GRAHAM ADAMS: The collapse of Maori nationalism

As with unionism, overreach will end iwi power push.

One of former Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s most singular achievements during her tenure as premier was to push a majority of voters to the point of revulsion regarding race-based policy. Now the coalition government is orchestrating a swift counter-revolution, with the support of the disaffected constituency Ardern helped create. 

What alarms the Maori nationalists and their allies among our political and cultural elites, including the mainstream media, is that they know the backlash is not going to stop at unpicking laws and policy around co-governance, which Ardern stealthily instituted in everything from health and resource management to educational policy and local government. 

The reaction to the Labour government’s overreach could result in the seven Maori seats eventually being abolished (as the Royal Commission into the Electoral System recommended in 1986), the Treaty being neutralised as a vehicle for grievances, and a widespread indifference, if not hostility, to Maori culture and language among the general population. 

Such a scenario will seem improbable, if not fantastical, to many but we’ve been here before of course in New Zealand when what looked like an unassailable part of our political and social fabric collapsed surprisingly quickly. The fall of unionism in the early 90s would have seemed just as improbable 10 years earlier as dismantling the notion of New Zealand as a bi-cultural state would have when the radical He Puapua report came into public view in 2021.  

Unionists dominated the nation’s economic activity for decades, until suddenly they didn’t. The mouthy big beasts of the union movement became relics in a surprisingly short time after the Employment Contracts Act was introduced by Jim Bolger’s government in 1991. It removed much of the legislative backing for unions and, by deregulating the labour market, crippled the union movement. 

Like the cocksure Maori nationalists in Labour’s Cabinet throwing their weight around under the indulgent Jacinda Ardern (particularly in her second term from 2020), the union leaders badly overplayed their hand for years, securing influence and financial benefits through extensive strike action, or the threat of it. 

When I worked as a “seagull” on Auckland’s wharves in the late 70s, the union ran a system of “ups and downs”. That meant I worked a morning shift but had the afternoon off on full pay. It was clear to me then that society would not tolerate being held to ransom by the unions so outrageously for ever. The featherbedding in union-dominated industries was a tax on everyone who bought those enterprises’ products. And most products came into the country via our ports. 

Voters increasingly see the demands by iwi for compensation and control over a broad swathe of New Zealand life and business in the same way. Auckland’s Watercare being obliged, for example, to pay a $2m annual fee to Waikato-Tainui for 20 years for water taken from the Waikato River not far from where it enters the sea is widely viewed as unjustified indirect taxation extracted by what amounts in many people’s minds to a ransom — or perhaps standover — payment.   

OIA documents have revealed Manurewa Marae was paid “koha” of $10,000 by Statistics NZ last year for simply accepting a Census collection contract. A number of other Maori-centric organisations were also paid substantial amounts simply for their co-operation. 

Voters might object less, of course, if they had seen the billions of dollars that disappeared into “Maori initiatives” in the 2021/2022 budgets had lifted the living conditions, education and health statistics of some of our poorest citizens, but those improvements seem as far away as ever. 

So far, the government has fulfilled many of the promises its constituent parties made to the electorate before October 14, including repealing the Maori Health Authority and Three Waters. Although the repeals have been loudly opposed, including predictably by the Waitangi Tribunal, they have not caused the widespread disruption that was initially expected — mostly for the simple reason the coalition parties all campaigned on them, and they are reversible. A future Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori coalition could reinstate these examples of co-governance easily enough if they wanted. 

Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, however, is a different sort of threat altogether. It represents an existential challenge to the Treaty Project that has been running for the past 50 years under the aegis of the professional managerial class, with the complicity of the judiciary. As a result, barely a day goes by without another journalist, academic, translator or religious leader publicly denouncing Seymour and his bill — and, weirdly, Luxon too for not reneging on his coalition agreement and killing the bill before it gets anywhere near Parliament. 

Seymour has proposed a solution that should be unremarkable in a democracy but is seen as subversive and revolutionary — he wants voters to be given the chance to decide their own constitutional future. Such a proposal is a complete anathema to our ruling classes, who appear to believe that even allowing voters to discuss the matter of the Treaty’s place in New Zealand’s life is unacceptably risky. 

Unfortunately for them, Seymour has secured a full six-month public consultation for the select committee stage, which will give a cross-party group of MPs the chance to assess what will no doubt be an avalanche of written and oral submissions from the public.  

And this is not exactly Seymour’s first rodeo. He took on the might of the Catholic church and religious fundamentalists over assisted dying and by tirelessly prosecuting his case up and down the country persuaded nearly two-thirds of the population to support him in a referendum in 2020. 

He is backing himself to repeat the exercise, aiming to bring down big game in the Treaty debate while his coalition partners content themselves with shooting rabbits. 

Last August, he said — to the outrage of his opponents — that he thought “the debate will be fun”. The reason he thinks this is because he knows his pitch to voters’ sense of fairness is both extremely popular and unimpeachable. His assessment is that even if the Treaty is the nation’s founding document, it is no longer seen by many as relevant to the New Zealand of the 21st century. It is, in fact, the founding document for a bi-cultural New Zealand that no longer exists. As David Lange said in 2000: “The Treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts. It is a bald agreement, anchored in its time and place”. 

Seymour’s ultimate fallback argument is that no matter what the Treaty says, or what scholars declare its articles actually mean, New Zealand has no future as a modern and prosperous nation if detecting a smidgen of Maori ancestral blood can grant different political rights to that person. 

The panicked, almost hysterical reaction from our ruling classes to the prospect of a national debate — let alone a referendum — on the Treaty principles is a clear sign that Seymour understands the national mood, while his critics’ overblown response confirms they fear he is correct even as they deny it. 

And there is a delicious irony that opponents to his principles bill, who were always ready to ask solicitously when Ardern was Prime Minister, “What exactly scares you about co-governance?” are now being asked, “What scares you about a national debate or referendum on the Treaty principles?”  

The answer the Establishment and its supporters in the mainstream media don’t want to face is that the jig is up for Maori nationalism — just as it was for unionism more than 30 years ago. In both cases it is mostly because of gross overreach. 

Last week, the Māori Working Group on Aerospace declared itself “shocked” that the Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology, Judith Collins, hadn’t included consultation with iwi as part of its Aerospace and Advanced Aviation Strategy — as if a neolithic culture which never got around to inventing the wheel deserves a share of the benefits of space technology on account of an imagined “partnership” with the Crown. 

The group, set up “to advocate for Māori rights and interests in aerospace”, was appalled that, unlike in 2023 under the Labour government, the strategy “makes no reference whatsoever to Māori, the Crown’s partner under Te Tiriti o Waitangi” — thus losing the opportunity “to build and strengthen relationships with tangata whenua in the protection and appropriate use of aerospace resources”. 

The group wants the nation’s burgeoning aerospace industry to develop policy “centred on tikanga” to enable “ethical and responsible exploration, caring for our environment, and unlocking economic and social benefits”. 

Part of the justification for Maori involvement turns on the mystical notion that space is a “taonga” because it is the realm that Ranginui — the “sky god” — inhabits. The irony of religious dogma having been the biggest impediment to the work of astronomers like Galileo, who was declared a heretic for asserting that the Earth orbits the Sun, is apparently lost on the activists. 

The extent of race-based favouritism — including among councils and universities — is far more widespread than most guess. Last week, Act obtained a copy of AUT’s policy for funding researchers’ travel, which allocates 30 per cent more points to travel applications for researchers who identify as Māori, and 20 per cent more for Pasifika. 

As Act noted: “The AUT points system for travel funding prioritises applications based on a number of criteria, before an ‘equity multiplier’ of up to 1.3x is applied to advantage selected groups. This means that while a Māori-identifying researcher can earn up to 37.7 points, a researcher not eligible for an equity multiplier may only accumulate 29 points. In effect, an Asian academic seeking to attend a conference to which they are contributing a paper could lose funding to a Māori-identifying researcher who is merely visiting the conference, solely on the basis of race.” 

AUT management justifies such a discriminatory practice by reference to its adherence to te Tiriti. 

In Auckland, some developers end up paying iwi what is known as a “taniwha tax” on developments or alterations to a building or property if they fall within a large circle around a “culturally significant” site. And there are hundreds of such sites across Auckland affecting thousands of properties. 

These examples are just the tip of an iceberg and the extent of them will shock the public when they are more widely publicised, as they will be once Seymour’s bill is tabled in Parliament. 

Meanwhile, the Act party and its leader are already happily shooting fish in a barrel — and the six-month select committee stage has not yet begun. 

Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore. This article was first published at The Platform.