Dr Muriel Newman
Dr Muriel Newman established the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. A former Chamber of Commerce President, her background is in business and education.
In a Herald interview, back in 2006, Auckland University’s Professor Elizabeth Rata warned, “The bicultural, Māori-Pākehā movement in New Zealand has been a mistake – it is subverting democracy, erecting ethnic boundaries between Māori and non-Māori and promoting a cultural elite within Māoridom.”
She explained, “Many New Zealanders originally supported Māori retribalism because they saw it as a means to much greater social justice. In fact, the opposite has happened – that group of poor marginalised Māori is in the same position now.”
The move towards greater social justice for native peoples originated in the 1960s in key universities around the world. Influential academics argued that the best way to improve lives was to bring ethnic group leaders into government institutions, to change the system from within.
According to Professor Rata, those changes, which were backed by a small political and academic elite, were extremely ‘subversive’: “Biculturalism is threatening democracy. You get inside a system and subvert it. Destroy from within.”
In those early days, radical Māori Sovereignty activists, heavily influenced by resistance movements from around the world, adopted revolutionary strategies for New Zealand. Their goal, ‘to take back the country’, was outlined in a series of inflammatory articles published in the feminist magazine Broadsheet in 1982:
Māori sovereignty is the Māori ability to determine our own destiny… In essence, Māori sovereignty seeks nothing less than the acknowledgement that New Zealand is Māori land, and further seeks the return of that land… The aim of Māori sovereignty is… to redesign this country’s institutions from a Māori point of view… This country belongs to Māori…
At its most conservative it could be interpreted as the desire for a bicultural society… biculturalism meant acknowledgement of Māori sovereignty, of Māoritanga, of our land and language… an all up return of all our land and the setting up of institutions to ensure Māoritanga as the culture of this country and the Māori language as the official language… A new identity based on Māoritanga must be forged.
By the early 1980s, moves were already underway within our state sector to introduce biculturalism and define New Zealanders by ethnicity. Biculturalism became a lever to force Māori language and culture onto the country and create institutions that prioritised Māori.
In his 1985 book Shadows Over New Zealand, former communist Geoff McDonald revealed how Māori Sovereignty propagandists were using Marxist strategies to influence politicians and the public:
Marxists understand that the key to destabilising New Zealand is to show how badly the Māori is treated by the whites. The big lie must be built up, until enough people believe it to enable the damage to be done. There is no Māori oppression at all. But that would not stop them from going ahead with their propaganda. Facts or truth have no relevance to Marxism. Anything can be said to help create the conditions amenable to the collapse of society. However absurd or grotesque the charges being made against white New Zealanders, if they are not answered then they will be believed.
And that’s exactly what happened.
The bicultural movement in New Zealand has created a dangerous state of separatism. It dominates New Zealand politics and deeply divides our society. The mantle of tribal totalitarianism is oppressive – it drags us back to a re-invented past, instead of enabling our multicultural society to go forward and flourish as one.
And while the blame for this dangerous situation rests squarely on the shoulders of the self-obsessed separatists striving for tribal control, it is the appeasement policies of successive governments that have allowed it to happen.
New Zealand’s key institutions have been ‘captured’ – to serve Māori above all others. That includes the public service and wider state sector, local government, the media, even the justice system, which is now elevating ‘tikanga’ or Māori custom above the common law.
Organisations like the New Zealand Geographic Board are systematically changing our country’s English place names to Māori without any regard to community opposition.
The education system is indoctrinating young minds, denigrating our pioneering history by feeding children a diet of false narratives about colonial oppression and Māori victimhood.
The Waitangi Tribunal has been radicalised to promote Māori supremacy and condemn every attempt by our democratically elected government to implement a policy agenda mandated by voters.
This week’s NZCPR guest commentator Dr John Robinson, a research historian and analyst, believes New Zealand is now at a dangerous juncture:
Across the world, over many millennia, people have learned how best to live together, in a decent society where all share a common feeling of belonging to one larger community – in sovereign countries, unified and living together as equal citizens.
Such ideals, basic to a decent society, do not apply in New Zealand, where there is inequality and racism in law… That separation by race, with the resultant considerable privileges, is written into law… New Zealand history has been rewritten with never any fault committed by Māori…
“The priority claimed for the Treaty of Waitangi has become a key weapon in the fight for power. It has been rewritten and then proclaimed a sacred text, immutable, to be followed religiously and not to be challenged. The only valid text is held to be that in Māori and the only arbiters to determine the meaning of the text are those Māori activists; none other have any authority. That trickery, and this revolution – a process aiming for the overthrow of government – must be recognised and negated with a firm and determined counter-revolution.
Dr Robinson has set out a prescription to restore democracy and enable New Zealand to become a ‘decent society’:
All reference to Māori in law must go. There should be no Māori seats and wards; all should vote together on a common roll. The completely compromised Treaty of Waitangi must be removed from all legislation, and the Waitangi Tribunal closed down immediately by government, which has that power – and that responsibility.
The reality is that, until now, successive New Zealand governments have lacked the courage to stand up to the aggressive threats and bullying demands of tribal leaders.
In the 1980s they persuaded Labour to fund Māori immersion education – early childhood Kōhanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa state schools. We can now see the effects as their graduates gain influence.
The new Māori Queen is a product of that system – as journalist Richard Harman explains: “
The new Kingitanga monarch, Kuini Ngā Wai hono i te Pō Paki, aged 27 and educated at a Te Reo immersion Kura in Huntly and then the University of Waikato, where she got an MA in Tikanga Māori… will be someone the so-called Kōhanga Reo generation of young Māori will be able to quickly identify with.
In an interview with TVNZ’s ‘Re News,’ while she was visiting Britain in 2022, she made it clear she felt the scars of colonialism. ‘My heart was heavy when I arrived here because I saw how vast and abundant the land is here. So why did they have to come to Aotearoa to steal our land, to murder our ancestors and grandchildren, to confiscate our resources, and for what reason?’ She said all the stories and historical accounts continued to leave her feeling hurt inside. ‘To be honest, my greatest desire is for all Māori land to be returned to Māori.’
In 1985, tribal leaders persuaded Labour to extend the jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal – set up a decade earlier to investigate contemporary breaches of the Treaty by the Crown – to cover historic claims that had already been settled, resulting in the creation of a $4 billion Treaty gravy train that’s still growing.
In 1993, they persuaded National to re-introduce Māori Seats, even though the Royal Commission on the Electoral System had expressly recommended their removal if MMP was introduced. They warned if they were retained, they would create a serious over-representation of Māori in parliament.
They were right – Māori now hold a disproportionate 27 per cent of the parliamentary seats, in spite of making up only 13.7 per cent of the voting-age population.
In 2005, they persuaded Labour to change the law so tribal business corporations could register as charities and avoid paying tax – even though the benefits flow to relatives instead of the wider community, which should have ruled them out.
A TDB Advisory report on the 2023 iwi rich list shows Ngāi Tahu and Tainui are now valued at $2.2 billion each, Auckland’s Ngāti Whātua is worth $1.6 billion, Ngāti Toa $795 million, Tūhoe $406 million, Ngāti Porou $298 million, Raukawa $238 million, Ngāti Awa $180 million, Ngāti Pāhauwera $101 million, and Ngāpuhi, which is still to negotiate a treaty settlement, $88 million.
In 2011 tribal leaders persuaded National to replace Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed with a law to enable Māori claims. As a result of the judiciary mis-interpreting the law to enable claimants to gain control of New Zealand’s entire coastline, the coalition has announced they will restore the law to what parliament intended. Until that occurs, doubts about the future will remain.
In 2020 they persuaded Labour to adopt their blueprint for the tribal control of New Zealand by 2040, and as a result, He Puapua policies for Treaty partnerships and co-governance have been embedded into the nation’s legislative and regulatory framework.
Driving this tribal rule agenda was Labour’s Te Arawhiti – the Office of Māori Crown Relations that was set up to work in partnership with iwi leaders. By the time of the 2023 general election, they had systematically established a controlling influence for Māori within the state sector.
This is what the coalition is now battling.
While their latest move of issuing a Cabinet Office circular directing public services to be delivered according to need not race – and scrapping Labour’s racist procurement policy requiring eight per cent of government contracts to go to Māori providers – is a step in the right direction, to ensure these policies cannot be reversed by future governments, all references to race and ethnicity must be removed from our Statute books.
What is incomprehensible is that the coalition has left in place key public service directives issued by Labour to entrench He Puapua. These include a Cabinet Office circular dated 22 October 2019 setting out guidelines to empower Māori as Treaty ‘partners’ in government decision-making, and a range of indoctrination programmes that are still being delivered by Te Arawhiti.
These should surely be suspended as a priority.
The radicalism and division of state-funded biculturalism has become a handbrake that’s not only holding back our country and constraining our future but is threatening the unity that binds together our diverse society.
Every attempt by the coalition to remove racial privilege is being strongly resisted by hostile tribal leaders, who are using their wealth and influence to preserve their gravy train.
Meanwhile extremists have stormed the parapets and entered the House of Parliament, radicalising the Māori seats at the heart of our democracy.
The only way to prevent a tribal takeover is to give New Zealanders their long-overdue say on the future of parliament’s Māori seats. Given the seats are now seriously distorting democratic representation in this country, its time voters decided whether they serve a beneficial purpose or should be scrapped – as recommended decades ago by the Royal Commission.
Since councils are holding binding referenda on local government Māori seats in October next year, why not hold a referendum on parliament’s Māori seats at the same time.
Will the coalition pick up on this challenge?
Biculturalism has been a colossal mistake. A policy introduced to help disadvantaged Māori has fuelled an ambitious takeover attempt by mega-rich tribal corporations aggressively seeking to dominate the government and control the country.
The coalition is attempting to rein them in, but they will not succeed unless the framework for tribal rule that’s been created is dismantled. That means removing race and the Treaty from legislation, disestablishing the Waitangi Tribunal and abolishing the Māori seats.
This article was originally published by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research.
