In 1858 Abraham Lincoln stated that Democracy was “government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.
There are two types of democracy and they are either Direct or Representative. In a direct democracy, citizens, without the intermediary of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. In a representative democracy leaders are elected by the people to form a government and act on behalf of the citizens.
Why do we need democracy?
Democracy explains and helps in maintaining law and order. Democracy helps citizens to choose their leaders to run the government. Democracy provides equal rights among citizens on the basis of caste, religion and sex. Democracy enhances the quality of decision-making and also improves the dignity of citizens.
Currently in New Zealand we have a government that is making decisions behind closed doors that are eroding the democratic principles of government that have ruled since the implementation in New Zealand, of the Westminster system of government.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted on 13 September 2007 as a non-binding, aspirational declaration of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
New Zealand in 2010, signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples under John Key’s National-led government.
In recent days the government has made decisions that we are told have been based on NZ complying with our obligations under this UN Declaration. Even though the Declaration was adopted as non-binding & aspirational we have been given the impression throughout the whole of the discussions around the He Puapua report, that it was a binding declaration which New Zealand was committed to implementing.
In 2019 Cabinet commissioned a report – titled He Puapua: The Report of the Working Group on a Plan to Realise the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This report was produced by Te Puni Kōkiri and it sets out a 20-year plan to bring the UN declaration into effect.
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 was only released (in a highly redacted form – being 34 out of a total of 123 pages) by the government last October. The report had been complete almost a year before the highly redacted version was released last October.
The report had been highly censored by the government and it wasn’t until a full version was published in March 2021 that the full list of recommendations became known. This degree of censorship and the fact that it had been kept out of public circulation until after the last election makes me suspicious of the intentions of the government in relation to this report. The report calls for a Treaty of Waitangi based constitution for New Zealand.
The Cambridge dictionary definition of indigenous is as follows:
Indigenous
Adjective
used to refer to, or relating to, the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else :
used to refer to plants and animals that grow or live naturally in a place, and have not been brought there from somewhere else:
not foreign or from outside an area:
Given that Maori have been very explicit about their origins as coming to New Zealand by canoe from Hawaii, under this definition they are not indigenous but just prior immigrants to the European settlers who came after them. The true indigenous peoples of New Zealand were in fact those that inhabited the country prior to the arrival of the Maori.
When the Prime Minister was questioned in parliament about whether the government would rule out establishing a Maori Parliament as called for in the He Puapua report, Ardern replied:
“Obviously, we have no intention of making such a constitutional change…” before adding, “However; we do commit ourselves to making sure that we are upholding our obligations as Treaty partners…”
In her post cabinet media briefing on the following Monday Ardern did rule out a Maori Parliament.
Even so the government’s critics are busy publicising aspects of the report they say have already been implemented by stealth.
He Puapua recommended making it easier to set up Māori wards in local councils and in February 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 Ardern 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.
The government has proposed to seize all three water assets from local and regional councils and put them into a small number of commercial companies to run those operations.
They are proposing to do this without allowing any reasonable time for the councils to consult with the ratepayers who actually have paid for and own those assets.
The government is being very dis-ingenuous by saying “the assets will remain in the ownership of the councils”, as the original councils will have absolutely no say in the management of those assets as would be expected in any normal similar asset ownership situation.
This, Three Waters Reform Program, is nothing more than an ideological experiment that will allow Maori to have control over water delivery in the whole of New Zealand.
The Three Waters Reform Program proposes that each of the entities set up to manage operations will be run by an Independent Board comprising of 50% Mana Whenua membership and 50% other with a requirement that a 75% support will be required to make changes within management of these entities.
Many current Mayors and Councilors around New Zealand have yet to be convinced that the Three Waters Reform Program will actually be of benefit to their ratepayers even though the government has tried to buy their support with an offer of $2.5Billion dollars and a nationwide advertising campaign costing $3.5Million dollars.
Instead of trying to buy off opposition to their proposal what the government should do is engage with the owners of those assets by way of binding public referendum in every district to allow those owners and ratepayers who have along with their families over generations paid for the three water assets to make a democratic decision to either opt in or out.
I believe that the only rational explanation for this Three Waters Reform Program is to use it to hand over control of water to Maori as recommended in the He Puapua report. The Government has no mandate for that course of action and for a government that has proclaimed itself to be one of the most open and transparent governments ever, it is completely unacceptable and far below this self-proclaimed standard of openness and transparency.
Government critics say these moves are confirmation He Puapua is functioning as an undeclared separatist agenda they believe the government has secretly endorsed.
Overall, the impression that the Government is intent on subverting the nation’s institutions and constitutional arrangements by stealth risks severely damaging the government’s long trumpeted virtues of openness and transparency.
The foundation of our democracy is the law applied equally to us “ALL” to ensure justice and fairness in a just and fair society as granted to all the subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.
Andy Loader