Maorification of Constitution begins as Sharples stacks advisory panel
This really stinks.
If you thought the Marine and Coastal Areas Act was a hijack of democracy, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming.
Next on the Maori-National government’s Maorification agenda is an all-out assault on the New Zealand Constitution itself.
Once they’ve had their way with that, New Zealand as we know it will be gone.
The Maorification of the Constitution began on Thursday with the naming of a wildly disproportionate Constitutional Advisory Panel.
In a country where 68% of the people are European and 15% are Maori, the committee is stacked 50-50.
A 50-50 split may be even. But it’s hardly fair.
The only New Zealand population it remotely resembles is our prison population.
Pakeha capture
What is the smiling tiger Pita-Peter Sharples up to? No doubt he’s planted a tame Pakeha or two in the panel to give him the crucial majority?
Well, looking down the list above, I see two interesting names.
First, Michael Cullen — my ’Wastemaster-General’ in the Taxathon TV ad of 2005.
This is the former finance minister who so loved his country that he quite deliberately booby-trapped the economy with a decade of deficits — just to make life harder for the incoming government.
And how does the not-so-Honourable Michael make his living these days?
Why, partly as Principal Treaty Claims Negotiator for Tuwharetoa.
(The tribe to which, as Treaty Negotiations Minister, he awarded over $100 million of your money in the 2008 ‘Treelords’ settlement.)
Doesn’t that smell a bit fishy to you?
If Cullen is not tame enough, one of the other Pakeha members is former National minister John Luxton.
The panel bio notes that Luxton has expertise in Crown-Maori relations, experience in co-management (as co-chair of the Waikato River Authority) and representing Maori interests.
But at least former ACT MP and investigative journalist Deborah Coddington ought to be a safe bet, right?
I don’t think so. See my UPDATE 3 below.
Hiding the agenda
The consitutional review is a condition of John Key’s uniquely unnecessary coalition appeasement (sorry, agreement) with the Maori Party.
You know it’s going to be bad when Anthony Hubbard of the Socialist Star-Times tries to snow you that the newly-named panel is “unlikely to be more than a Mad Hatter’s tea party of unanswerable riddles and pointless in-fighting”.
Yeah right.
The government’s main agenda is obvious: to elevate the bogus version of the Treaty of Waitangi to the status of official sacred cash cow for their Maori con artist mates to plunder at will.
But look how this lefty journo does his best to keep that news from you.
(Actually you can’t look unless you’ve got the actual paper. His column’s not online.)
First Mr Hubbard diverts your attention to the republican issue.
He pretends that the real reason the committee won’t be looking at ditching the monarchy is that John Key doesn’t want to.
The real reason, of course, is that the Maori Party doesn’t want to. Replacing the Queen could kill the golden Treaty goose. And we can’t have that.
Then he tries to make you believe that the big issues for the panel will be the size of parliament, and the length of the parliamentary term.
And then, and only then – in column six of his six-column column — does he casually gloss over the real hidden agenda:
Some of the other subjects for the committee — the Treaty, Crown-Maori relationships and Maori representation — are contentious in theory but in practice many people find them boring most of the time. New Zealand voters tend to fall asleep when the word “constitution” is mentioned.
Yawn, yawn, nothing to see here, move on.
Boring you to sleep
No doubt the Star-Times, Sharples and Obfuscator-General Finlayson will be pumping out lots of big, boring words to try and keep you comatose for the duration of this constitutional stitch-up.
But I plan to be doing the exact opposite — stripping their bloated word-carcasses of their fat, and distilling from the layers of putrid gobbledygook their true meaning and hitherto-hidden agenda.
You know where to come for the real truth.
Sharples apparently thinks his Constitutional Advisory Panel is a ‘good mix’.
Course he does. He’s shamelessly stacked it with a quarter more Maori and a quarter fewer Europeans than their populations warrant.
Ngai Tahu leader Sir Tipene O’Regan and legal scholar John Burrows will lead a government appointed panel which is to lead public discussion on constitutional issues including the status of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Panellists like Sir Tipene (who a friend used to know as Steve “before he became a Maori”. and who told a friend of a friend that he is Tipene “only in certain circles”) will undoubtedly try to lead the public.
And when he does, I hope by then the public will be savvy enough to push back.
80s Treaty tricks
I hope people like you will ask people like Sir Steve to show you proof that the Treaty is a ’partnership’ that contains ‘principles’.
Because they won’t be able to.
Unless they’re written in invisible ink, there’s nothing whatsoever in the Treaty about partnerships or principles.
Why not? Because they were conjured up in the 1980s out of thin air.
They were the figments of the activist imaginations of a judge, Robin Cooke, and a prime minister, Geoffrey Palmer (who later regretted it, and who some say resigned because of the damage he knew he’d cause).
Once Cooke and Palmer had cooked up this fake Treaty of Waitangi, it became much easier for guys like Tipene-Steve to extort money from you and me.
There is only one place this panel will try to lead you: away from the truth.
Do not go there.
The real deal
The truth is that the Treaty was a simple deal done mainly because the northern Maori had been begging the Brits for ten years to protect them from three very real threats:
- Vengeful Maori — tribes plotting utu for Ngapuhi’s musket massacres of the 1820s.
- Vengeful Froggies – French would-be colonisers bent on avenging the massacre of Marion du Fresne and his crew in 1772.
- Bad Brits — escaped convicts and other disreputables causing trouble in lawless Kororareka.
Without the Treaty, the tribal musketeer-slaver-cannibals would have slaughtered and eaten each other to extinction by 1860.
(I’m not making this up. Between 1825-40, Maori had already blasted, hacked, boiled and gnawed back their numbers from 120,000 to 50-60,000. That, Tariana Turia, was New Zealand’s true holocaust.)
The Treaty deal was that the British got the country, and the Maori got the same rights as the British.
That was pretty much it.
By any measure, it was an excellent deal for the times.
I’m working on a series of posts that will spell out, point by crystal clear point, what happened before and after the signing of the Treaty — and how various conmen have been distorting the truth ever since.
But back to this poisonous panel.
Who will speak for non-Maori?
At least Dr Sharples, unlike Hubbard, is honest enough to admit the panel’s main purpose:
“An important part of the review process will be consultation with Maori, particularly on the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitution,” Dr Sharples said.
The most important part, I’m sure he meant to say.
“The members of this are well placed to seek out and understand the perspectives of Maori on these important issues.”
Indeed the five Maori members and one Maori employee certainly are.
My question is: who will speak for the 85% of New Zealanders who are not Maori?
And will their views count?
The panel will also consider electoral issues including the size of parliament, the length of the parliamentary term, and number and size of electorates and the status of Maori seats
And with the panel overloaded with Maori, guess what they’ll find?
It will also consider whether New Zealand should have a written constitution and Bill of Rights issues.
Dr Sharples said a Royal Commission was considered to carry out the work, “but just selecting people of mana and a range and setting them up under their own authority and giving a lengthy period would have the same effect”
Course it would. Rigging your own panel is much cleverer than expecting a judge to do your bidding.
(Mind you, our judges are biased enough, as we know from Lord Cooke, and the bench that overturned 160 years of settled law with the Ngati Apa decision on the foreshore and seabed in 2003.)
“These guys don’t actually set the kaupapa, it still comes back to parliament. A Royal Commission usually comes up with some golden recommendations and if you don’t take them people question you.”
Well, we can’t have people questioning us for ignoring expert recommendations (like the 2025 Taskforce), can we?
But with Prime Appeaser John Key and Activist-General/Obfuscator-General/Appeaser-General (you choose) Chris Finlayson driving the Maorification agenda, don’t expect critical questions to be tolerated.
And if Finlayson’s arrogance over the Marine and Coastal Areas Act is any guide — not to mention chair Tau Henare’s rude put-downs of submitters to the Maori Affairs Select Committee – don’t expect straight answers.
UPDATES
UPDATE 1
One of my more abusive commenters has pointed out the difficulty of identifying by race, given that many of us are a mixture of two or more. Certainly, we know that all Maori are.
So here’s an idea: Since we’re such a multicultural lot, why don’t we drop this preoccupation with ethnicity, metaphorically rip off our skins and set up a colour-blind state — with one law, and one electoral roll, for us all.
Could work?
UPDATE 2
We now find that Sir Tipene/Steve O’Regan is being sued by the Financial Markets Authority for his role in the Hanover Finance collapse.
Is it OK for a man being sued by one government agency to preside over another government agency – especially one advising on matters at the very core of our national being?
No Prime Minister, it’s not OK.
UPDATE 3
I had puzzled at why the notoriously biased Sharples would include former ACT MP Deborah Coddington on his tame advisory panel.
Was it to give the appearance of balance? Or is Deborah really a wet in dry’s clothing?
(Or just a wet, full stop?)
This Herald article confirms that theory, where she happily parrots the views of tame Treaty industry historian Paul Moon:
“Yes, the English ripped off the Maori, too, when it came to getting them to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.
“Henry Williams deliberately mistranslated from Maori to English to protect his land holdings, and numerous other travesties were perpetrated.”
Then we have this ridiculously saccharine account of Deborah’s dinner with the Turias.
Note the priceless ending: “Leaving is like saying goodnight to kin, such is the warmth of Tariana and George Turia.”
And I’ve no doubt the Turias are very warm, hospitable and genuinely caring people, as are most Maori.
(And, for that matter, most humans.)
But Tariana is the leader of an openly racist political party. And Deborah is an investigative journalist.
Does this totally uncritical restaurant review suggest to you that Ms Coddington can be trusted to fairly represent your wishes?
