Waitangi 2024

There are Tectonic geopolitical forces grinding away at our Treaty and Sovereignty this year.

This Government is denigrating our Treaty, desecrating our Independent Foreign Policy and mutilating our Global standing – and they’re just getting started!

The looming privatisation agenda currently being drafted by the Rights corporate lobbyists will see mass deregulation of industry donors and ramming through legislation that will allow International Mining, Big Oil and Trans Nationals more access to our resources without the usual checks and balances…

Govt to free up foreign investment in ‘sensitive’ NZ land and assets

Ministerial scrutiny of whether overseas investments are in New Zealand’s national interest is to be significantly reduced in a move critics say risks eroding sovereignty but supporters believe will enrich New Zealand.

National and Act’s coalition agreement says the Government will amend the Overseas Investment Act 2005 to restrict ministerial decision-making to national security concerns only and make these decisions “much more timely”.

The act requires overseas investors to obtain consent from the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) before acquiring interests in significant business assets, sensitive land or fishing quota.

…this new hard right racist climate denying Government have already managed to suck us into the vortex of another American war while jetting off to Australia to privately seek Military Industrial Complex influence into our politics.

This new Government is selling NZ off faster than we can notice.

The Atlas Network

The ATLAS Network is the international Hard Right Think Tank that have links to ACT, Taxpayers’ Union and The NZ Initiative. They are providing the blueprint for free market far right tactics attacking. the Left and are funded by the petroleum Industry. George Monbiot explains what ATLAS Network is…

A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?

…demolishing public services, privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest AND restricting the right to strike?

THIS IS ALL POLICY THE NEW HARD RIGHT RACIST CLIMATE DENYING GOVERNMENT HAVE ADOPTED!

The Atlas Network have deep links with most of the NZ Right Wing Think tanks and defiantly with ACT…

…the more Kiwis learn about the Atlas Network, the more deep concerned they will become about who is actually generating social policy here and why.

This Waitangi Day

I believe co-governance is a strength, not a weakness!

In my entire 50 years of life, I as a Pakeha male have never once been penalised in any way shape or form by any measure to help Māori!

I don’t see co-governance as the faux apartheid some manufacture it as.

Calling He Puapua ‘a secret agenda’ is disingenuous to the words ‘agenda’, ‘secret’ and ‘a’.

The idea that a barely read wish list of indigenous hopes and aspirations that could live up to the promise of the Treaty would ever get fully implemented is Trump like in its delusion of imaginary white fears.

An upper house 50-50 split between Pakeha and Māori to decide Treaty Legislation has been an idea I’ve been arguing for years now!

For a majority MMP Labour Government that could barely build houses to suddenly transform into a super hero for Indigenous rights who manages to overnight re-write the entire constitutional framework of NZ by stealth is so farcical in its possible threat delivery that you may as well imagine a child with a water pistol up against a laser guided Jet fighter.

He Puapua was a wish list of hopes and aspirations, it was not a secret blueprint for the takeover of a country by radical Māori and attempting to frame it as such is bordering on QAnon conspiracy fantasy.

Likewise with 3 Waters and the claim it’s Māori stealing da water.

We wouldn’t be having discussion over who owns the water of John Key hadn’t sold our hydro assets!

Remember how the ruling in that case shaped this issue?

The Court said Māori did have an interest in water and it was up to the Crown to negotiate that.

Labour used the co-governance model built by National and ACT to deliver on that legal obligation!

Māori are a break peddle on neoliberalism and their views can ensure privatisation and foreign ownership stops!

The Treaty of Waitangi, and a Māori worldview are taking a greater role in shaping how we interact with the world

For decades, the Treaty of Waitangi has formed a part of New Zealand’s approach to trade. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta is kicking it up a notch. National Correspondent Lucy Craymer explains.

When the epochal Uruguay Round of global trade talks was happening almost four decades ago, New Zealand’s chief negotiator had a premonition.

Tim Groser reckoned the global trade arrangements being formed might – in ways he could not anticipate – come into conflict with the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1986, with a Labour Government led by David Lange in office, and vast economic and social reforms sweeping change across the nation at a breakneck speed, the modern significance of Te Tiriti was only starting to come into view.

We could see a potential political problem arising whereby people would want to do things that we couldn’t quite foresee, in respect to the treaty,” Groser says. “We needed to avoid trade agreements getting in the way of that.”

The negotiation brought about the biggest reform to global trade ever and led to the creation of the World Trade Organisation. A clause was included allowing New Zealand to meet its treaty obligations, even if this meant breaching the global agreement.

Groser says it went through with no controversy and little publicity, even in New Zealand.

“I don’t think a single country raised a question let alone an objection. It’s not surprising. Why would they? Countries have bigger fish to fry,” he says.

A version of this clause, which allows the government to deliver on Te Tiriti ahead of its free trade obligations, has been included in every agreement since.

Most Pakeha don’t know that the Treaty is our out clause in free trade deals!

We can side track the exploitation from global corporations by using the Treaty!

For me, I love the Treaty because of the relationship of responsibility it immediately sets up between the Crown and its people.

I believe Pakeha have to actually understand that the Treaty applies directly to them as well because it explains the relationship between the state and its citizens!

The Treaty sets out the obligations of the Crown to protect the rights of its people. We deserve as a nation to entrench the Treaty as the basis of our constitutional relationship so we can force Governments to protect our rights rather than strip us of them.

Treaty’s are to be honoured, not settled!

Pakeha want to gloss over the theft and confiscation of indigenous lands because it’s a shameful denial of the promise of a Treaty between two peoples and when you consider the paltry compensation that has been paid back to Maori via the Waitangi Tribunal, it’s a mere $1.4 Billion.

$1.4 Billion for confiscating the majority of NZ??? What is most egregious is that some Pakeha have the audacity to claim that pathetic reparation is a ‘gravy train’.

One of the problems with NZ politics is that we have a unicameral Parliament, that means we just have one chamber with no upper house. This means NZs Parliament is one of the most powerful Parliaments in the world. It allows for legislation to be read straight into law and is one of the reasons why the neoliberal revolution was so ruthless and impossible to reverse.

I think one solution to the Waitangi Tribunal ruling is to consider a NZ Parliament Upper House that has 50-50 representation between Maori and Pakeha. If Sovereignty was never signed away, then the Government of today has a responsibility beyond paltry compensation for past injustices , it must provide real power sharing solutions on Treaty issues.

Having a 50-50 Upper House with the power to delay legislation that was not in the best interests of the Nation when it comes to Treaty issues would stop Government’s from fire sales of national assets and prevent things like the Foreshore and Seabed legislation from becoming law.

An Upper House would be seen as a guardian of the Treaty for the maintenance of public well being over private gain, it would show real power sharing and for Pakeha, it would represent a political body that protects their public interests as much as Māori interests.

Now do I for one second believe we can have an actual debate on these very important topics?

No. Fucking. Way!

Those who secretly burn crosses will have a field day under the fake veneer of ‘debate’.

This is going to be a cluster fuck of madness that Seymour will not be able to contain once he releases it.

There is a dark part of the NuZilind mindset that is Cracker at his worst and this debate isn’t being held in good faith, it’s being held because the worst angels of our nature were stirred during this election and vomited out at the other with force and toxicity.

Social media timelines are about to get KKK level gross.

The only hope we have is to actually step up and debate the issue in good faith because co-governance IS a unique strength that can build us, but we need the skills to debate without cancelling which will play into the hands of extremists.

Pakeha need to appreciate and embrace the Treaty as our birthright to be here and acknowledge that it demands obligations from the State that protects our rights and self sovereignty.

The whole concept of self sovereignty as agency is the very definition of liberal progressive democratic values.

The problem is we are having this debate not in good faith, but to satisfy the race baiting thirst of the most fringe elements of NZ Society.

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.

If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.