In a report published on the Stuff website;
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the protest at Parliament looks like “an imported protest” that is based on disinformation and she questions the motivation of the people involved.
As the protest enters its second week, an estimated 400-500 people are camping out in Parliament grounds in tents, with numbers swelling during the day.
Ardern told Breakfast on Monday that, while New Zealand had a strong history of protest, “what I’ve seen here has not been the way that we’re used to seeing protests in this country”.
“When you see signs calling for the execution of politicians, that’s not really a group that wants to engage in political dialogue… They’ve talked about (vaccine) mandates, but actually what I’ve heard is a lot of misinformation and anti-vax messaging coming from the forecourt,” she said.
“I really question the motivation of what I see down there.”
It came back to disinformation. In the protests she had been confronted with for quite some time, what had stood out was that so many people were there based on things that simply were not true, Ardern said.
She may be right in her summation; she should know what it is like to talk about things based on misinformation particularly if she was to use her government’s recent statements and actions related to the Three Waters Reform Proposals as an example.
It isn’t unusual for governments to decide not to publicise all of the facts surrounding an issue if they do look favourable for that government, but in New Zealand it is almost unheard of to have a government making statements that are totally opposed to the truth of an issue.
Such as the many statements made in relation to Three Waters when her government was telling us that it was going to be voluntary for councils to opt in when at the same time they had already made the decision that it would be compulsory to hand over their three waters assets.
The statements that ownership of the three waters assets will remain with the local councils when in fact this is not true as they will not have any control over the assets which is one of the true measures of ownership.
The He PuaPua report that was commissioned by Te Puni Kokiri and completed in 2019 and its recommendations for race based policies. It envisages that by 2040 – the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi – the nation will be ruled under an equal power-sharing arrangement between Māori and non-Māori leaders.
This report calls for a Treaty based constitution for New Zealand.
Many claims have been made that the He Puapua Report; which recommends radical policies based on race, was a hidden separatist agenda for her government but these claims have been refuted by Prime Minister Ardern and she assured the public that the Report did not reflect Government policy
But despite this assurance it is clear that the reality is very different.
In fact the report itself was kept hidden from the public and the government’s own coalition partner until after the 2020 election even though it had been completed in 2019 and when they were finally force to acknowledge its existence and publicise it, the report was redacted to the point where there were only thirty some pages of over one hundred and twenty that were readable.
A fully readable copy was only published after one had been leaked to the media without any redactions and it was only at this time that the public were able to see the level of disinformation that had been spread by the government in relation to the recommendations in the report.
Many of the recommendations have already been implemented and there are still more that are well down the path to implementation such as the separate Maori Health Authority which is going to have a power of veto over the whole of the health budget.
He Puapua recommended making it easier to set up Māori wards in local councils- and in February 2021 the government did just that by overturning the law that meant voters could petition for a referendum to veto a council decision to introduce them.
Labour made no mention of such a law change in its election manifesto, but Jacinda Ardern’s government pushed the Māori wards legislation through Parliament under urgency, allowing less than 48 hours for public submissions.
He Puapua calls for a Māori-centric version of New Zealand’s history in schools, and there is currently a move to rewrite the history curriculum in line with this recommendation.
He Puapua calls for public education programmes, including conscious and subconscious bias training to deal with structural racism, and this is already being promoted by the Public Service Commission.
He Puapua recommends exempting some Māori land from rates, a notion reflected in the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Act 2021 passed in April.
Government critics say these moves are confirmation He Puapua is functioning as an undeclared separatist agenda they believe the government has secretly endorsed.
The implementation of the He Puapua recommendations by stealth will only create two systems based on racial division and this will be nothing short of disastrous for New Zealand and its population.
Attempts to racialise New Zealand, is bound to provoke significant public complaint. Government has a duty to uphold the Rule of Law and protect the democratic rights of all New Zealanders.
Any failure to uphold the equal application of the laws, on the grounds that a separate Māori Health or Justice system will soon replace the long-established principle of “one law for all”, will be taken as proof that this government intends to change profoundly the constitutional arrangements of the New Zealand state.
Such a fundamental change to the manner in which New Zealand is administered, especially one predicated on ethnic and cultural considerations, could have no legitimacy without having first secured the endorsement, by way of referendum, of a majority of New Zealand citizens.
To suggest that the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi in some way obviate the Crown’s need to obtain the consent of the New Zealand electorate before changing the way our country is administered, and by whom, is tantamount to suggesting that the Treaty legally entitles the Crown to extinguish democracy in the Realm of New Zealand without reference to its citizens and in defiance of its laws.
The Labour Government’s silence on these matters is indefensible. A clear statement of its determination to uphold the Principle of One Law for all is long overdue.
Andy Loader