Zoran Rakovic
Zoran Rakovic is a structural engineer with nearly 30 years of experience, who has helped design and strengthen buildings across New Zealand.
What is a code of conduct? On the surface, it seems uncontroversial. A set of rules. Expectations for how councillors behave: toward one another, toward staff, toward the public. Don’t shout in the chamber. Don’t harass. Don’t leak confidential material. Basic manners married to procedural obligations. This is how the social contract survives a Zoom meeting.
But behind this simplicity lies a darker question: When does a code of conduct stop being about conduct and become something else? When does it cease to regulate behaviour and start to regulate belief? In its attempt to be progressive, modern, inclusive, clause 8 of the Draft Standard Code of Conduct (Revision 21 August) crosses a line that even Orwell would find unsubtle.
Clause 8 is not a code of conduct. It is a loyalty test.
Let us begin not with the clause but with the structure that enables it. The Local Government Act 2002, Schedule 7, Clause 15 requires every council to adopt a code of conduct for its members. This is not a blank cheque. The purpose is narrowly framed: to set out “understandings and expectations” about how members conduct themselves in their roles. That is: how they behave. Not what they believe. Not how they vote. Not what moral or metaphysical framework they use to evaluate policy. A code of conduct is about means, not ends. You don’t get expelled for voting against the budget, but you might get called up for doing so while drunk, naked, and screaming racial slurs.
A code of conduct is supposed to create the conditions under which democracy can flourish. It does not define what that flourishing looks like. It sets limits on action, not on thought.
But clause 8 wants more. Clause 8 demands that councillors “operate and make decisions” in a way that “recognises and respects the significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi,” and that in doing so they “take into account” a specific five-pronged doctrine: tino rangatiratanga, partnership, equity, active protection, options. It is lifted, wholesale, from Local Government New Zealand’s 2022 ideological template: unquestioned, unchallenged, and enforced through complaint and sanction.
Do you see what’s happened?
This is no longer about conduct. It is about consciousness. It does not merely say ‘treat Māori with respect’. It does not merely say ‘engage iwi under the statutory framework’. Those would be conduct rules. No, it says your decision-making must be aligned with a specified interpretation of the Treaty: one that is contested, evolving, and far from democratically mandated. And if you fail to adequately ‘recognise’ these principles? You are out of step with the code. Out of step with decency. Out of step with your obligations. Complaint incoming. Please report to the Inquisition.
This is a structural sleight of hand. The rules for behaviour have been hijacked by the rules for belief. And it is ultra vires, outside the legal power of the code itself.
Let me be precise. The Local Government Act imposes obligations regarding Māori participation. But it does so at the level of the institution, not the individual. It requires the local authority to foster capacity for Māori contribution to decision-making. It requires the organisation to engage, consult, consider. It does not say that every individual member must conform to a sacred interpretive orthodoxy. It does not say that a councillor must subordinate his or her own judgment to a five-point priesthood. In fact, to do so would violate the very spirit of representative democracy: that those elected are accountable first to their electors, not to a framework imposed from above.
Clause 8 doesn’t regulate conduct. It enforces doctrine. It redefines political dissent as procedural breach.
Now imagine a councillor who votes against a funding increase for a Māori development programme: not because they oppose Māori wellbeing, but because they believe the funding model is inefficient, or the process lacked accountability, or the same objectives could be achieved through a wider social investment lens. Under clause 8, that councillor could be accused of failing to uphold “equity” or “active protection.” Not because they were rude. Not because they shouted. Not because they leaked anything. But because they voted wrong.
This is not a code of conduct. This is a creed of compliance.
And like all creeds, it must be enforced. The draft code outlines an elaborate breach process. Complaint. Investigation. Sanction. Suspensions. Public censure. The tools of good governance, now turned inward, now aimed not at bad behaviour but at ideological deviation. Clause 8 transforms a democratic chamber into a doctrinal tribunal. The heresy is insufficient recognition. The penalty is public shaming, internal exile, or worse.
Of course, the defenders will say: “This is just a commitment to honour the Treaty.” But which Treaty? The English text? The Māori text? The modern Tribunal interpretation? The Waitangi Principles developed in secret by Cabinet? The Supreme Court’s reading in Transpower? The moral Treaty? The constitutional Treaty? The Treaty as taonga, or the Treaty as contract? There is no one Treaty. There are a thousand Treaties. Clause 8 picks one, anointed by LGNZ, and enforces it under pain of moral condemnation.
This is governance by ghost. The spirit of the Treaty, interpreted by the unelected, enforced by process, measured by complaint.
But even if one accepts the Treaty principles in full (accepts partnership as a power-sharing framework, equity as outcome parity, tino rangatiratanga as autonomous governance), this still does not justify making them conduct obligations of individual councillors. Why? Because codes of conduct are not vehicles for policy. They are not substitutes for democratic mandate. They are not where you embed your vision of a better New Zealand by tricking people into thinking it’s just about decorum.
In governance theory, there is a difference between normative vision and operational restraint. Normative vision belongs in your long-term plan, your strategy, your speeches. Operational restraint belongs in your code of conduct: don’t be corrupt, don’t abuse staff, don’t violate process. Clause 8 short-circuits that separation. It pretends to be restraint while smuggling in vision.
In legal theory, this is what we call a Trojan horse.
In Žižekian terms, Clause 8 is pure ideological interpolation. It interpellates the councillor not as a citizen, but as a subject of the Treaty-state. The councillor is no longer the representative of a ward. She becomes instead a node in a bicultural matrix of governed obligations. Her decisions are no longer hers: they must reflect not reason, not conscience, not constituency, but the sacred order of Treaty interpretation. The subject is no longer free. The subject must recognise, must respect, must obey. She may speak, but only in the register of prescribed equity.
But what happens to the democratic polis when councillors are turned into mouthpieces? What happens to political plurality when a code of conduct becomes a tool of ideological exclusion? What happens to accountability when deviation is recast as misconduct?
The answer is already known. We have seen it before: in committees of virtue, in loyalty oaths, in the slow bureaucratisation of belief.
And the truth is: no one voted for this.
The voters of a district elect a representative. They entrust that person to weigh evidence, represent values, make decisions. If that councillor is rude, abusive, corrupt – they should be sanctioned. But if that councillor simply has a different view of equity? If they believe, in good faith, that partnership does not mean veto? That tino rangatiratanga must be balanced with democratic universality? That active protection cannot justify permanent asymmetry?
Then the proper venue for disagreement is the ballot box, not the complaints committee.
Clause 8 hijacks process to enforce ideology. It crosses the line between governance and governmentality. It substitutes obedience for representation.
And so it must be removed. Not softened. Not edited. Removed. Entirely.
If a council wishes to adopt a Treaty partnership framework, let it do so as a policy. Let it debate it. Let it consult the public. Let it adopt it by vote. But do not sneak it into a code of conduct as if it were about tone and manners. Do not pretend a doctrine is a duty. Do not lie to the people and say ‘this is just how we behave’.
Because once we confuse belief with behaviour, disagreement with dishonour, dissent with breach, then we have done something far worse than pass a bad policy.
We have replaced democracy with dogma.
We have built a church inside the council chamber.
And we have hung the Treaty not as a taonga, but as a warning.
You must believe. You must obey.
Or you will be called… unfit to serve.
This article was originally published by To Make the Darkness Conscious.
