Stanford’s Magic Trick: Treaty of Waitangi in Education, gone
Critics say Erica Stanford’s latest education reforms do more than centralise curriculum power — they effectively erase Treaty of Waitangi obligations from the very mechanisms controlling what New Zealand children are taught.
In a follow up to her move to take over complete control of education in New Zealand, including the writing of curriculum and removing all teachers’ input into the New Zealand Teachers Council, the Dictator of Education, Erica Stanford, has gone one step further, fulfilling her obligation to the Atlas Network and its lackeys, including Professor Elizabeth Rata, by removing the obligation to implement or even acknowledge the Treaty of Waitangi.
She’s done the job she was put into politics to do and I’m sure that a cushy very well paid job awaits her when she leaves politics.
Bevan Holloway explains the situation in the following article. Once again due to my ongoing battle with ME/CFS forgive me if I take the easy way out and paste the whole article (with Bevan’s approval).
Where did the Treaty obligation actually go?
The Treaty Obligation Has Disappeared
In its place, nothing other than ministerial power
Stanford said she takes the Treaty very seriously.
But in the Bill she has just introduced to the House giving her unlimited power to create curriculum, there is not one reference to Te Tiriti in the section that grants her that power.
Nothing that directs her to act as a partner.
This dissolves her argument for relieving school boards of their Treaty obligations. She said it was her obligation, as the Crown. And now it’s gone.
The removal of s127(1)(d) — taking the requirement that boards give effect to Te Tiriti out of the Education and Training Act — was defended on the grounds that the obligation properly sits with the Crown, not with boards. The Crown would carry it, Stanford said. Boards would be relieved of a duty that was, in the Minister’s framing, more appropriately held at the centre.
CURRICULUM INVESTIGATION
Stanford’s legal fictions
In her Q&A appearance on 18 May 2026, Education Minister Erica Stanford attempted a remarkable feat of legal gymnastics. Seeking to justify her government’s rollback of Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations for school boards, the Minister demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of New Zealand’s administrative and constitutional law.
Then the Amendment to the System Reform Bill arrives.
The clauses that concentrate curriculum authority in the Minister’s hands contain no Treaty reference. No direction to act as a partner. No means by which the obligation Stanford assured us the Crown was assuming actually attaches to, shapes, or informs the power Stanford is creating for herself.
I want you to pay close attention here, because we are now in a phase where attention to rhetoric and what it is covering is becoming absolutely necessary.
“But when questioned about the findings on Monday morning, Luxon rejected suggestions the Government had breached Te Tiriti and defended the reforms as necessary to create “clarity” and “certainty” across legislation.”
“Clarity” and “certainty” are not neutral words. They are the rhetoric of governments that want to do something they cannot defend if named accurately.
The rhetorical work of the s127 debate was to make the removal look like a transfer. Largely, the public bought this. We were too easily assured. The work of this Bill is to make sure the transfer never happens. And so, the obligation is not moved. It disappears.
The Tribunal has named the breach. The Prime Minister has answered with the vocabulary of clarity and certainty. The Minister said she takes the Treaty seriously, and then introduces legislation that contains no Treaty provision at the point where the Crown’s power is at its most acute when it comes to schools: what children will learn.
This is the removal of a constitutional check, the Crown doing in two moves what it could have done in one, but knew it never could.
Why critics are warning about democratic backsliding
If you want to see what happens next, look to Hungary, look to Poland, look to Turkey. Do not find false solace in the idea that this is New Zealand.
I’m with this thick cunt Pope.
No politics in school, because I don’t understand what politics is and define it in the stupidest terms possible and hate the darkies.
Cue strangled outraged noises from Pope. The dude who’s totally comfortable with Israel raping Palestinian detainees.
A Pope who approves of sexual assault? That must be a first (sarc).
“She’s done the job she was put into politics to do and I’m sure that a cushy very well paid job awaits her when she leaves politics.”
No Allan. She’s removed a lunatic imposition by the previous government. How on earth can schools be expected to uphold/give effect to a political treaty? Upholding treaties is not a job for schools.
This is the reason National voted against Acts treaty bill .They wanted to take credit for fucking Maori over them selves and not allow Act a win .
How exactly does removing treaty clauses from school governance “fuck Maori over”?
People believe what they want to believe and the current government obviously don’t like any evidence that contradicts what they want to believe about the treaty so they have decided that the education system is the easiest way to get the next generation thinking like them.
We need to call for a national strike over this and so may other issues.