As you probably know, we have been running a petition to End the Waitangi Tribunal. That campaign continues, but in the meantime we heard some news that brought a smile to our faces... the Government has appointed former Labour Minister and ACT leader Richard Prebble to the Waitangi Tribunal!

The outrage machine has kicked into action with Willie Jackson even saying:

"I think we were all in shock [on Thursday] ... but what next - are we going to make Don Brash the new chair of the tribunal?"

Now there's an idea...

Anika Moa and Kiri Allan's racist podcast tirade

Radio NZ actually pulled the episode, recognising it was not in line with their values. But unlike how hard they have fought Official Information Act requests previously, they happily handed over the episode to other media who published it anyway.

In the episode, Anika Moa was outspoken about her disdain for white men and not shy about displaying her ignorance of New Zealand Parliament. She said:

“Everything they do in parliament is white man rules, white women rules, white this, white that, whitewash.”

Given there are a record number of Māori MPs and ministers in Cabinet as well as many other ethnicities and cultures making up Parliament, Ms Moa's comments are seriously ignorant.

A train crash from start to finish, former Justice Minister Kiri Allan minimised her behaviour on the night she crashed into a parked car and fled from the police while under the influence of alcohol.

According to Stuff, Allan "said the parliamentary system was not designed for Māori women, citing the number of wahine Māori MPs who had left parliament under a cloud."

It was a divisive discussion that demonised white New Zealanders and perpetuated victim narratives. For those of us who believe in equality before the law and want to see New Zealanders valued by the content of their character rather than their skin colour or ancestors, the episode was indicative of the toxic race narratives that exist currently.

Electorate seat change

Statistics New Zealand has announced that next election there will be 64 electorate seats rather than 65. There will be an additional list seat to compensate. The number of Māori seats remains the same, at seven.

It is disappointing that New Zealand still has Māori seats. One of the reasons for moving to the MMP system was that it would allow for a more diverse group of New Zealanders to be elected to Parliament. The intention was that we would not need quota seats after this change.

"With the introduction of MMP in 1996, the proportion of Māori in Parliament increased from 8% to 14%, a total of 17 MPs. In 2011, 22 MPs (18%) were Māori; the number increased to 28 (23%) in 2017, but fell to 25 (21%) in 2020, when no New Zealand First MPs were re-elected." - TeAra Encyclopedia

And those saying this were right! None of the record number of Māori in Cabinet were elected in Māori seats. Likewise the disproportionate number (compared to the wider population) of Māori MPs in all parties. 

It is time to do away with the Māori seats.

State-sponsored terrorism of Māori kaumatua, women, and children?  

I've saved the most ridiculous for last. It truly beggars belief.

This week New Zealand Police carried out a large operation that targeted gangs mostly in Ōpōtiki. Firearms and drugs were seized. Violent offenders were apprehended. A successful mission to disrupt the scourge of organised crime that should have been supported by all.

Not Te Pāti Māori. No. Rawiri Waititi launched an attack on the Police Minister alleging that elderly Māori along with breastfeeding women were victimised by the operation. He called it state terrorism.

Police Minister Mark Mitchell wasn't having it though. In response to Waititi's "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?" line of questioning the minister informed him that the operation had uncovered how the gangs were running methamphetamine through schools.

Te Pāti Māori's stance is hideous in that it links gangs to Māori as if they are some kind of extension of the whanau. They forget that not all gang members are Māori and not all Māori are gang members. 

They also justify and defend violent crime and destruction of communities via drugs, intimidation, and weapons. 

Māori in Ōpōtiki are more likely to be victimised by the gangs than the police trying to rid the place of them. All New Zealanders are entitled to live in safe communities without the violence of gangs.

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I'll close on a positive note by repeating my congratulations to all Hobson's Pledge supporters who joined us in condemning the racist new Prosecution Guidelines. We secured a swift U-turn from the Solicitor-General and should all be very pleased. However, we are keeping a close eye on what the guidelines will look like after this 'review'. We wouldn't put it past Crown Law to try pull a swift one.

Have a wonderful long weekend.

Congratulations! You are part of a community of people who speak up against racism, inequality, and division, and that community has had a big win!

The Solicitor General heard our cries of "You cannot be serious" and has pulled a quick U-turn on her dodgy Prosecution Guidelines.

Una Jagose KC has taken down the Prosecution Guidelines and is reviewing them. They will be republished once amended.

Significantly, she told the media that she realised she had missed the mark after reading and listening to public commentary. That is us! Public commentary is all the Hobson's Pledge supporters who spoke up.

We provided you with the Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts of the Minister of Justice, the Attorney General, the Prime Minister, and the leaders of New Zealand First and ACT, and encouraged you to demand answers from them.

Hobson's Pledge supporters heard the call and showed en masse on their social media pages and in their inboxes. You made a difference. We can all be very proud of this result.

A recap in case you missed the insanity this week:

The Solicitor General released her new Prosecution Guidelines to be effective 1 January 2025. In those guidelines were alarming instructions to treat Māori offenders differently to everyone else.

"The guidelines ask prosecutors to think carefully about particular decisions where a person (whether the victim or the defendant) is Māori."

A defence lawyer writing to David Farrar's Kiwiblog said:

Essentially the new guidelines require prosecutors to take into account race when deciding whether to prosecute someone, or withdraw charges against them. Despite the claim that "this does not promote different treatment based on ethnicity", it is clearly designed to do exactly that.

As a defence lawyer, when advocating for my clients it will now be logical for me to include in my emails to the prosecution something like "I note that my client is Māori and therefore consideration must be given to the new Solicitor-General's guidelines when deciding whether it is appropriate to continue with this prosecution."

I can anticipate that I will get some replies saying this is only a small victory, and we are still faced with a deluge of race-based policies yet to be fixed. However, when faced with so much to be frustrated about, it is important that we take a moment to celebrate these wins.

Momentum is important. One backdown can precipitate another. Next time a senior public servant thinks they will get away with slipping racially segregated policies into their guidelines they will think twice. They don't want to have to front the media and eat humble pie.

So take a moment to toast the win this weekend.

I have a lot to update you on today, so bear with me. This is more of a newsletter than my usual style. Some good news and some not so good, but either way we are busy at Hobson's Pledge HQ!

The ASA Decision

You may have seen media reports that the 600+ complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority about our advertisement on the front cover of the NZ Herald have been reviewed and the ASA Complaints Board has made a decision.

We were pleased to see that the majority of complaints about the advertisement were not upheld. However, the one small part that was upheld appears to tie itself in knots in its attempt to make something misleading out of the advertisement. We are considering our options and whether to appeal.

It is astounding that even though a majority ruled in our favour on most matters, a minority on the Advertising Standards Authority Board consistently held that statements unwelcome to Māori should be suppressed, irrespective of truth.

The tendency for amateur authoritarians to paint those whom they disagree with as ‘evil’ rather than just holding a differing viewpoint has been cancerous to our ability to debate important and difficult subjects. It was pleasing to see the following decisions in relation to nonsense complaints that sought to paint Hobson's Pledge as evil:

A majority of the Complaints Board said the advertisement did not reach the threshold to breach the ‘Decency and Offensiveness’ rule in the context of advocacy advertising.

A majority of the Complaints Board said the advertisement did not reach the threshold to cause fear or distress without justification.

We also note that the Complaints Board said they ‘accepted the source for the map and the factual claim that almost the entire coastline is under application for customary marine title.’ This was central to our advertisement and to have that validated is important.

MACA Submissions

As we shared with you a while back, we were having some real trouble with getting the Select Committee to accept your submissions if they didn't go through the special government web form.

We saw right through their objections. This is about control and deterring New Zealanders from exercising their right to submit on bills. They hate when groups such as ours work together to make having our say easier. 

We offered to send submissions through in one file - their choice of type - and let them know that if we weren't able to do this we would print out every single submission and hand deliver them to Parliament.

I guess they didn't take us seriously.

On Tuesday we delivered 5166 submissions to Parliament on behalf of Hobson's Pledge supporters. 

Update on defamation action

I have been touched by the level of support I have received thus far on this matter. Sometimes we just have to take a stand and refuse to let the usual suspects tell lies about us.

Here are some excerpts from the press release we sent out earlier this week:

Don Brash has today filed a defamation claim with the High Court in Auckland against Matthew Hooton after several attempts to resolve the matter privately.

Specialist defamation lawyers, Peter McKnight and Ali Romanos, have been retained as counsel for Dr Brash. Dr Brash received a delaying response from Mr Hooton’s lawyers just ninety minutes before the requested deadline and has been left with no choice but to file proceedings.

Mr Hooton seriously defamed Don Brash including suggesting he is profoundly dishonest, lacks integrity, and is corrupt. This goes far beyond disagreeing with what Dr Brash has said on any given matter and impugns his character in a very serious way.

In any case, debates relating to the Treaty cannot be allowed to deteriorate into personal attacks. It should not be beyond public figures to argue the facts and their beliefs without resorting to smearing reputations.

Outrageous new Prosecution Guidelines released by Solicitor General

If you haven't seen them already, prepare to be dismayed. Or furious, perhaps.

The guidelines quite literally call for a two-tiered approach to charging alleged criminals.

As the NZ Herald's Audrey Young wrote:

It is astonishing that the seasoned Solicitor-General, Una Jagose, KC, has got herself into political difficulty over the latest revision of the Prosecution Guidelines in which she asks prosecutors to “think carefully about particular decisions... where a person is Māori”.

...

She is clearly including guidance to think carefully about prosecuting when the offender is Māori.

That is problematic at any time, let alone for a Government that is united on one thing if nothing else – equal treatment of citizens.

As you might expect, Hobson's Pledge is horrified by this. We are in the process of pulling together a response. We are writing to each and every minister with a connection to this matter and pulling together a campaign to stop this race-based rubbish in its tracks.

Watch this space.

Gary Judd KC takes on regulations

Gary Judd KC has proven himself to be a heroic champion of common sense and equality. This week he brought another fight to the Parliament's Regulations Review Committee - the compulsory completion of Tikanga Māori courses for all law students. 

Gary argues that tikanga is different from law and that if the compulsory courses go ahead "they will essentially be seen to be giving the green light to what is really just political activism."

Gary has also said:

“For a custom to be accepted as law, it had to be certain, consistent, reasonable, and it had to be not repugnant to justice and morality.

“If judges were doing their job properly, they would have said, ‘tikanga cannot satisfy these requirements, therefore we reject the notion of tikanga being part of the law’.”

He is correct. Tikanga is variable from whānau to hapū to iwi. It cannot be treated as law. 

We will be keeping a close eye on this and will keep you in the loop.

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Phew! Quite a download of information for you.

Thank you for all your support on these issues and the many more that have come our way this year.

I can only assume that ministers have not seen the outrageous new Prosecution Guidelines released quietly at the beginning of this month. They cannot possibly have seen them because they contradict both Coalition Agreements and the promises the Government has made to end race-based policies.

David Farrar of Kiwiblog alerted me to the matter via a reader who wrote in to his blog about it. The reader is a defence lawyer and expressed surprise at the blatant race discrimination.

The new guidelines quite literally provide a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card to New Zealanders with at least one Māori ancestor.

The justification of this is that there are a disproportionate number of Māori in the criminal justice system:

“Research over many years has consistently found that Māori are significantly overrepresented in the criminal justice system at every stage, including as victims, and we recognised at the start of the project that the discretion to prosecute may contribute to that."

The authors of the two-tiered guidelines treat the New Zealand people as if we are a bunch of idiots. They claim, "this does not promote different treatment based on ethnicity or membership of a particular group; it instead alerts prosecutors to situations and factors that may deliver inequitable outcomes."

Which is totally contradicted by the instruction to consider not charging someone simply because of their Māori heritage: "The guidelines ask prosecutors to think carefully about particular decisions where a person (whether the victim or the defendant) is Māori."

The defence lawyer who wrote to David Farrar provided the following analysis:

Essentially the new guidelines require prosecutors to take into account race when deciding whether to prosecute someone, or withdraw charges against them. Despite the claim that "this does not promote different treatment based on ethnicity", it is clearly designed to do exactly that.

As a defence lawyer, when advocating for my clients it will now be logical for me to include in my emails to the prosecution something like "I note that my client is Māori and therefore consideration must be given to the new Solicitor-General's guidelines when deciding whether it is appropriate to continue with this prosecution."

I am not ordinarily foul-mouthed, but let me tell you, a few choice words came to mind reading about this. It is outrageous, to say the least.

The Hobson's Pledge team want to make as many people aware of this as quickly as possible, so we have come to our supporters in the hope you will raise the roof with us. 

If you use social media, please consider contacting the following ministers to ask if they are aware of the prosecution guidelines and to let them know you are in complete opposition to them and will consider this a broken election promise if they do not do something about it.

Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith (Facebook)	Attorney General Judith Collins (Facebook)	Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (Facebook)	Leader of NZ First Winston Peters (Facebook)	Leader of the ACT Party David Seymour (Facebook)
Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith (X/Twitter)	Attorney General Judith Collins (X/Twitter)	Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (X/Twitter)	Leader of NZ First Winston Peters (X/Twitter)	Leader of the ACT Party David Seymour (X/Twitter)
Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith (Instagram)	Attorney General Judith Collins (Instagram)	Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (Instagram)	Leader of NZ First Winston Peters (Instagram)	Leader of the ACT Party David Seymour (Instagram)
Email	Email	Email	Email	Email

The guidelines were sent to lawyers on 3 October, but we are yet to see any reporting on it. You could also track down our media companies on social and email and send them a note.

These guidelines must be swiftly thrown in the bin before they come into force on 1 January 2025.

Ethnicity or whether or not one has a Māori ancestor should not be a factor in deciding to charge someone who has committed a crime. That is a separatist system. A two-tiered system. We cannot accept that our justice system is to work on the premise of "do the crime, do the time...except if you have Māori ancestry."

This is blatant discrimination. Why should a Chinese New Zealander, Samoan New Zealander, and an Irish New Zealander be charged for a burglary, but the 4th accomplice gets off scot-free by virtue of one of his great-grandparents being Māori?

We must make a racket. I can't imagine many New Zealanders would be happy about this, and that is probably precisely why the media aren't reporting on it.

So get out there and post on your own social media. Send emails. Spread the word. Tell the five decision-makers above how wrong this is and tell them on every platform possible. We will be doing the same.

Remember, this is our best chance to defeat these appalling policies, and we must not waste it.