The latest Waitangi Tribunal investigation into the policies and tactics of this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government has been launched, this time into the deeply inflammatory Treaty Referendum Bill.
ACT’s Treaty Referendum Bill is dangerous and disingenuous…
1. All citizens of New Zealand have the same political rights and duties
2. All political authority comes from the people by democratic means including universal suffrage, regular and free elections with a secret ballot
3. New Zealand is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy where discrimination based on ethnicity is illegal
…The Bill sounds good until you realise what it actually means…
Lord Cooke’s ruling in 1987 was an attempt to create a framework that gave the Treaty meaning. He ruled, “the Treaty created an enduring relationship of a fiduciary nature akin to a partnership, each party accepting a positive duty to act in good faith, fairly, reasonably and honourably towards the other”, and this has been the framework for co-operation for almost 4 decades.
…passing ACT’s Bill would remove that obligation to work with Māori making the Treaty meaningless.
This is a direct attack on the Treaty and the very value of our Democracy
Let’s be very clear, what the right are arguing for here with this Treaty Principles Referendum Bill is not Democracy, but Majoritarianism.
The benchmark for morality under Majoritarianism is that 51% can vote to kill the other 49%.
Great if you are in the 51%, not so great if you are in the 49%.
A democracy worth its name understands the power structures within society and provides a democracy that actually represents the wider interests of everyone.
What ACT are doing here is stripping away Māori political rights by strangling off any obligation to work with Māori. It makes the Treaty redundant so attempts to pretend this doesn’t impact the Treaty is just a deception.
Majoritarianism is not democracy, it’s authoritarian.
Democracy uses the State to build people up, Majoritarianism demands the State punish those the Majority despise.
We need to fight for our Democracy and not the empty legitimacy of Majoritarianism.
Just because you have the numbers to do it, doesn’t make it right or just or clever or worthy of us.
It’s counter productive culture war revenge fantasies implemented for nothing more than political plunder.
David’s argument that ACT stand for tino rangatiratanga is so misplaced I wonder if David has ever met any Māori…
The Treaty: We don’t believe Treaty of Waitangi is a partnership between races – David Seymour
Over the past decade, no party has shown more courage in standing up for the freedoms of New Zealanders than Act.
There’s been the freedom of parents to choose a school that suits their children, charter schools. Our party has stood for the legal rights of licensed firearm owners, freedom of speech, the freedom of vulnerable people suffering at the end of their life to choose assisted dying, and the freedom of people to go about their business in the face of heavy-handed Covid measures.
Now in Government, we continue to stand up for New Zealanders’ rights. We are reintroducing choice in education, beating back the thickets of red tape and regulation so deadly to innovation and development, and ensuring Oranga Tamariki has the rights of each vulnerable child as its unconditional focus, among other initiatives.
In these and other examples, Act stands for the mana of the individual, the right to live life as you choose so long as you are not harming others. Put another way, Act has championed tino rangatiratanga, or self-determination.
…at a time when the Mining Industry and Trans National Corporations want to buy up NZ land and the privatisation thugs are looking to rob us blind, we need more safeguards to our sovereignty than David Seymour’s limp and brittle definition of tino rangatiratanga.
All he is doing here is reducing the concept of tino rangatiratanga into the shallow individualism of the Western tradition.
Individualism über alles is a petty trade in for what Māori already have.
David wants to downgrade Māori from citizens to consumers.
Māori communalism is as close to Kiwi socialism as we are going to get! David’s attempt to reduce tino rangatiratanga into individualism misses the Māori values where sharing and communalism is central.
All David is doing is forcing a Western Philosophical definition of the self onto Māori and then telling them to accept it!
How does replacing Māori communalism for a shallow western definition of the individual, justify dumping the Treaty Principles?
If anything, wouldn’t further atomisation of Māori culture help fray the unity and allow ACT to legislate it away?
Māori tino rangatiratanga is the sovereignty of the people, not the self interest of the individual!
The white redneck anger of the Settler Spite electorate love this bashing of Māori for political purposes and their naked hatred of Māori aspiration speaks of a terrible cultural insecurity.
I don’t see why we should allow the neuroses of Cracker to undermine our bicultural strength and identity.
ACT’s Treaty Referendum Bill is dangerous and disingenuous. This Government is risking race conflict by trashing the Treaty.
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It’s the usual Right reactionary opposition to Left excess. Best to be a centrist.
It’s the usual Right reactionary opposition to Left excess. Best to be a centrist.
I suspect that another issue that drives support for ACT is the people who moved to NZ since the treaty was signed (especially in recent decades) who don’t feel bound by the agreement. While I believe that their argument is illogical when people perceive that something is costing them they can get a bit irrational.
NZ is being colinised again but this time by migrants from a major asian country who support act because act will enable them to take over .That is why Act are inciteing Maori hatered so that their supporters can take over while everyone is scrambling to fight the non existant Maori take over of their own country .
Very soon we will be all eating curry which maybe the reason Fonterra is selling out of its finished food business because there will be no need for dairy products .
David Atlas Seymor believes in a special class of people alright ….
He believes the most wealthy and powerful people in the world should be exempt from paying their share by being taxed like the rest of us ,,,
This is clearly demonstrated by his non-funny joke, said in Parliament,, between him and John Key,, with both mocking the wine-box tax shenanigans relating to Fay-Richwhite and the BNZ
“David Seymour: In what century did the wine-box inquiry take place?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: One so far back I can hardly remember it.”
If poor and average people were a race ,,,, then Seymour would be a racist.
The treaty of Waitangi is an impediment to the rich and multi-national corporations getting their (un-taxed) hands on our resources ,,, that’s why it’s got to go.
Well said.
And as someone else pointed out the number of recent immigrants who feel they have no connection to the Treaty is huge. However they need to realise that the pleasures and privileges they enjoy here, the reasons why they came here, are directly attributable to the Treaty. It is a valuable document for everyone, not just Māori or those who can date their ancestors’ arrival to 1840 or before.
Those immigrants liked what they saw here. They need to remember why it looked so good.
He believes that special class of people should be exempt from other laws too, the Tim Jago type of laws.
I would say this government is risking not being re-elected and let’s hope so.
I don’t even think the Coalition of Chaos will see out the full 3 years..
You have to give them one thing though…they are the masters of one dimensional thinking….just not capable of anything more.
Seymore is such a simple simplistic simpleton i can see why 93% of the population don’t want him in.
He has no real life experience to draw on … any fool can see through his woeful, shallow, ill thought through ‘reckons’.
Extrapolating that ‘reckons’ out…
A whole bunch of ,( for example),wealthy Chinese or Indians can arrive here…set up fake businesses for a couple of years, (that are not actually turning a profit), so as to gain residency and citizenship .
Compare that to Maori who had vast areas of their best land stolen, and then, through having no other option, were forced to try and adapt to the thieves way of life.
The thieves then open the borders to wealthy exploitative crooks who want to use our housing market as a pyramid scheme, thus further shutting Maori out.
Now Seymore seems to think that that is democratic, fair and a level playing field.
He’s a myopic Atlas sycophant, Luxon’s a religious nutter and Winston’s losing the plot taking advice from a bunch of pommy wide- boys..
N.Z…
the country that lost it’s way…
Same shit for a century from the Colonisers.
The French don’t like the Noumea Accord they signed anymore which granted greater autonomy to the natives, so need to change laws to decimate that Treaty. And the mines and the military bases.
In order to pillage more, for over a century the Crown here too have a whole history of changing laws to decimate the Treaties they have signed.
Minister Tell Porkies : ” Oooops, that T.O.W is a fuck up for farmers, miners and landlords”.
Little Dave: ” Yeah, we haven’t exploited enough resources yet, there’s still that 4% in native lands.”
Luxie:”But what shall we do with the dissidents who can’t see MY vision? ”
Little Dave: ” A megaprison, you know like the Taranaki wars where we sent thousands off and imprisoned them just for defending their lands. Then starve their kids they deserve it.”
Winnie: ” Oh yeah, just like the English halved the population of Ireland changing laws in the 1800s. Bring back the good old days I say. Thank goodness Israel makes us look like a civilised government stealing shit covertly! ”
Luxie: ” Good plan. I’ll distract and throw in mobile phone bans. Can’t have kids being savvy and exposed to information like climate change .”
Little Dave: ” While you Spin it Luxie Baby. I’ll set up some new ministry to hunt down all those T.O.W clauses.”
Simpering Simeon: ” I’ll distract and re-route NZTA funding to road works to improve roads for the trucks to the mines.”
Luxie : ” Oh Davey, I’m in love with your neurodiversity. I can say the convoluted latin, greek , french words like neurodiversity, but Fuck it, I’m too lazy to say ‘ Whaikaha ‘ . Just like the Kanaks eh. Fuck maaori ! Let’s get that referendum moving “.
I doubt they ever said those exact word OToole, but I bet they thought them.
Your references to what is going on in New Caledonia should sharpen the coalition of clowns and their running mates, thinking. But it won’t.
Though it may give impetus for action to any potentially disenfranchised Maori.
The Greeks have a wise saying “Those whom the gods would destroy, first they fill full of hubris”. Hubris, or false pride, is the epitome of Seymour and his 26 followers. When he gets smacked in the nose by the political reaction to his racism, it’s gonna hurt. The good news is that destruction of the SCT redneck inbreds will denude the wealthy of their only political voice. Serve them right.
The George Carlin skit about how dumb/smart the average American is, comes to mind. And that was before social media group think – lol
I have a massive dislike for National, however they do support the treaty. What is gutless is their inability to saying “NO” to ACT and NZ First over Maori and treaty issues.
Its called cannabis Helen not marijuana
Left wing NZ Twitter be like: “we’ll be in the streets” if this goes ahead.
I think the right wing of NZ politics genuinely don’t understand – or don’t necessarily want to know – just how angry the left could get on this subject. For me, in the centre left, the choices are as stark as the future is potentially grim.
As my parents marched in the streets for stopping the Springbok tour in 1981 I would like to think that if we had to march, I’d be joined by my mates, by my colleagues and others with a spine to stand up for the country we know and love. Not the one David, Christopher and Winston want us to have.
Thanks Rob.
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