The Treaty Principles Referendum Bill is a lie built upon a false premise – Majoritarianism is not Democracy!
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
This garbage is what ACT are dangling in front of Kiwis and are pretending is a stand for democracy when it’s the total opposite of democracy.
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, but before I get to that, allow me to shit kick some of the dumb arsed Hate Troll talking points.
1 – While we on the Left lost the election, that doesn’t mean we can’t criticise and critique the stupid reactionary and counter productive policy this hard right racist climate denying Government have embarked upon! This is a liberal progressive society, we have every right to challenge and protest the cruelty of this new regime and trying to shout us down because your side won is a tactic to avoid focusing on the extremism of this Government brought about by Luxon’s remarkable weakness. So no, just because you ‘won’ doesn’t mean you get to implement counter productive policy without us criticising the hell out of it!
2 – Attempting to claim ‘we are merely implementing democracy’ misunderstands democracy, and don’t ‘one person, one vote me’, it’s actually ‘one person, two votes’ under MMP, which highlights the argument about value while pointing out you right wing trolls have no idea what you are talking about..
3 – This whole argument that “we the people didn’t have a say in Lord Cooke’s 1987 ruling” utterly misunderstands the nature of our democracy and is the intellectual equivalent of being a book burner! We have a representative democracy, not a participatory democracy. We elect people and pay them well and resource them with the best advice to make the best decisions, if you don’t like them you kick them out of office once every 3 years. Demanding a say in issues requiring deep wisdom, experience and technical skill is like letting children design airplanes FFS! You are all honestly smarter than Lord fucking Cooke are you? The arrogance of so many of you is just jaw dropping in its level of self delusion! I want a fucking expert making decisions as important as this, not slack jawed yokels who are frightened every time there’s an eclipse that the moon dragon is eating the Sun God. In fields that demand intelligence, why the Christ would you ask morons for their fucking opinion? It’s like getting them in to have a say over brain surgery FFS! Why would you listen to a fucking redneck on advice for brain surgery, or rocket science, or building bridge or building a legislative constructional framework that allows indigenous people to access promises made by a Treaty the conquering culture never wants to acknowledge?
I mean, who are you people to have such misplaced faith in your own petty bigotry?
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.
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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has to decide whether to invest significant taxpayer money into upgrading Premier House – the Wellington house designated for PMs to live in. Until then, he’s choosing to live in his own apartment, for which he can charge taxpayers up to $52k in accommodation grants – see Thomas Manch’s Luxon yet to move into Premier House as he considers ‘significant’ renovations (paywalled)
10) For a useful insight into how the National-led Government will be thinking about how it cuts and reforms spending in the public sector, it’s worth reading former
Normal attitude from the “deserving”. Any criticism is purely Tall Poppy syndrome moaning, something Christopher simply abhors.
The only right that wealth and status has to offer is solving the problems of the underclass.
Referendum on majoritarianism!
First, need to clarify what does this future with treaty at the centre looks like. What will next 50 years look like. Will we still be making treaty settlements, separate legal system, separate privileges for maori in 50 years? Or will we all be one?
Until NZ understand and mostly agree what the govt is trying to achieve, this country will be divided. Labour tried to implement ha Papua in stealth. People do not forgive govts implementing policies through the backdoor.
Maori have taken the bait of the treaty principles referendum
U rightly mention that the Tpr is a Trojan horse for immigration and a foreign student quota and free education the anthem of flying nun.
Perhaps the whole idea of referendum especially binding one’s needs to be revisited. I would scrap them altogether. The one on Marijuana was an example of outside interests pouring money into our country to influence social policy. Referendum to change existing legal policy should require at least a super majority (75%) or an actual majority of the population as a whole not just a majority of votes.
I don’t think the Act Party referendum addresses the real issue.
We first need to decide as a nation whether Maori ceded sovereignty when they signed the Treaty or not.
If yes then lets have Seymours referendum.
If no then Maori have every right to separate Health, Education,Justice and Parliamentary systems.
Would that include those services are only paid for by a separate Maori taxation regime?
I suppose Maori would pay for it if that is what they choose.
My biggest concern would be a separate Justice system which would do away with the “one law for all” principle we have now.
No Gerrit, all the stolen land given back and rented out to the receivers of stolen property at fair market rates. That would bet a good starting point.
Yep, good luck with that proposal. Once the various tribes had sorted out what land belong to what tribe (set the boundaries), how much was stolen and how much was sold and who will recompenses for the improved value of all land that will be nationalised back to tribal entities.
I just dont see a vote going for nationalisation of land back to Maori owners.
The tribal boundaries will be interesting for at one stage Ngapuhi raided from the East Coast to Taranaki. Is that the Ngapuhi boundaries.
Seeing that it took over 100 years for Ngati Porou to reconcile to Ngapuhi wrongs, it could well be another 100 years for accurate tribal boundaries to be set.
Worth a read;
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-MacHist-t1-body-d9.html
“So terrible were the raids that over a century passed before Ngati-Porou agreed to allow bygones to be bygones and accepted representatives of Ngapuhi as honoured guests. “
“1. All citizens of New Zealand have the same political rights and duties”
New Zealand does not have a constitution to define those rights and duties, so what are we talking about here? The Governor-General, Members of Parliament and members of the Police Force, judiciary and state servants all have their own set of rights and duties. If this bill is enacted into law (unlikely) and fully implemented (extremely unlikely) a whole lot of options will open up for you, me and my iwi, so be careful what you wish for David. This bill would not just make bad law, it would make extremely silly law. No, if you want to define the rights of the citizens you have to define those in a proper constitution or bill of rights.
“2. All political authority comes from the people by democratic means including universal suffrage, regular and free elections with a secret ballot.”
It is untrue to say that all political authority comes from the people in the Realm of New Zealand. Constitutionally all political authority comes from the monarch who is sovereign, and it is only by convention that the monarch follows the will of the parliament which is elected by the people. By all means give the people political authority, by all means take it away from the Crown and parliament, but to do that you will need to write an entirely new constitution. In short you would need to effect a revolution.
What does universal suffrage mean? Votes for kids? Votes for prisoners of the state? What are regular elections? Every 3 years? 4 years? 10 or 20 years? At what point do “regular elections” become the cover for a dictatorship of the politicians? Who wants to give the politicians irrevocable power of attorney over our lives for even a single year? Why would we want to be saddled with the abominable secret ballot which is wide open to fraud and false allegations of fraud?
“3. New Zealand is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy where discrimination based on ethnicity is illegal”
Does not New Zealand have a hereditary Head of State whose position is based entirely on his whakapapa? How can it call itself a “liberal democracy”? Will this bill if enacted signal the end of the colonial monarchist state? What is a “multi-ethnic democracy”? Something like Singapore or Fiji? Is that even relevant? The purpose of law is not to say how things are. That is the role of journalists, politicians, sociologists and political scientists among others. The purpose of law is to set in place structures, restrictions and obligations, hopefully with the aim of creating a better more stable society. ACT’s bill does none of that. It is just ACT’s distasteful political joke at the expense of the New Zealand public.
And of course, none of this has anything to do with the Treaty of Waitangi.
Exactly, ‘It’s just ACT’s distasteful political joke at the expense of the New Zealand public’.
‘And of course, none of this has anything to do with the Treaty of Waitangi’.
The Treaty of Waitangi is an impediment to ACT being able to implement it’s equally distasteful agenda on behalf of it’s very generous donors. Therefore they claim, that impediment must be removed.
If ACT wants it removed or modified, it is vital for all of us, the New Zealand public, that it stays, absolutely as it is, warts and all.
This Treaty Principles discussion is abhorant and evil, I find it particularly distasteful especially with the progress this country has made in the past 30-40 years to heal Race Relations.
I totally agree with you Joy. ACTs call for rewriting the Treaty has nothing to do with equality for all, it’s all about appeasing their donors. Anyone who thinks ACTs donors care about the average Kiwi has had their eyes and ears closed since Roger Douglas (ACTs Trojan horse) highjacked Labour.
How interesting then that ACT hasn’t called to rewrite the treaty.
Disinformation reigns for the left.
Pssst…we all see it, look at the polls.
You are arguing semantics – the proposed Bill will remove any Indigenous rights enshrined in the Treaty, and threrefore, in real terms, disadvantage Maori. If that is not its intention why is it being done?
The word ‘equality’, will be mentioned a lot and it sounds very laudable. It will lull a lot of people into thinking a robust debate is a good idea.
But it disguises the real reason for the debate, which isn’t about ensuring equality. The opposite, in fact. It’s about greed, pure and simple, and doing NZders out of our birthright.
Anything that stands in the way of a few individuals, not necessarily NZders, gaining access to our assets without us being able to stop them, will be in danger.
Yes, the degree of racism being exposed is shameful. The progress we think we’ve made in the last few decades appears to be a very thin veneer if it can be so easily dislodged by a party with very little support. People are gullible.
I repeat – Lord Cooke did not say the Treaty CREATED a “partnership” only that the responsibilities of the signatories to each other, ie. the Crown and the Maori chiefs, was “akin to a partnership”.
The relationship matters. A signatory willing to actually fight to keep their win is completely different in real life. There’s going to be constant fighting and renegotiation because of that.
“We have a representative democracy, not a participatory democracy.”
Yup. And the people now representing us, based on the last election (which, as you note, the Left lost), are fulfilling their promises. Polling tends to suggest that a majority of the population favor this referendum.
Better luck next election…
And the jokes keep coming.
Which surely can’t be far off.
Polling? A majority? Not sure what you mean here. The election resulted in a coalition government, a a majority in legislative terms, but created by negotiation of the promises made by respective coalition partners. A democratic majority is an illusion.
This whole Bill is pointless.
Sadly millsy it is already achieving ACTs desired results. We are finding out the level of racism that exists in this country and ACT have tapped into it.
I have to say Martyn you are right about some people having no business opining on massive issues that they have no f’ing clue about. Actually opine all you like but don’t let them vote about it. I certainly put myself in the category of leaning on experts but I am smart enough to know Dave Seymour isn’t an expert and most MPs have no more clue than most. Why do you think they form all these working groups ( the coalition is doing the same as the last lot).
We have seen so many lies from the coalition lately ( yes we saw them from Labour) yet we have some ‘normal’ kiwis defending those lies through some sort of tribal allegiance. It is every bit as dangerous as being ridiculously “woke”. If Labour had said let’s ( Benson and) hedge cigarettes against inflation and bullshit about a black market those same people would be outraged. If they are National voters they didn’t even vote for a lot of this shit but they now defend it because they have hitched themselves to some psychotic partners. Shane Reti must hate himself. He looks like Colin Powell telling you the ice cream truck is really a chemical weapons factory.
It is essential for ACTs donor’s game plan that they get this bill enacted before NZ history is covered in school. My education in this area was sadly lacking (i’m 70+). It was based on the warped colonial version of events, written to justify their actions, void of historical facts and archaeological evidence.
Well, it has yet to be explained to me how our elected representatives get away with having conspired to steal public assets and cripple our state.
You imagine that the Treaty establishes “an enduring relationship of a fiduciary nature”, fine.
Does our government not already have an enduring fiduciary duty to all our citizens? I know that nothing that they’ve done since Roger Douglas would support that contention. But they have duties, and those duties are unquestionably to all our citizens, nor are those duties extinguished by their dereliction.
Ngungukai, it is depressing to watch that progress being put at extreme risk by National’s need to have a coalition deal. For Luxon to have included something in a deal that he knew would be “devisive and unhelpful” is reprehensible.
Yes. Repugnant way to behave.
Let Maori do what Maori have always done.
We dont need a son of England telling us what to do
If “majoritarianism is not democracy” (a claim I do not dispute) then can Martyn tell us what a non-majoritarian form of democracy would look like?
Geoff, for me it would see Parliament, and not Cabinet and coalition deals, have control.
Yes, devolution of power is a way to ameliorate the effects of majoritarianism. But more fundamentally you could do away with the principle that all power goes to the person or party or parties who secure a majority of the vote, which is of course the basic principle of majoritarianism. That means you would have abandon the concept of “winning” or “losing” an election. (Epitomised by Michael Cullen’s infamous remark “We won. You lost. Eat that”.) That in turn means that a citizen’s vote would never be “given” to a candidate, but instead revocably assigned to a chosen representative for an indefinite period. So to actually abolish majoritarianism, which sits at the heart of the Westminster system, you would need to effect nothing less than a political revolution.