New Zealand’s mainstream media has finally named the elephant in the room. Late last month, the nation’s biggest newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, published an opinion piece that claimed a coup is under way in New Zealand by the Maori tribal elite.

The article, written by former Labour minister and ACT Party leader Richard Prebble, was widely circulated and commented on, including by the state broadcaster RadioNZ.

His column focused mainly on the government’s plan to confiscate the water assets of the nation’s 67 councils and hand their governance to an equal number of unelected tribal members and council representatives.

The deeply unpopular asset-confiscation program is known as Three Waters – drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater.

The headline of Prebble’s read, Three Waters is a coup – an attack on democracy.

Unfortunately for the government – and Nanaia Mahuta, the Minister of Local Government who is driving the legislative change – the former Minister’s views cannot be easily dismissed. As an influential member of Cabinet during the revolutionary Labour government led by David Lange in the mid-80s, he has a unique political insight and his views carry weight.

Prebble noted that New Zealand is a ‘liberal democracy’ in which ‘individual rights and freedoms are officially recognised and protected … by the rule of law’. Governments, he said, are therefore ‘accountable to the people by a system of one person, one vote’.

‘Liberal democracy is incompatible with co-government by tribes,’ he concluded.

While he believes there may be some logic to the use of co-governance as a pragmatic solution to historic claims for the ownership of disputed public assets such as national parks, there is none for public services such as Three Waters:

‘It is ratepayers – Maori and non-Maori – who paid for the pipes, dams, stormwater drains, and sewage plants. The Government’s Three Waters legislation is a coup. It is replacing liberal democracy with co-government with iwi.’

Another voice that cannot be easily dismissed is that of Kaipara Mayor Dr Jason Smith, who was appointed by Minister Mahuta as a member of a working group established to mollify opponents of the reforms. He described Three Waters as ‘a Trojan Horse for ending democratic rights’.

The iwi elite driving the takeover are seeking comprehensive tribal rule by 2040. The plan to achieve this goal is outlined in a radical document called He Puapua, which was mapped out by the government in 2019, under the guise of enacting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The declaration was signed secretly in 2010 under the conservative National government of John Key, who assured the nation it was ‘non-binding’ and had largely symbolic significance.

Knowing how explosive He Puapua was, Jacinda Ardern barely mentioned it in Labour’s 2020 campaign manifesto. Even her Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, knew nothing about it before the election. It was only revealed after Ardern won a landslide victory.

By failing to gain the consent of voters for what looks like tribal rule (as they were never asked), Jacinda Ardern has no mandate for He Puapua co-governance agenda. It is completely illegitimate.

The government’s Office for Maori Crown Relations clarifies on its website where this tribal ‘partnership’ agenda is leading:

‘Maori decide and the Crown assists in implementing the decision made by Maori. The Crown’s role is as enabler and implementer, not a decision-maker.’

Hiding in plain sight, the website confirms for anyone still uncertain about the extent of the coup currently underway that the ultimate goal of the so-called ‘co-governance’ partnership agenda is, indeed, tribal rule.

As a result, the Prime Minister is embedding racial preference throughout our regulatory and legislative framework – from the Public Service and the conservation estate to schools and the entire science and research sector.

Enabling iwi to control health required new legislation to abolish the country’s 20 district health boards just as giving them control of water involves a bill to confiscate water infrastructure and services from all 67 councils.

That piece of legislation, the Water Services Entities Bill, passed its first reading in June with more than 88,000 public submissions lodged – most in opposition. Showing a deep disdain for democratic convention, the government is refusing to hear from most of the thousands of submitters who asked to be heard in person.

The scale and speed of the government’s cultural takeover is breathtaking, and it is reshaping democracy as we know it before our very eyes.

Professor Elizabeth Rata, the Director of Knowledge in Education at Auckland University, outlined the threat posed by this tribal coup in a recent address entitled In Defence of Democracy.

‘I want to talk about democracy – about what it is we are in danger of losing and what we need to do to retain our nation’s remarkable 170-year legacy of democratic governance…

‘The question we must ask is this: How has a small group of individuals, both Maori and non-Maori, managed to install a racialised ideology into our democracy?

‘The corporate tribes have already acquired considerable governance entitlements – the next and final step is tribal sovereignty. It is a coup d’etat in all but name, accomplished not by force but by ideology – enabled by a compliant media.’

And that’s the point.

The Prime Minister is using a well-orchestrated public media campaign to justify the transfer of control of major public resources and services from the Crown and thus, out of the hands of the people.

Using a $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, that’s only available to media who agree to ‘acknowledge’ and ‘promote’ the fabrication that underpins co-governance – that Maori are Treaty ‘partners’ with the Crown – without the full scrutiny of New Zealand’s Fourth Estate, this tribal coup is being progressed at pace.

Dr Muriel Newman is a former New Zealand Member of Parliament, who runs the public policy think tank the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at www.nzcpr.com

Amy Brooke

22 May 2021

In spite of government opposition, a radical report proposing destroying  New Zealand’s democracy, unintelligibly called He Puapua (let’s not give it an English title, or people may begin to wonder what is in it) has been released, because of an appeal under the Official Information Act (OIA). A previous, heavily redacted version was finally released but only as a result of constant pressure.

He Puapua argues for this country to be predominantly governed by individuals of part-Maori ancestry and for those of part-Maori descent — no matter how minimal. A separate parliament and civil service is to govern those identifying as Maori, with, as usual, no definition of who can legitimately be regarded as Maori — in a country where intermarriage has been the norm for 200 years — and where full-blooded Maoris no longer exist.

Its intent is for separate Maori health and court systems; Maori ownership of the foreshore and seabed (now already happening); separate Maori wards on  councils; Maori governance over water and every other possible sphere of influence — such as the reassignment of the entire conservation estate under the Department of Conservation (DOC).

This two-systems approach has already been adopted, with health reforms dominated by a separate Maori Health Authority able to veto government decisions relating to everybody’s health. Under Jacinda Ardern’s supervision, Labour has already pushed legislation through parliament to ensure the public no longer has a say with regard to Maori wards on councils. Moreover, it is envisaged that progress between basically two governments would be overseen by the Aotearoa Monitoring Group, currently chaired by the Maori sovereignty activist, Margaret Mutu. Larded with increasing numbers of untranslated Maori words and phrases — making it virtually impossible for most New Zealanders to understand — it has been well described as ‘a masterpiece of deceit’. No reference is made to the fact that a previous Independent Constitutional Review Panel examining radicalised Maoris’ call for a Treaty-based constitution found widespread opposition to the proposal, with 96 per cent of submissions opposing it, ‘and 97 per cent vehemently opposed to local government Maori seats’.

Incredibly, some former politicians are simply shaking their heads at Jacinda’s supposed ‘naïveté’. This manipulative politician, adept at projecting compassion and well-being, flashing her famous smiles, and  talking at great length —while  managing to say almost nothing relevant in response to questioning — is dodging accountability by switching to vigorous and indignant Hollywooding, claiming she hasn’t read the document.

Who actually believes her, given that while she claims the report hasn’t found its way to the Cabinet table, and refuses to state her view on its recommendations, her ministers are already implementing some of its communications? Her current ploy is to brush off criticism of this pernicious, fundamentally racist document by accusing its critics of ‘playing politics’. So much for her promise of transparent government.

As historian Mike Butler has pointed out, the plan to implement He Puapua was slipped in under the radar, without troubling MPs or talking to the media. That Labour did not campaign on this in either the 2017 or 2020 elections invites the charge of sheer duplicity.

What we are being now faced with is apparently prevarication on a grand scale — from the same determined woman who has consistently handed over every possible advantage, with preferential taxpayer funding, to perennially obsessed part-Maori agitators.

This same adroit politician appointed the controversial Nania Mahuta to crucial portfolios imposing thoroughly undemocratic directions. Mahuta could not possibly have done so without Jacinda’s backing. And if the Prime Minister’s hand is being forced here, who is the puppeteer? To whom does she owe allegiance?

While she has described herself as socialist, in fact socialism is regarded as the smokescreen of communism — to tactically present a more palatable face to the public. Moreover, destabilising a democracy is regarded as a communist coup.

We should be under no illusions. This attack on this country is well under way, as is the Maori sovereignty takeover, assisted by a Prime Minister so foolishly dismissed as merely naive, but who, on the actual evidence — her ongoing promotion of divisiveness and separatism — is bad news for New Zealanders and undermining national unity.

What about government-related official institutions embracing the ridiculous? To simply laugh off what is happening would be a big mistake in relation to the nonsense recently produced by Christian Hawkesby, assistant-governor of the Reserve Bank, now to be known as Te Putea, no doubt to bring it into line with what pre-European Maoris used to call it before their colonist oppressors arrived.

Hawkesby’s recent address to the Institute of Directors centred around the claim that Tane, the God of the Forest, watches over all bank employees. ‘Each day as we walk through the security gates to enter our Wellington offices, Tane Mahuta (New Zealand’s oldest living Kauri tree) ‘looks back at us as a reminder of our responsibility… which is to ensure that “Tane will not wilt and lose mana”.’ And so on.

Could we ever have envisaged such nonsense — a Reserve Bank official calling on his staff to worship a giant tree to make sure it doesn’t wilt? It’s been pointed out that, ‘Mr Hawkesby is responsible for formulating monetary policy, providing equity in financial markets, managing the foreign reserves, operating interbank payment and settlement systems, and circulation of currency’.

It is not his job, if undertaking a personal journey into the psychobabble of animism, to inflict what many regard as less than rational thinking on bank employees. He should be required to resign. Simply calling what he said ridiculous is only a start. His New Age nonsense and arguably racist activism is conduct unbecoming  – not only unacceptable – but with no place in government.

And yet this primitive underpinning of what should be rational advocacies is becoming increasingly pervasive — as with activists’ success in opposing specific project developments because of the claimed presence of taniwhas (mythical Maori monsters).

With New Zealand’s democracy now white-anted by racist policies, we will also deservedly become a laughing stock if our politicians and bureaucrats continue to pay obeisance to primitivism. However, as  Einstein observed, ‘Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.’