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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics article by writer Stephen Berry.
Support Racial Division? You Are Just What They Are Looking For.
The poison of identity politics is far from contained, indeed it is likely to spread further during the upcoming local body elections, driven in part by Local Government New Zealand itself. A candidate guide provided for all those standing for election to a community board, city, district or regional council makes no qualms about LGNZ’s desire to influence candidate policy positions in favour of supporting so-called diversity, group identity and the ‘principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi’.
Providing a candidate guide is an excellent initiative, given how many candidates are completely clueless about the powers held by the bodies to which they seek election. Unfortunately, these powers have recently been expanded by the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Act 2019 which repealed Section 11a of the Local Government Act 2002 defining the core role of local government. Now sections 10 and 12 are all that remain to define the purpose and powers of Councils. These are only limited by the requirement that exercise of their powers is for the benefit of their district or region and that they consult with voters and Maori.
The LGNZ candidate guide goes much further than simply providing unbiased information, promoting the co-governance cancer that has only radicalised and divided New Zealanders. However, the page that states one of the key responsibilities of representatives is to uphold the principles of The Treaty of Waitangi is actually included in the Local Government Act.
(4) Treaty of Waitangi
In order to recognise and respect the Crown’s responsibility to take appropriate account of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and to maintain and improve opportunities for Maori to contribute to local government decision-making processes, Parts 2 and 6 provide principles and requirements for local authorities that are intended to facilitate participation by Maori in local authority decision-making processes.
Further on in the guide, the information ceases merely adding warm fuzzies to the existing legislation and commences a diatribe of woke propaganda. Te Hononga, the Bay of Plenty Regional Council/Tai Moana’s Maori Relationship and Engagement Plan, is cited as an example of local authorities correctly engaging in partnership and co-governance with 35 iwi, 160 hapu and 224 marae.
Te Hononga emphasises that tanagata whenua across the region have their specific tikanga, kawa and taio-Matauranga and proposes a range of participation options including those that are tangata-whenua-designed to enable a much more flexible approach to engagement, co-design and building relationships.
The requirement for all candidates to honour the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi is repeated several more times in the guide. However there are further, more insidious goals declared by LGNZ, such as diversity and inclusion.
“The only way that local democracy can truly serve the people is when the diversity that exists within the community, is reflected in the korero or discussion and at the hui where the decisions are made.”
Presumably, this doesn’t include people who don’t believe partnership and co-governance with Maori are conferred by the Treaty of Waitangi, despite the assertion that local government needs candidates of “every identity, background, culture, age and stage, ability and ambition”. Idiots are encouraged to stand but those who oppose the racial division of New Zealand are not. Indeed, listed among the skills required to stand for council, LGNZ says elected members should never attack “the competence or personality of others (sic)”.
The 2022 local body elections are set to be the most racialised in New Zealand local political history, which stretches back to 1845. The fixation with lifting the number of female, brown, disabled, LGBT, young etc. faces being elected (essentially anyone who isn’t a white male aged over 40) is an act of identity politics itself, and this year, a record 29 district councils and 6 regional councils will have separate Maori constituencies. However, it is often the beneficiaries of identity politics who are quickest to claim they’re the victims of being treated as a group identity.
Wellington City Councillor Tamatha Paul claims many in New Zealand would never accept a “20-something year old Maori woman in charge”, adding that the reality of local government is that it was designed by “old white men” and can’t be retrofitted to be more culturally inclusive. While as many as 50% of surveyed local government members claim to have experienced racism or gender discrimination in office, such a figure is completely unreliable. If you attack an elected member for their competence, ideology or personality they may genuinely believe that you are attacking them for their race or gender (and who knows how many under-fire white men have counted themselves as being amongst that 50%?).
Karena Joyce-Paki was the first Maori elected to the Kaipara District Council in 2016 but complains she has only been offered a committee chairperson role once, for a single meeting. Her Google footprint is tiny, containing one interview on Radio Waatea and reference to a couple of submissions to Auckland Council on the Dome Valley waste centre proposal. Given her total lack of profile and her own admission that she is waiting for others to offer her a committee chairpersonship, I suspect her competence, rather than her claims of racial and gender discrimination, is what is holding her back.
Institutional racism is getting worse in New Zealand but it isn’t the pathetic excuse for failure peddled by the identitarian left. Institutional racism is very deliberately being expanded across all levels of governance, politics, education and many large corporations. It is racism that doesn’t just attack European New Zealanders but also degrades every other ethnicity because they’re treated like they cannot progress on their own merits: a message many ethnic individuals are only too happy to swallow.
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