Investigation call boosts support

Thank you for the support that has flooded in since Wednesday when the New Zealand Maori Council called for an investigation into Hobson’s Pledge by the Human Rights Commission.

Since the invective-ridden media release from the Maori Council announcing the call included a number of our alleged misdeeds, we thought it timely to recap what we have actually done since we were established in September 2016.

We campaigned:

For a new Government in 2017 that would repeal race-based laws and scrap separate Maori electorates;
Against Maori wards in Palmerston North, Manawatu, Western Bay of Plenty, Whakatane, and Kaikoura;
Against the establishment of a Crown-Maori partnership ministry;
Against the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngai Tahu Representation) Bill; and
Against unelected tribal appointees with full voting rights on Hastings District Council committees.

We are currently campaigning:

Against the Government giving away the entire marine and coastal area of New Zealand to tribal groups; and
Against implementing, in New Zealand, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (a document which, as we explained last week, Helen Clark’s Government refused to sign, which John Key’s Government, to its lasting shame, did sign, and which the current Minister of Maori Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, now proposes to implement).

We got a new Government in 2017 but that new Government prefers to increase race-based law and is doing so with less coherence than previous Governments.

The citizens of Palmerston North, Manawatu, Western Bay of Plenty, Whakatane, and Kaikoura got to vote on Maori wards and voted against them overwhelmingly.

A Crown-Maori partnership ministry has been set up, a victory for virtue-signalling over sound policy, and despite there being not the slightest word about partnership in the Treaty of Waitangi (in any version of the Treaty).

The Canterbury Regional Council failed to get voting tribal appointees because the Bill was dropped, but the Hastings District Council did get them on its four standing committees, even though the mayor and five of its 14 councillors have Maori ancestry.

For nearly three years we have been calling out the bare-faced rorting that is going on in the name of “the Treaty” and “Maori disadvantage” and the Maori Council wants to shut us down.

While collecting signatures for the five petitions against Maori wards we found that:

Many Maori don’t support race-based policy, something amply confirmed by the fact that almost half of all Maori New Zealanders have chosen not to be on the Maori Parliamentary roll.
The message that political rights should be based on citizenship not ethnicity resonates with hundreds of thousands of new migrants.
What politicians say and do is out of step with what most people want. This confirmed our own polling, which showed that over 90% of all New Zealanders want us all to have equal political rights.

In the wake of the dreadful Christchurch mosque killings, we saw how quickly the narrative shifted to Maori issues and knew it wouldn’t be long before we would be in the frame. Just days after 15 March, Don was interviewed on Radio Waatea with the interviewer assuming that Hobson’s Pledge would have to change its narrative in the light of that awful event. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

We thank you all for your support, and expect to be here for a long time yet.