Tens of thousands of farmers jamming 57 towns with utes, tractors, and harvesters on Friday was by far the news story of the week.

A plan for two racially separate governments in New Zealand under tribal control means that we will have to decide whether we want our future to be that of an ethno-nationalist state or a democratic-nationalist one, according to Professor Elizabeth Rata of the Faculty of Education, at Auckland University.

Consultation on the implementation in New Zealand of the United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People will start with Maori groups, Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson confirmed on Thursday. See More UNDRIP consultation 

The fact that a 2019 a report that outlined a plan for two governments under a tribal committee came to the Government but was never shown to any New Zealand First Cabinet Minister has angered party leader Winston Peters.

Six weeks ago, when the leaders of both the National and ACT parties drew attention to a Government-commissioned plan, titled He Puapua, to establish two governments in New Zealand by 2040, one for Maori and one for everyone else, there was name-calling and side-stepping.

The expected time to transfer the entire coast of New Zealand to small groups of people with Maori ancestry will reduce from 100 years to 30 years after Treaty Negotiations Minister Andrew Little caved in to pressure from the Waitangi Tribunal.

Will tikanga law that a High Court justice has just included in a coastal area ruling include inter-tribal warfare, cannibalism, slavery, and other primitive customs, or will it just be a modern version, historian Dr John Robinson asked this week.

A petition that got a blogger fired from his job after he criticised the He Puapua plan for two governments under tribal monitoring, plus a spoof video ridiculing a Maori Party MP, raises the question whether a Maori Party co-leader started it.

At least 32 councils scrambled to meet Friday’s deadline to set up segregated voting via Maori wards or constituencies for next year’s elections. Overwhelming support was claimed despite low response to limited consultation.

A proposal to give one tribe equal say to that of 23 councils over South Island water without consulting the non-Maori community is outrageous, Hobson’s Pledge spokesman Don Brash said today.