“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” That of course was infamously said by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda in Hitler’s Third Reich.
He understood the power of indoctrination – that convincing the public depended on being able to repeat blatant lies often enough. As a result, all forms of communication – newspapers, magazines, books, art, music, movies, radio – became part of the Nazi propaganda machine.
Schools played a key role – teachers were “re-educated”, history was re-written, and impressionable children were indoctrinated to become loyal patriots.
While these abhorrent developments occurred almost 90 years ago on the other side of the world, it is concerning to see these same techniques being used in New Zealand today.
The ‘big lie’ that is being perpetrated against New Zealand democracy is that ‘Maori are in partnership with the Crown’. The ambitious tribal elite driving this dangerous agenda are demanding supreme rights – the power to co-govern New Zealand.
Astonishingly, instead of ridiculing their greed and rejecting this ludicrous attack on our democracy, Jacinda Ardern’s Government is perpetuating the lie. As a result, activists are now gaining access to public resources and authority they would once have believed impossible.
Where claims of a Treaty partnership were once infrequent, they are now being repeated with such frequency – including in our schools – that New Zealanders are being brainwashed into acceptance.
‘If you control the language you control the mind’ was an important theme explored by British writer George Orwell in his iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
As US analyst Jem Berkes explains, “Demonstrating the repeated abuse of language by the government and by the media in his novel, Orwell shows how language can be used politically to deceive and manipulate people, leading to a society in which the people unquestioningly obey their government and mindlessly accept all propaganda as reality…
“Orwell’s novel paints a nightmarish picture of a totalitarian system gone to the absolute extreme, but it is a novel that is fundamentally about psychological control of the public… psychological tactics (manipulation of people through language) can be continuously applied to the general public without raising great public opposition or fear — and that is where its strength lies.”
Without a doubt, language is now being used in New Zealand as an instrument of political control to shape reality, conceal the truth, and manipulate history. It’s why language is at the heart of the plan for Maori supremacy – as then Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox explained in a 2017 interview in the Listener:
“New Zealand would gradually move to its own unique form of governance, one that would abandon the Westminster model in favour of Maori customs, principles and values… It would take 36 years – 12 election cycles – for a Maori sovereignty party to share government…
“The critical step in shifting New Zealand thinking is to make the Maori language a core subject in the country’s schools… people look at things differently once they’ve acquired te reo. The Maori world view is different and that’s expressed in the language. The language unlocks our history and our thinking.”
While Labour intends making the Maori language compulsory in schools, the current shortage of Maori Language teachers has led those driving this separatist agenda to adopt the strategy of saturating the public with the Maori language. This not only includes calling New Zealand “Aotearoa”, but changing English place names to Maori, referring to the Maori names for government agencies, and using more and more Maori language in everything written and spoken.
A former Otago Daily Times columnist Dave Witherow outlined the process: “Radio New Zealand – the New Zealand equivalent of the BBC – is supposed to be free of political meddling. Yet now it has been hijacked, and its hapless staff obliged to dispense their daily dose of te reo. There were just a few words to begin with. Then longer sentences which have kept on growing until the keener young grovellers now begin and end their spiels with expansive swatches of a lingo understood by only a minuscule proportion of their audience…
“The new rules at RNZ were imposed without notice or public discussion, and they show, yet again, that no aspect of New Zealand life or culture is immune from the separatist commissars and their spineless friends in government.”
By exposing the truth, Dave created huge controversy. But over the intervening three years, the separatists have become emboldened – especially those demanding special rights and powers for the Crown’s Treaty of Waitangi ‘partner’.
Yet, as this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, former Judge and law lecturer Anthony Willy explains, there is no legal foundation for such Treaty partnership claims.
He firstly clarifies that the Treaty of Waitangi is a simple contract which has no standing in law:
“It is not a ‘Treaty’ which was then, or now recognised at International law. The law relating to treaties is clear. They can only result from undertakings made between sovereign powers. Whatever misconceptions the Colonial Office in London may have temporarily entertained about the governance of these far away Isles in the 1830s it is clear beyond doubt that there was no Sovereign recognised by its inhabitants and no settled form of governance in the nature of a nation state. Furthermore the document has not been enshrined in New Zealand statute law. If the document is not a Treaty recognisable at law then it can only be in the nature of a contract entered into by the signatories, and like all contracts it was and is to be observed in good faith.”
Secondly, he points out that it is impossible for a partnership to exist between the Crown – our sovereign – and her subjects:
“It was and is constitutionally impossible for the Crown to enter into a partnership with her subjects. She can as she did in 1840 make promises to them but by definition, the Crown is supreme, and the people are subject to her laws.”
And thirdly, Anthony explains that since the use of the word ‘partnership’ in the 1987 Maori Council Court of Appeal case, which activists claim as the ‘evidence’ of the existence of their ‘partnership’ with the Crown, was part of the commentary of the judgement, not the decision, the concept has no standing in law:
“The only judgment in that 1986 Maori Council case which refers to the Treaty giving rise to a partnership between the Maori signatories and the British Crown is that of Justice Cooke. The Judge said, ‘The Treaty signified a partnership between races’… His Honour was quite entitled to hold these obiter views (that is statements made in passing which are not essential to deciding the matter before the court) as any other private citizen but his duty as a judge was to identify and apply the law. Nowhere does his Honour cite any legal authority for his views and they run counter to a number of previous cases of high authority. In short he was making up the law for which there was no legal precedent and trespassing on the role of Parliament the only institution in our democracy which could legislate for such a fundamental social upheaval… None of the other four Judges agreed with this brave social experiment… In no legal sense does this case decide that that there is a partnership between Maori and non-Maori and any later case which purports to rely on the dicta of Cook J is to misconstrue the reasoning on which the case is founded.”
While this means that claims of a partnership have no legal foundation, this has not stopped those pushing the sovereignty agenda from misrepresenting the situation and continuing to use the lie to justify their claims for power.
As Canterbury University law lecturer David Round wrote in an article on judicial activism, “Partnership has taken on a life of its own. Every day it is spoken of and referred to, with the implication of course that the partnership is a genuine one and one of equals. Partnership has turned out to be an attractive idea, among Treaty claimants anyway.”
In their election manifesto, the Maori Party, which is pushing the Treaty partnership agenda, outlines where all this is heading.
As well as renaming New Zealand “Aotearoa” and replacing English place-names with Maori names, the Maori language would become compulsory in schools. All New Zealanders of Maori descent would be required to register on the Maori electoral roll, Parliament’s Maori seats would be entrenched, a Maori-only Parliament would be established, separate social services instituted, and a new constitution based on the Treaty of Waitangi would be introduced.
The democratic petition rights, that allow the public to overturn council decisions to introduce Maori wards through referenda, would be removed.
All conservation land would be given to Maori, and they would have the right to claim private property that has historical significance – like Ihumatao.
With Ihumatao having the potential to open the floodgates for claims on private property, Prime Minister Ardern should be extremely wary of attempting to appease radical activists – as the former government found, to the country’s cost, when they tried to ‘do the right thing’ over the foreshore and seabed.
As a result of introducing the Marine and Coastal Area Act in an attempt to resolve customary right grievances, more than 500 opportunistic claims for the coast flooded in to the High Court and the Minister for Treaty Settlements. While the law protects the public’s right of access to the coast, if claimants succeed in gaining title, they will secure rights akin to ownership – including possession of non-nationalised minerals, the right to charge commercial operators, and veto rights over resource consent applications.
Worried that no-one would be standing up for the public interest in the 200 claims lodged in the High Court, the NZCPR supported a property rights group to not only register as an interested party in the cases, but to secure the services of an experienced legal team to represent the public interest in the first two claims.
That is where the legal test specified in the law, that requires claimants to have “exclusively” used and occupied their claimed area since 1840, is expected to be clarified. Since all of the competing claims overlap, claimants are now arguing for “shared exclusivity” so they can divvy up the coastline between themselves.
If the Judges find in favour of the claimants in these first two cases, then much of New Zealand’s coastline will fall into tribal hands. If that is the outcome, the NZCPR will fundraise for an appeal.
It’s of huge concern that most people are completely unaware that this attack on our coast is occurring right now. The reality is that unless more public spirited people are prepared to help support this fight in the public interest, the outcome could be a disaster for New Zealand.
So, what should be done about the Treaty partnership lie?
First and foremost, we need to raise awareness that Kiwis are being subjected to an orchestrated propaganda campaign. That’s what the NZCPR is attempting to do through these newsletters.
Secondly, we need to remember that this is our country too, and we should not let ourselves be held hostage by extremists. These radicals are not great in number, and but they are using the Treaty “partnership” lie to try to deceive New Zealanders – more people need to say so.
Thirdly, when Helen Clark was Prime Minister, she called Maori supremacists “haters and wreckers” and refused their demands. Jacinda Ardern should follow suit and stop pandering to extremists.
Opposition parties also need to step up. At present there is virtually no political opposition – they are letting us all down.
New Zealand’s democracy is under attack. Masked by a propaganda campaign, most people are failing to recognise that the enemy of democracy is within.
