As New Zealanders we have always prided ourselves on being an inclusive multi-racial society. Yet under the present Labour Government we are heading down a path of separatism with our society divided by race based on a factually incorrect interpretation of Treaty of Waitangi documentation.
Next week is the 40th anniversary of the 1981 South African Springbok tour of New Zealand, an event that deeply divided our nation.
More than 150,000 people took to the streets to protest against sporting contact with South Africa, a country that defined and divided its people by race/colour through a formal system of Apartheid established in 1948.
There were many protests over the years demanding that New Zealand stop all sporting contact with South Africa (particularly Rugby), apartheid was abandoned.
In 1981 the then Prime Minister Rob Muldoon, invited the Springboks back and for two months New Zealand became a nation at war with itself.
In the latest NZCPR newsletter, Ross Meurant a former Member of Parliament and Police Inspector, who at that time was seconded to second in command of the Police’s Red Escort Group – an elite squad established by Prime Minister Muldoon to protect the Springboks during the tour, is quoted as standing against Apartheid in New Zealand now.
“Today, in my assessment, the Government is heralding the introduction of Apartheid to New Zealand. In 1981 I was one who literally fought to protect the rights of Kiwis who wanted to exercise their lawful right to attend rugby games and not have their travel disrupted by protestors who disregarded the rights of fellow Kiwis in their quest to fight Apartheid in another country. Today, I find myself in a role not dissimilar to that of John Minto 1981. Difference is: I stand against Apartheid in New Zealand…
“In my assessment, what Labour are doing, is tantamount to imposing a form of Apartheid by elevating Maori above The Rest of New Zealand. That will generate animosity and hostility.”
The current government is enabling and supporting a separatist race based agenda that will result in a situation that is the same as happened in South Africa with the introduction of Apartheid. Breaking down of our multi-cultural society with the eventual result of Race based civil disobedience.
The Labour Government under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is elevating Maori to the status of a ruling class through their interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi giving Maori a co-governance role. This decision based purely on race is surely no better than that made by the rulers in South Africa through the introduction of the Apartheid system.
Another claimed justification for making these race based decisions to elevate Maori to a ruling class is NZ’s obligations after the signing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Jacinda Ardern’s government commissioned a report which she claimed was about developing a strategy to fulfil our obligations under that declaration. Jacinda Ardern stated that the report titled “He Puapua” was an advisory document but this was at best a disingenuous statement as parts of that document have already been enacted and as such it is the beginning of division of our country based on race (Apartheid any way you look at it).
Part of the He Puapua report defines the pathway to achieve Maori sovereignty by 2040 and the implementation of parts of that report which has been done in secret without any public referendum or mandate other than their victory in the last election will not stand up to public scrutiny.
Elevating Maori to a co-governance based on the claim that Maori are ‘indigenous’ to New Zealand is both wrong and the claim is simply not true – Maori are migrants, like everyone else who arrived from another country.
“The Oxford English Dictionary defines someone indigenous as ‘born naturally in a land or region; native to that region’. In that sense, all native-born New Zealanders are indigenous. Otherwise, if ‘indigenous’ is used to refer to a people whose ancestors have lived in a place from time immemorial, then New Zealand has no indigenous inhabitants.”
So why is the government trying to enact racist policies supposedly to comply with the requirements of the UN Indigenous Rights Declaration when NO ONE in NZ is indigenous?
The claim has been often made that the Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand’s founding document but in actual fact the Treaty of Waitangi was a simple contract between Queen Victoria and 512 Maori chiefs that established the Queen as our sovereign, protected private property rights, and gave Maori the same rights and privileges of British citizenship as every other New Zealander.
Surely New Zealand’s founding document should be Queen Victoria’s Royal Charter of 1840 that created New Zealand as an independent British colony.
Jacinda Ardern and her Ministers often refer to the “partnership” created by the Treaty of Waitangi but I can find no reference to “partnership”, or any synonym of “partnership”, in any version of the Treaty.
There have been various attempts in recent decades to argue that the chiefs who signed the Treaty in 1840 really didn’t cede sovereignty to Queen Victoria – despite the speeches made at the time and subsequently at a large conference of chiefs in Kohimarama in 1860 – but there can be no doubt what the actual words of the Treaty provided.
Dr Michael Bassett (a member of the Waitangi Tribunal for a decade, a highly regarded New Zealand historian, and of course a long-time Labour Member of Parliament) has said that when he was on the Tribunal The Waitangi Tribunal generally accepted that the translation by Sir Hugh Kawharu was the correct one.
Sir Hugh translated the three clauses of the Treaty thus:
“The first:
The chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs who have not joined that Confederation give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government over their land.
“The second:
The Queen of England agrees to protect the Chiefs, the Subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures. But on the other hand the Chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs will sell land to the Queen at a price agreed by the person owning it and by the person buying it (the latter being) appointed by the Queen as her purchase agent.
“The third:
For this agreed arrangement therefore concerning the Government of the Queen, the Queen of England will protect all the ordinary people of New Zealand (i.e. the Maori) and will give them the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England.”
‘The highly respected Maori leader, Hon Sir Apirana Ngata -M.A. LLB. LIT.D’ wrote the following:
THE TREATY OF WAITANGI – an explanation published in 1922
The acclaimed Maori Leader Sir Apirana Ngata explains the intent in the pages of this book, the “Treaty of Waitangi”. He concludes with the words: “The Treaty made the one law for the Maori and Pakeha. If you think these things are wrong and bad then blame our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful”.
Governor Hobson was sent by Queen Victoria, Queen of England and Her other lands to arrange conditions between the Queen and the Chiefs of the Maori people. The main purport is in the words, “This is by reason of the fact that so many members of her race were living in this land and many more were coming”. Therefore, the Queen was desirous to establish a Government with a few to avert the evil consequences to the Maori people and to Europeans living under no laws.
These are very wise words. It was correct that many Europeans had settled throughout both islands, missionaries and their families, European sellers of goods, the whalers, sailors, thieves and murderers. It had been stated that 500 convicts had escaped from Australia and were living in various parts of the Bay of Islands just prior to the Treaty. Maori authority had no effect on them but they often disturbed the Maori people.
Neither did the laws of the Queen affect them by reason of the fact that the Queen had no authority over these islands. According to the records of the missionaries, one thousand of the Maori people were murdered by the Europeans in the years prior to the Treaty, and we have also heard of the Maori people murdering Europeans. These were lawless times. Therefore, the Queen “was desirous to establish a Government with a view to avert the evil consequences to the Maori people and to the Europeans living under no laws”.
Now these were important words “living under no laws”. It was the European conscience of the man who formulated the words of the Treaty who saw that this was the main trouble throughout North and South Islands. This was the trouble which was forcing itself to be remedied – lawlessness. This conflicted with Maori custom, the authority of Maori Chiefs of cannibal times, of illiterate days and the individualistic European idea of the European who had strayed out of the confines of his own laws and who had left behind the very lands from which he was nurtured. It was this law, then, which was stretching out to follow him – the long fingernails of Queen Victoria which she had attached to Governor William Hobson.
This was at a time when the Maori tribes were fighting fiercely among themselves. There was no peace following the wars of Hongki Hika, Te Wherowhero, Te Waharoa and Te Rauparaha. Guns and powder were the goods most desired by each tribe, when chiefly women were given away, and lands were sold. This was at a time when lands were sold on a broad scale.
Europeans crowded to buy land for themselves in the Bay of Islands, Hauraki, Porirua and the South Island, guns, kegs of powder, blankets, tobacco and spirituous liquor were given in payment. Many claims were made by various Europeans for the one piece of land sold to each of them by various Maori chiefs. Where was the law in those times to decide what was right?
The Maori did not have any government when the European first came to these islands. There was no unified chiefly authority over man or land, or any one person to decide life or death, one who could be designated a King, a leader, or some other designation. No, there was none, the people were still divided, Waikato, Ngai Naua, Te Arawa, Ngapuni and tribe after tribe. Within one tribe there were many divisions into sub-tribes each under their own chief. How could such an organisation, as a Government, be established under Maori custom?
There was without doubt Maori chieftainship, but it was limited in its scope to its subtribe, and even to only a family group. The Maori did not have authority or a government which could make laws to govern the whole of the Maori Race.
Despite the claims of a partnership having no factual foundation, it has not stopped those pushing the sovereignty agenda from misrepresenting the situation and continuing to use the partnership fiction to justify their demands for power.
As New Zealand continues down the separatist path set out by Jacinda Ardern and her current government, New Zealand will increasingly become an apartheid nation, where those claiming Maori heritage are given superior rights over everyone else.
On the basis of false assumptions and fabrications, democracy will be sacrificed, and New Zealand will return to tribal rule.
Professor Elizabeth Rata of Auckland University has argued that to stop the slide and restore democracy all references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi should be removed from legislation.
We believe that all references to race should also be removed from legislation to eliminate the dangerous practice of granting privilege according to skin colour – and to ensure that all New Zealanders are treated equally.
The reality is that today we are a multi-cultural inclusive nation of many different nationalities.
Tomorrow if we follow the Prime Minister’s current path towards apartheid and race based legislation, democracy will be sacrificed, and New Zealand will return to tribal rule.
I know which one I want – how about you?
Andy Loader