OPINION: Dr Muriel Newman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The recent appointment of ten<\/em> unelected iwi representatives with full voting rights onto a Council Committee of just six<\/em> elected Councillors is a stark illustration that the tribal takeover of Local Government in New Zealand is now well underway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0But before we examine a prominent King\u2019s Counsel\u2019s findings that this development is unlawful, we should first ask a more fundamental question: how on earth has it come to this in a supposedly democratic country?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n To answer that question, we need to revisit the egregious betrayal of voters by Jacinda Ardern\u2019s Labour Party after the 2020 election, when they campaigned on one set of promises only to deliver something entirely different once elected to office as a majority government.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the behest of their powerful 15-strong Maori caucus, Labour unleashed an effective tribal takeover of New Zealand – without any mandate whatsoever from voters.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The blueprint for their betrayal had, of course, been mapped out a year earlier under the guise of a plan to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples<\/em>. However, the He Puapua<\/em>\u00a0strategy<\/u><\/a>\u00a0to replace democracy with tribal rule by 2040, was deemed to be so radical that it was kept secret from their New Zealand First Coalition partner – and from the public – until the 2020 election delivered the Party the opportunity to implement it without scrutiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mainstream media was even silenced, through the announcement of a new $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund<\/em>\u00a0that required recipients to promote<\/em>\u00a0the \u201cTe Tiriti<\/em>\u00a0partnership<\/em>\u201d fabrication \u2013 which was the central tenet of He Puapua<\/em>\u00a0– as a condition of their funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naturally, the cash-strapped, largely left-leaning media sector welcomed the handouts and were only too willing to facilitate Labour\u2019s wishes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n To embed the \u201cTe Tiriti<\/em>\u201d agenda within the state sector, Labour turbo-charged the Office of Maori-Crown Relations – which had been set up in 2019 as an agency co-managed by tribal leaders – giving iwi power brokers access to the entire State sector. Over 200 staff were deployed to undertake a mass \u201cre-education\u201d campaign, forcing Government agencies to adopt \u201cTe Tiriti<\/em>\u201d, and compelling employees to sing waiata, call New Zealand \u201cAotearoa\u201d, and speak the Maori language.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A key objective was to embed the partnership<\/em>\u00a0agenda within State sector decision-making bodies, since that gave unelected and unaccountable tribal representatives the balance of power through the right of veto in all \u201cco-governance\u201d arrangements.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was through this mechanism that Labour orchestrated an effective tribal takeover of our country.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the demands of iwi leaders escalated, major public sector reforms were undertaken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without warning – and in the middle of the pandemic – the country\u2019s District Health Boards were disestablished and replaced by a centralised system co-governed by Maori, with race<\/em>\u00a0prioritised ahead of clinical need<\/em>\u00a0as a deciding factor in patient care.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maori control of the country\u2019s freshwater was orchestrated through Three Waters<\/em>, which centralised community water infrastructure and assets to enable co-governance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the long-standing democratic right of communities to reject council decisions to establish Maori wards without public consultation was abolished to enable the tribal takeover of Local Government.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Private sector agencies were also targeted through new laws that required regulatory bodies to impose Te Tiriti partnership<\/em>\u00a0requirements onto real estate agents, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, charities – and even re-registering societies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the 2023 election approached, the public became increasingly alarmed by these developments, but were reassured by pledges from National, ACT and New Zealand First, that if elected, the tribal influence would be removed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coalition Agreements promised the Maori Health Authority and Three Waters would be abolished, local government petition rights would be restored, Treaty principles would be removed from legislation, He Puapua<\/em>\u00a0would be stopped<\/em>, no race-based laws would be enacted, and equal rights would be restored.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the new Government underestimated just how deeply public officials had been captured. Many of the nearly 20,000 extra bureaucrats hired under Labour were committed He Puapua<\/em>\u00a0advocates who are now pro-actively sabotaging the Coalition\u2019s attempts to dismantle it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n While some flagship projects were axed, the ideological machinery remains firmly embedded in the State sector, which explains why so many Coalition Bills – even those supposedly designed to reject race-based provisions and restore equal rights – still end up prioritising tribal influence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The much\u2011vaunted Fast\u2011track Approvals<\/em>\u00a0legislation is a glaring example. Despite all the tough talk, it still mandates that local Maori are notified of projects, and that \u2018expert panels\u2019 include a member \u2018qualified in a Maori worldview\u2019 – which in practice means someone sympathetic to iwi demands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has now resulted in a five-month delay for the Santana Minerals application for a gold mine on the West Coast – and an alleged demand<\/u><\/a>\u00a0from iwi for a $180 million payoff.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, instead of the new legislation treating iwi the same as everyone else \u2013 the race-based privileges included in the law are now creating the same problems of delays and blackmail that crippled the Resource Management Act<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the same story with the Marine and Coastal Area Act<\/em>\u00a0amendments that were introduced by the Coalition last year. Instead of removing \u201ctikanga\u201d or Maori custom from the legislation – since that was the reason the law went off the rails in the first place – it was retained. The predictable result<\/u><\/a>\u00a0is that the Coalition\u2019s reforms are on track to make no material difference at all to case outcomes, leaving New Zealand\u2019s coastline still likely to fall into tribal hands.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, if future claims follow the same pattern as the first case heard under the new law, the only<\/em>\u00a0option to save<\/em>\u00a0the coast is if ACT and New Zealand First pledge to repeal<\/em>\u00a0the Marine and Coastal Area Act<\/em>\u00a0and restore Crown ownership of the coastline – in the national interest – by reinstating the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The RMA reforms are following the same disastrous path. Instead of terminating all<\/em>\u00a0Treaty-related agreements with iwi that councils have entered into over the years, the Planning<\/em>\u00a0and the Natural Environment <\/em>Bills intend carrying them through into the new legislation. This means favoured iwi will still be able to demand cultural assessment reports – at the applicants\u2019 expense – and hold out their hand for \u201ccompensation\u201d to sooth their cultural needs, like $180 million from a mining company.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And with the draft legislation signalling all existing<\/em>\u00a0iwi agreements with councils will be carried forward, there\u2019s now a rush of new arrangements being established up and down the country, ahead of the law change, as iwi engineer themselves a privileged status in Local Government decision-making into the future \u2013 not to mention the gravy-train of lucrative financial rewards that brings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this is in spite of the 2025 High Court ruling<\/u><\/a>\u00a0in Hart v Marlborough District Council confirming that local councils are not<\/em>\u00a0part of the Crown and therefore have no<\/em>\u00a0Treaty obligations beyond what Parliament explicitly legislates.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, these far-reaching \u201cpartnership\u201d agreements between iwi and activist councils are not<\/em>\u00a0required by law. Yet because the Coalition has failed to make this explicit, many local authorities – including activist councils like Whangarei, where voters deliberately removed Maori seats – are now about to \u201cembed<\/u><\/a>\u201d Te Tiriti partnership<\/em>\u00a0obligations across their entire operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As mentioned earlier, the latest egregious power grab involves the Far North District Council\u2019s decision to appoint 10 iwi representatives with voting rights onto its Te Kuaka Committee for Maori Strategic Relationships<\/em>, which had just six elected council members.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n While appointing a majority of iwi representatives to over-ride decision-making by a minority of elected councillors, would appear to be undemocratic, it is, however, permitted under the law: Clause 31 (1) of Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act<\/em>\u00a0states \u201cmembers of a committee or sub-committee may, but not need be<\/em>, elected members of the local authority\u201d and 32(1) enables the granting of voting rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n