Heather du Plessis-Allan recently had an epiphany. She didn’t know that many Kiwis don’t want co-governance being forced upon us without our consent. Du Plessis-Allan says, “That result surprised me. It was many times higher than I would have expected.” And she concludes, “ignoring this simmering anger is a bad idea”, and thinks it will encourage a further loss of trust in our democracy.
[…] Friday last week – a group of Australian pollsters released a poll in the local Wellington newspaper showing that 48 per cent of respondents want “a referendum on Maori co-governance, to end the confusion and let every New Zealander have a say.” Only 17 per cent said no. […]
ACT is the only party backing a referendum on co-governance. Every other party either outright rejects it or says it isn’t important.
Worse, the Labour Government has gone out of its way to actually stop normal people […] from having any kind of say on co-governance.
It used to be the case that when your local council proposed to establish Maori wards, ratepayers could object. They would need to collect signatures from five per cent of ratepayers to force a vote. The vote was binding. That was democracy.
In 2021, Nanaia Mahuta binned that right to object. Too many times democracy had said no. […]
If you ask [politicians, bureaucrats and media] if we should have a referendum on co-governance the answer is always no: it’ll be divisive, it’s race-baiting, people don’t understand what they’re saying, this is good for Aotearoa. No one ever says out loud what the real reason is: a referendum will return a big, fat no.
NZ Herald
Read more here (paywalled). Discuss it on the BFD.
