It was sadly predictable.
Less than two weeks ago, I wrote to you celebrating the strong commitment which the three parties which form our new Government have made to restore our democracy, where every citizen has the same rights before the law.
I particularly liked their commitment to scrap all vestiges of co-governance in public services – including their commitment to scrap Labour’s racist Three Waters proposal and the separate Maori Health Authority; their commitment to scrap references to ill-defined “Treaty principles” in legislation; and their commitment to remove an obligation to give special preference to tribal groups in resource management decisions.
The commitment to require all local authorities which have voted for Maori wards to seek a public mandate by means of a referendum was also very welcome, as was the commitment to give priority to the English names of government departments, given that English is the main language spoken by all those born in New Zealand.
In short, they made a strong commitment to uphold the principles of liberal democracy, including equal citizenship and parliamentary sovereignty.
And all this from a Cabinet of 20, seven of whom, including the Deputy Prime Minister, are Maori.
But already we are seeing very strong push-back from those who claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that the Treaty of Waitangi was intended to mean that for the rest of time those with any trace of Maori ancestry should have a constitutional preference as compared with all other New Zealanders;that New Zealanders with any trace of Maori ancestry should be entitled to special consideration when it comes to controlling our water and other natural resources, should be entitled to foist on all our children a narrow and distorted view of our history, and should be entitled to preferential treatment when it comes to local body planning rules.
Today, we have seen that six of the people elected in the race-based Maori electorates – electorates which should have been scrapped in 1996, when MMP was first introduced, as the Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended in 1986 and which the National Party has repeatedly promised to scrap – have changed the words in the oath of allegiance to the Crown. One Maori journalist has reported that they called King Charles a “scab” in their oath.
The same six, elected on the Maori Party platform, have succeeded in disrupting traffic and the lives of thousands of New Zealanders because they fundamentally reject the basic principles of democracy, and have said so. They do not want a society where all of us have the same rights: they want to retain the preferences which successive governments have been willing to give them, none more so than the Labour Government of Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins.
Well, it’s crunch time. We either fight for a society where all citizens have the same legal rights or we surrender, and descend into a race-based society where those with a smidgeon of Maori ancestry have a legal preference over all the rest of us for the rest of time. The Treaty of Waitangi provided that all New Zealanders would have the rights and duties of British subjects, an extraordinarily enlightened vision for 1840. And frankly, if it had not provided that, we would long ago have had to abrogate the Treaty because there can be no basis for a harmonious future where rights depend on who our ancestors were.
So we have drafted a letter to the Leaders of the National, ACT and New Zealand First parties, congratulating them on what they have agreed to accomplish over the next three years and urging them to stand firm behind those commitments. It is imperative that our leaders know that many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders stand behind them, and support their commitment to restore a colour-blind democracy.
