour, repeatedly and directly eroding the ‘one person, one vote’ principle, much to the disapproval of their traditional voter base.
National’s dedication to property, legislative and financial settlements for Māori has transformed tribes from small communal groups into powerful, national corporate entities. These entities now enjoy, in many cases, tax-exempt charitable statuses while wielding immense regional political influence and power.
Over many years and by a number of prime ministers, National has been quietly building an institutional foundation for, what has transpired to be, the modern Māori corporate empire.
Through generations of what can only be regarded as deliberate political deceit, a succession of National prime ministers have quietly laid the institutional foundations for the, seemingly untouchable, Māori corporate and political domain that is dominating the political landscape we are confronted with today.
I have gone back as far as Jim Bolger’s government in an attempt to prove my argument.
Jim Bolger’s government, 1990–1997, did not just utter sympathies: it actively entrenched the modern treaty settlement process, thus fundamentally reshaping New Zealand’s economic and ethnic landscape.
Bolger’s government was responsible for massive transfers of wealth to Māori.
Bolger’s government, in 1994, introduced a $1 billion cap to settle historical Treaty of Waitangi claims, called the “Fiscal Envelope”. Maybe ‘Fiscal ATM’ is now more appropriate.
It was sold to sceptical taxpayers as a strict, non-negotiable limit to stop Treaty payouts from spinning out of control. Yeah right!
Of course, the Fiscal Envelope was roundly criticised by Māori leaders at the time. But it actually laid down the infrastructure for a massive wealth transfer, effectively orchestrating the multi-billion-dollar tribal corporate empires we see today.
But this deal gets much worse for the taxpayer.
Because of that resistance, Bolger’s government sweetened the deal with the powerful iwi of Tainui and Ngāi Tahu by signing early deals that included “relativity clauses”. Clauses that promised that if the Crown ever spent more than $1 billion in total on other tribes, they would automatically get top-up payments.
To date those top up deals have seen over $780 million paid out to Tainui and Ngāi Tahu.
Well done “Spud” and co. Your generosity was astounding.
My next example of munificence by Bolger’s government was delivered by Simon Upton as Minister for the Environment in Bolger’s government, when he steered and passed the foundational Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). This legislation bestowed upon Māori the mandate that all resource consent applicants must consider Māori cultural values whenever anyone applies to subdivide land, develop a property, or change how natural resources are used.
This ‘little gift’ established consultation fees and a tribal veto power over private property. Today, that gift has morphed into a sophisticated extortion racket, where developers and everyday homeowners are routinely extorted just to move some dirt on their own land.
The next helping hand from Bolger’s government relates to MMP.
The Royal Commission on the Electoral System, in 1986, first proposed switching to the MMP voting system, explicitly recommending doing away with the separate Māori seats entirely.
When Bolger’s government drafted the “Electoral Act 1993” ahead of the binding MMP referendum, Bolger chose a path of calculated political convenience. After intense lobbying from Māori leaders who, obviously, wanted to retain their dedicated seats, Bolger completely rejected the royal commission’s advice to abolish the seats.
Good old “Spud” further bolstered Māori influence by linking the Māori electoral roll population to the number of Māori seats. This change allowed the number of Māori seats to grow, a move that critics argue simply diluted universal voting power.
The last example, and the absolute crown jewel in National’s tribal handout portfolio, was when Bolger’s government proposed, brokered, and signed off the landmark 1992 commercial fisheries settlement, commonly known as the “Sealord Deal”.
That deal single-handedly bankrolled the rise of the modern tribal corporate powerhouse.
The Sealord Deal provided Māori with a 50 per cent stake in Sealord Fisheries. In exchange, Māori agreed to the permanent termination of all commercial fishing claims. That deal, effectively privatised tribal interests, integrating tribal interests into New Zealand’s corporate economy.
The other 50 per cent in the Sealord deal was sold to Brierley Investments. Contrary to the belief in many quarters, it wasn’t Māori who sold out in 2001. Brierley sold its half to Japanese giant Nissui. Maori kept their 50 per cent stake, but, and what a transaction this was, Māori gained 100 per cent control of the massive Sealord fishing quota, securing a long-term corporate and resource monopoly.
When you stand back and look at it, the 2001 restructuring of Sealord was a masterclass in ‘corporate’ cunning, engineered by the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. Surprise, surprise: guess who was leading the Waitangi Fisheries Commission? None other than the ‘walking headline’ Shane Jones!
Rather than selling out to Japanese giant Nissui, Māori pulled off a brilliant power play. By exploiting New Zealand’s foreign ownership restrictions, Jones and the commission partitioned the company, offloading the operational risks to Nissui while capturing the 100 per cent control of the Sealord fishing quota for themselves.
Māori retained a 50 per cent corporate stake, effectively forcing foreign capital to subsidise a bulletproof tribal monopoly.
This manoeuvre transformed a government handout into an enduring commercial empire, generating a massive war chest that now permanently funds a highly sophisticated, un-elected political lobbying organisation to challenge New Zealand’s democratic norms.
Before these settlements, tribal leaders lacked the capital to challenge the Crown in court or hire expensive policy analysts. The massive cash flow from corporate fishing quotas and commercial empires transformed the game.
This money allowed tribal leaders to retain public relations firms, constitutional experts and have top-tier corporate lawyers ‘on tap’. Instead of reacting to government policy, tribal leaders began drafting their own legislative frameworks, leveraging their wealth to out-litigate and out-submit local councils and cash-strapped community groups at every turn.
Jenny Shipley, who, while Jim Bolger was overseas attending a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, ousted Bolger in a 1997 coup
Shipley’s brief 1997–1999 tenure, did nothing to halt the aggrandisement of Māori, in fact she orchestrated the ratification of what is now termed co-governance principles through legislative processes.
The passage of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, signed off by Shipley’s government, remains a watershed moment with the signing of the act being deemed as the precise moment National opened the floodgates to modern co-governance.
But even more power was vested in Māori when, to facilitate the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, the Shipley-led National government handed Ngāi Tahu unprecedented statutory muscle. Instead of a simple cash payout of $170 million, National granted the tribe legally binding “Statutory Acknowledgements” over natural resources, un-elected seats on public conservation boards, and a right of first refusal over Crown land.
Far from a simple settlement of historical grievances, this monumental piece of legislation fundamentally reshaped New Zealand’s constitutional landscape by introducing statutory acknowledgements. This legislation legally consolidated the entire iwi into a single, centralised entity, explicitly granting this new tribal body the full “rights, powers, and privileges of a natural person” in corporate law.
By weaponising the RMA in the tribe’s favour and legally establishing a singular, centralised tribal corporate empire, National effectively signed away local democratic sovereignty and created a permanent, self-funding, political monopoly.
Joe Public never stood a chance! By explicitly granting full “rights, powers, and privileges of a natural person” in corporate law, National had legislated to ensure this new tribal body could operate with maximum force,
In one foul swoop, a scattered tribal collective was transformed into an unaccountable corporate style juggernaut, armed with the legal firepower to out-manoeuvre ordinary citizens at every turn.
The 1998 act cemented the entity, giving it the legislative framework and financial clout by way of the $170 million redress, to build, what is now, an immense economic tribal empire. This moved Ngāi Tahu out of the realm of cultural and tribal advocacy into a position of massive corporate and political leverage.
Before this act, Treaty settlements were primarily about financial compensation and formal apologies. But statutory acknowledgements legally bound local councils to register the resident tribes cultural and spiritual attachment to land, rivers, and lakes.
In the new act these acknowledgements created a binding legal mechanism that forced local government authorities to involve tribal delegates in RMA decision-making. By cementing Ngāi Tahu’s cultural and spiritual veto power over specific geographic areas into law, Shipley’s government quietly laid the foundations for modern co-governance in resource management.
Furthermore, the Shipley government actively paved the way for local councils to establish dedicated Māori consultative committees. By establishing race-based advisory roles within local authorities, National initiated a strategic shift that began diluting traditional local governance and moving decision-making away from standard, colour-blind, democratic election processes.
In short, we were captured.
Shipley’s National government had not only financed a parallel Māori ‘government’ structure but legally bound future generations to pay for its expansion.
Shipley’s government had willingly handed the keys of local democracy over to a corporate tribal elite, laying down the exact race-based blueprint that would later begin to disassemble ‘one person, one vote’.
This article was originally published by No Minister.
