Table of Contents
Judy Gill
For many New Zealanders, concerns about the growing influence of the United Nations are no longer abstract or theoretical. They have become practical questions about who shapes public policy, who sets norms and where democratic accountability begins and ends.
The United Nations increasingly operates as a global norm-setting body. Through recommendations, reporting obligations and compliance frameworks, it exerts pressure on national governments across a wide range of domestic policy areas –including education, health, race policy, and constitutional interpretation – without any direct democratic mandate from the citizens affected.
This influence is not exercised through force, but through institutional authority, reputational leverage and bureaucratic momentum. It is governance by alignment rather than consent.
Democratic Accountability and International Institutions
The United Nations is unelected and not accountable to national electorates. Its authority rests on international consensus among political and administrative elites rather than on democratic endorsement by voters. While international cooperation has an important role to play, problems arise when international bodies are invited to influence matters that traditionally fall within domestic constitutional self-government.
Sovereignty, if it is to mean anything substantive, must ultimately be grounded in the consent of the governed. When authority is exercised without clear democratic consent, accountability becomes diffuse and public trust correspondingly weakens.
International Appeals and Domestic Governance
In recent years, New Zealand activists – including some Māori legal advocates – have increasingly taken domestic political and constitutional disputes to United Nations forums. Questions concerning Treaty interpretation, constitutional arrangements and social policy are reframed as matters requiring international scrutiny or intervention.
There is a clear tension here. Movements that speak forcefully about resisting historical colonisation are appealing to a supranational institution that is more distant from democratic accountability than any domestic legislature. Whatever one’s political position, this raises legitimate questions about where authority should properly lie in a democratic society.
International institutions may amplify particular perspectives, but they cannot resolve domestic constitutional questions on behalf of a sovereign people.
A Deeper Issue: New Zealand’s Constitutional Foundation
Underlying debates about international influence is a more fundamental and rarely examined issue: the unresolved constitutional status of New Zealand following the constitutional changes of the mid-1980s.
Prior to 1986, New Zealand’s Parliament derived its authority from the British constitutional framework. Although New Zealand had long exercised practical independence, the legal source of parliamentary authority ultimately rested on Westminster statutes and the Crown.
In 1986, the fourth Labour government enacted the Constitution Act 1986, followed by the Imperial Laws Application Act 1988. Although passed in 1986, the Constitution Act came into force on 1 January 1987, formally severing New Zealand’s constitutional reliance on the United Kingdom and relocating supreme authority entirely within New Zealand’s institutions.
This was a profound constitutional shift.
The Missing Step: Popular Ratification
What did not occur was any form of direct public ratification. There was no referendum and no explicit act by which sovereignty was formally re-grounded in the people themselves.
In constitutional theory, when a political system disconnects from its original source of authority, it must establish a new foundation of legitimacy – a process often described as autochthony. Ireland followed this path in the 1930s by submitting its new constitutional order to popular vote.
New Zealand did not.
Instead, parliament effectively assumed supreme authority without formally locating that authority in the electorate. Courts have since treated parliamentary supremacy as settled doctrine, rarely revisiting the question of legitimacy.
As of 1 January 2026, this unresolved constitutional situation has existed for 39 years.
A parliament whose authority has never been explicitly ratified by the people is structurally vulnerable to external influence. It is more easily shaped by international norms, bureaucratic consensus and ideological frameworks that originate outside democratic debate.
Before New Zealand yields further influence to international bodies – including the United Nations – it should first resolve a basic constitutional question: where does sovereign authority ultimately reside?
This is not simply a debate about monarchy versus republic. It is a question of legitimacy, consent and democratic grounding.
Until the constitutional implications of the 1986–87 changes are openly examined and addressed, every discussion about sovereignty, international governance, and democratic accountability rests on uncertain foundations. Thirty-nine years on, the question remains unresolved:
Who governs New Zealand – and by whose authority?
Direct article on constitutional questions.
https://ianwishart.com/2022/10/a-very-kiwi-coup/
Constitution Act 1986 (New Zealand).
Official New Zealand legislation; in force 1 Jan 1987.
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0114/latest/whole.html
Imperial Laws Application Act 1988 (New Zealand).
Defines application of UK statutes.
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1988/0112/latest/whole.html
New Zealand Law Society – LawTalk.
Discussion of mainstream legal opinion about republic/sovereignty.
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/news/publications/lawtalk/
Parliamentary sovereignty (New Zealand). Discussion of parliamentary supremacy doctrine, including views from Lord Cooke of Thorndon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty#New_Zealand
United Nations – About the United Nations. Official description of the UN’s purpose and structure. https://www.un.org/en/about-us
