Category: Maori Issues
Our finally completed election results need to be viewed on several levels. On the surface, the change of government was caused because Jacinda Ardern’s and Chris Hipkins’ Labour ministries were weak in personnel and unable to extract even respectable performance from the current feeble bureaucracy when dealing with bread and butter issues.
Labour’s decimation in the polls represents a rejection of woke. New Zealanders do not want to be divided by race, nor by any other categorisation, and nor do they want to be threatened by exaggerated climate predictions to justify authoritarian control.
Almost accidentally, Labour discovered what it would take to make the working-class stop voting for it. Making those citizens feel as though they had, somehow, to justify their right to participate in shaping their nation’s future: that was the crucial catalyst for electoral defection.
A Court of Appeal decision was released last week that will have a profound influence on the future of New Zealand. Poor drafting and a radical application of ‘tikanga’ by the judiciary has delivered the exact opposite outcome from what the public was promised.
The way to hell is paved with good intentions and that is proving to be never more true than the legal circus which surrounds the interpretation of the Marine and Coastal area Act 2011.
What New Zealanders now need to consider is that even though the most destructive government in our history has been defeated, they have left democracy in a parlous state. It has been undermined by the co-governance agenda driven by a radical cabal of Labour’s Maori MPs, led by members representing the Maori seats.
The 2020 Labour Government must rate as be New Zealand’s worst ever government; not only for its litany of failures, but for its arrogance and disrespect towards democracy. Fortunately, democracy prevailed and has yet again sent a message that power is in the hands of the electors not the elected.
Since He Puapua transfers democratic rights and public resources to the tribal elite, it represents major constitutional change. But with Labour securing no public mandate for He Puapua, all policy enactments are illegitimate and should be scrapped. That includes the Maori Health Authority, Three Waters, and all commitments to co-governance.
The battle lines are drawn. On one side is a small but powerful tribal elite claiming racial privilege is necessary to improve Maori disparity, and anyone who disagrees is racist. On the other side is the majority of the population who say everyone should be treated equally, that race does not cause inequality, and calls for racial privilege is racist.
No other government in New Zealand’s history has treated voters with the level of arrogance and contempt shown by the Jacinda Ardern–Chris Hipkins 2020 Labour Government. It will take a herculean effort from a new government to repair the damage and heal the divisions.