Why Taxpayers’ Union hate Māori so much
Why does the Taxpayers’ Union keep finding itself on the same side of every anti-Māori fight in New Zealand? From Treaty debates to education reform, a pattern is emerging — and it’s not accidental.
Brilliant expose on just how much the Taxpayer’s Union consistently positions itself against Māori interests…
Is Taxpayers’ Union waging a war on Māori?
Let’s focus on the office of the Taxpayers’ Union in Tamaki Makaurau. This office appears to operate as a tight network — a small group working across multiple brands that gives the impression of something much larger.
Under these logos, one group will start a petition, or maybe tweet something, then someone retweets that tweet, and before long – a newspaper is reporting it as news, and in too many cases, the law is being changed. This is what happened with the Treaty obligations in schools. It started as a petition, next minute, the law is changing.
A small network with a very loud voice
Remember – we’re only talking about maybe ten people working under a bunch of logos:
Taxpayers’ Union. Free Speech Union. Hobson’s Pledge. The Campaign Company. NZ First. ACT. The Platform. Reality Check Radio. New Zealand Initiative. Shubz. Destiny. Corina Shields.
The Taxpayers’ Union’s network is everywhere, and if you look into their social media, it seems like one person does the graphics and nek minute 5 groups are posting the same message.
Not all of these logos are based at the TPU office, but online, it all seems very coordinated as they speak with one voice. It’s a small and tight network.
Te Ata Tino Toa
So what’s the agenda behind it?
…right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups like the Atlas Network and Taxpayers’ Union promote free-market policies (like deregulation and individual property rights) that often conflict with indigenous collective land rights.
These exploitation interests collude with indigenous rights because indigenous communities have the cultural memory of the first wave of capitalist exploitation via colonisation, so strangling off indigenous identity (as is being seen in the Education Curriculum) or direct attacks on indigenous rights like ACT’s Treaty Principles Referendum.
The job of Taxpayers’ Union is to appeal to existing biases within their support base and pretending their criticism is genuine attacks on overspending.
New Zealand is a country, not a balance sheet — and treating it like one erases the people who were here first.
Taking a free market view to a country is a political attempt to silence criticism and force a free market narrative.
Taxpayers’ Union are free market mercenary shock-troops who race bait to arouse their culture-war audience.
The Taxpayers’ Union’s job is make the redneck feel less racist by gift wrapping the criticism as some sort of Taxpayer concern when they have none of that legitimacy.
It’s a fake Union for Taxkeepers.
Their stable of clients are a tight knit network of right-wing hate trolls and Social Sinfluencers who magnify each others voices and disinformation the way Fox News does.
It’s sophisticated, it’s malicious and it’s self-serving.
They are the interests of the wealthy playing to the petty racism of their reactionary base.
