John McLean
Citizen typist patriot
Under a 1992 Deed of Settlement, New Zealand’s government granted ownership of the lakebed of Lake Taupō, plus the beds of rivers and streams feeding into that great lake, to Ngāti Tūwharetoa – a central North Island Māori tribe. Specifically, ownership of those tracts of New Zealand was vested in the Tūwharetoa Māori Trust Board.
That vesting was said back then to be substantially symbolic, with the 1992 deed containing the following assurances:
“Public access to Lake Taupō for recreational use and enjoyment of its waters has always been acceptable to Ngāti Tūwharetoa and is in accordance with Ngāti Tūwharetoa custom.”
“The people of New Zealand shall continue to have freedom of entry to and access upon Taupō waters (including their beds) for recreational use and enjoyment…”
But of course that wasn’t the end of it. Far from it. A 2007 Settlement Deed inexplicably replaced and extended the 1992 deed. Under that replacement deed, the Crown expressly permitted the Tūwharetoa Board to impose licensing requirements on commercial operators on Lake Taupō and its rivers and streams (Taupō Waters), and to tariff such operators.
The 2007 deed provides that the Tūwharetoa Board, as owner, “may grant rights of occupation or use of parts of Taupō Waters for any purpose and charge for the same”.
Then in July 2017, the Crown and Tūwharetoa entered into yet another settlement deed that affirmed the 2007 deed and gifted extra goodies to Tūwharetoa.
By no coincidence whatsoever, a month later in August 2017 Tūwharetoa applied for a declaratory judgment from New Zealand’s High Court. The Tūwharetoa Board sought court endorsement of a Tūwharetoa entitlement to require “commercial users” of Taupō Waters, including fishing guides, to obtain a licence from Tūwharetoa, and to charge such operators whatever Tūwharetoa damn well likes.
In 2021, shortly after the Labour-only regime came to power, Tūwharetoa cemented its vice-like commercial grip on Taupō Waters when its 2017 application crystalized in a formal declaratory judgment. That Tūwharetoa coup was a fait accompli, because the judge was “Justice” Cheryl Gwyn.
Devoted readers of my Substacks have met this Gwyn womyn before. I mentioned her in an earlier piece covering New Zealand’s current war for constitutional supremacy.
UNCIVIL WARJohn McLean 30 August 2024
A former – perhaps current – member of New Zealand’s Socialist Action League, Cheryl Gwyn was – astonishingly – the head of New Zealand’s Security and Intelligence Service from 2014 to 2019. In other words, extreme Leftie Gwyn was the head of New Zealand’s internal state surveillance apparatus.
Prior to that, Cheryl worked in all the telltale areas. From 2003 to 2014, as Deputy Solicitor General, she oversaw the Attorney General’s activities at the Crown Law Office, with direct responsibility for the management of Treaty of Waitangi claims, constitutional and human rights law issues, race relations and indigenous rights. On such matters, she’d represented New Zealand at the now-farcical United Nations. The Attorney-Generals during Gwyn’s tenure as Deputy Sol Gen were Margaret Wilson (2003–2005), Michael Cullen (2005–2008) and CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (2008–2014).
Cheryl Gwyn’s final time as the Head of Stasitearoa, under the Ardern Regime, was busy for her. In addition to spying on pink-skinned New Zealanders who were failing to exhibit prophylactic pounamu, Gwyn was fighting a personal court battle on her ex-home front.
Our Cheryl was sued in 2018, along with others, for misrepresenting the condition of a house she and her husband/partner had sold. Specifically, she’d deliberately misled the unsuspecting purchasers by failing to disclose that the dwelling leaked like a sieve. With Gwyn recognising it would be practically impossible for her to become a judge while having her dirty laundry aired in court, Gwyn & Co coughed up and settled the claim.
IMO therefore… High Court Justice Cheryl Gwyn is one of many embedded ‘sleepers’ in New Zealand’s Deep State, poised to wake and fully reactiWoke – in her judicial capacity – under New Zealand’s next left-wing government. To their post-modernist, neo-Marxist graves, Gwyn-types never disappear or change their crusading, conniving minds and ideologies. Cheryl could well succeed her ideological (apparently not physical) twin on the Supreme Court, “Justice” Glazebrook.
GLAZEBROOKJohn McLean 9 September 2024
Glazebrook’s extended two-year term is due to expire on 8 February 2028. What the F was Attorney General Judith Collins thinking when she extended G’s spot on New Zealand’s highest court? These Nats are not what they seem.
Justice Gwyn’s 2021 declaration – that Tūwharetoa has cart blanche to tithe anyone trying to earn a decent living doing anything to do with Taupō Waters – supercharged Tūwharetoa’s milking of Taupō Waters fishing guides. Since then, Tūwharetoa has thumped all Taupō Waters fishing guides with a seven per cent levy on all their gross earnings. Many guides have now abandoned or are thinking of abandoning their Taupō Waters guiding businesses.
It’s impossible to overstate just how preposterous Tūwharetoa’s exploitation of commercial operators on and around Taupō Waters is. This is a tribal shake-down, never expressly countenanced by New Zealand’s parliament. And it’s limitless. There’s simply no fiscal limit on what Tūwharetoa can seek to squeeze from commercial operators on and around Taupō Waters.
Tūwharetoa’s official fact sheet – guided fishing activities on Taupō Waters (#12 above) contemplates “actions for trespass” for fishing guides who don’t pay their dues. But in reality, transgressive entrepreneurs and their customers who refuse to bow to Tūwharetoa’s water-use racketeering are far more likely to attract the physical attentions of Tūwharetoa’s hired goons… the sorts of nefarious characters whom the Tūhoe tribe got to burn down all the huts in what used to be New Zealand’s Urewera National Park (before the National Party gave away that national park in 2014).
The current government could and should step in, with legislation, to either extinguish Tūwharetoa’s water rort or, if the Nats don’t have the guts, at least formalize, limit and otherwise regulate what’s going on. But the current government won’t do either. Which is why the National Party may well attract less than 30 per cent of the party vote at the next election.
What can we expect from Tūwharetoa’s Taupō Waters commercialization, in the next few years? Here’s my pick. Tūwharetoa will supercharge their relentless levies on businesses dependent on Taupō Waters, and exempt anyone with Tūwharetoa ancestry from any such levies.
(Pay your fishing guide in cash.)
Meanwhile, Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka and ‘his’ Department of Conservation have bestowed upon Ngāi Tahu the management and operation of the Crown’s massive Molesworth farming station. From now on, either open your wallets to that pseudo-tribe if you want to do anything on the Molesworth Crown Land, or F OFF. Race-based land control and commercialization is gathering steam.
We still await the court decision on Ngāi Tahu’s claim to pretty much all South Island water. None of this is pretty.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
