Over the last year, the Hobson’s Pledge Trust has been promoting the message that New Zealanders are one people, with equal rights to live in this land – not two people, Maori and “the rest”, as successive governments have asked us to believe.  Over the last month or so, with the upcoming election in mind, we have been urging people to “use your vote to end National’s race-based policies”.  Not surprisingly, people have asked: how?

First let me explain why voting National won’t end the race-based policies which have been increasingly built into central and local government practice in recent years.

The policies of Labour’s new leader Jacinda Ardern on Maori seats and a water tax should send a chill through Hobson’s Pledge supporters.

It’s almost exactly 14 years since I first addressed the Orewa Rotary Club, and almost exactly 13 years since I came here as Leader of the National Party to give a speech which, for a time, turned “Orewa” from a place to a date, so that people spoke of “before Orewa” or “after Orewa”, rather than north of Orewa or south of Orewa!