Water ‘partnership’ added to law

You may have missed it but the Water Services Act that became law a week ago quietly added to legislation water “partnership” while establishing a framework “to provide transparency about the performance of drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater networks and network operators”.

Water “partnership” was legalised by a “Te Mana o te Wai” clause, that functions like a Treaty clause in other legislation, to enable the “Treaty partner” to demand rights, resources, money, or power.

The clause, in Subpart 3, 14 (2), says that “when exercising or performing a function, power, or duty under this Act, a person must give effect to Te Mana o te Wai, to the extent that Te Mana o te Wai applies to the function, power, or duty”. See Water Services Act

This follows the Water Services Regulator Act 2020 which also grants recognition of "Te Mana o te Wai" with respect to fresh water.

According to advice sought by Environment Minister David Parker, Te Mana o te Wai “requires us to give effect to two sets of values”.

“The first set of values that New Zealanders that are relatively familiar with: good governance, stewardship, and care and respect for water,” the advice says.

“The second set of values, which are Maori values, being:

  • Mana whakahaere, which is generally around the way that iwi and hapu wish to govern the use of land, the use of water.
  • Kaitiakitanga, or unique practices around the care and protection of taonga, including water, and
  • Manaakitanga, or cultural philosophy around sharing, equity, reciprocity.

“It’s only by properly engaging iwi and hapu, at the catchment scale, that you can really interpret and express those values,” said the woman in the You Tube clip. See Te Mana o te Wai

That brief Te Mana o te Wai” clause enables “mana whenua” Maori in each catchment to assert rights to governance, management, and ownership of water in the area.

“Mana whenua” Maori are those whose Treaty settlements have given them special “mana whenua” status to an area that puts them apart from others with Maori ancestry living there.

We think that water partnership is absurd because there was no evidence that the Treaty of Waitangi created a “partnership” between Maori and the Crown until activists in the 1980s started talking it into existence.

Moreover, water partnership looks like implementation of part of He Puapua, a plan for a radical revision of our government into two racially divided spheres, one by Maori for Maori and the other, a fully bi-cultural set-up for everyone else.

Page 66 of the plan says 2025 is the deadline for “Maori” to be awarded title to fresh water.

We have collected more than 18,500 signatures on a petition against the He Puapua plan.

Click here to sign  Reject co-governance  and like and share the petition page. Please share this email with others and ask your friends to sign.

Maori seats off limits in review

Seats in our Parliament reserved for Maori roll voters – they provided Labour with six Maori MPs at the 2020 general election – are among the issues that are off limits during a “review” of the country’s electoral laws.

The review will include voting age, the three-year term, party funding and the “coat-tailing” rule.

But the Government has been careful to ensure the seven Maori electorates (although it lost two of them to the Maori Party last year) aren’t swept away during this clean-up of our electoral system. See Sweeping review

While it is anachronistic to separate “Maori” from everyone else, the high participation of people with Maori ancestry in both central and local government is evidence that there is no longer any need for special Maori representation anywhere.

‘Maori’ want half the seats on Ruapehu council

An activist has called for a “hikoi” down Taumarunui’s dilapidated main street on Wednesday, October 20, to demand that at least six of the Ruapehu District Council’s 12 seats be occupied by Maori roll candidates.

Advocate Fiona Kahukura Chase asked for the number of seats occupied by Maori roll candidates to be closer to half of council, with a minimum of three, to reflect the 45.3 percent of the Ruapehu district population that is Maori. See Maori seats hikoi

You should be aware that buried in New Zealand’s race-based electoral law is a manipulation of statistics that blurs the distinction between Maori population and Maori roll voters.

Maori ward candidates are elected by Maori roll voters of whom there are 1978 in the Ruapehu district, making up only 23 percent of a total electoral population of 8648.

It didn’t take long for the predicted demand for 50 percent “Maori” representation to materialise there. I suspect some Ruapehu councillors may now have second thoughts about last year’s vote on the issue that was 10 to 2 for Maori wards.  See Ruapehu votes for Maori ward

New Polynesia history highlights curriculum flaw

Polynesia 900-1600: An overview of the history of Aotearoa, Rekohu, and Rapa Nui, by Madi Williams, will disarm the growing number of those intent on weaponising history for their own political ends, according to historian Paul Moon. 

The new secondary-school history curriculum asserts that "Maori history is the history of Aotearoa New Zealand".

But then, after describing the Polynesian migrations here, teachers are required to jump straight into lessons on the colonial era, thus side-stepping centuries of hapu and iwi history, Dr Moon wrote.

His review may be read at https://www.newsroom.co.nz/where-we-come-from 

Maori fires escalated carbon emissions

Soot preserved in Antarctic ice came from fires in New Zealand lit by Maori settlers 700 years ago, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey have found.

A check of the charcoal records of Patagonia, Tasmania, and New Zealand revealed that there was a major increase in fire activity in New Zealand around the year 1300 – the estimated arrival date of the Maori people.

The deposits show that black carbon emissions from burning in New Zealand dwarfed other pre-industrial emissions in these regions, the study concluded. See Maori and black carbon increase

Te Punaha Matatini Centre director Dr Priscilla Wehi said the research lacked “New Zealand collaboration despite the central topic of Maori burning and fire use” and was 'helicopter science'”, where research is “led and conducted by those who live and work far from the subject of their work”. See Early Maori fires

You may recall that Wehi was in the news a few months ago when she claimed a Maori “connection to Antarctica and its waters” that has “been occurring since the earliest traditional voyaging”. See Maori sailed to Antarctica in 7th century

The pygmy pipehorse that Maori ‘forgot’

A 6cm candy-stick-coloured pygmy pipehorse, discovered in the rocky reefs off the north-east coast of New Zealand, has been given a Maori name allegedly lost because of colonisation.

Hori Parata of the Ngatiwai tribe said “we know there are stories from our tupuna about this species, but the original name has been lost as a result of the negative impacts of colonisation,”. See Maori name for pygmy pipehorse

It’s no surprise that the this person who believes he has descended from a whale (See Sharing ancient knowledge) claimed this little sea-horse was a taonga. But one has to chuckle over his blaming colonisation for ‘forgetting” a name.

Aotearoa ‘more distinct’ than New Zealand?

A piece aired by Radio New Zealand this week tried to talk up “Aotearoa” as a new name for New Zealand by saying that adopting a Maori name we would “give substance to our distinctness as a nation”. See Why not change name again? We think that is naïve rubbish. Our petition calling on the Prime Minister to delete any reference in official communication to any name for our nation other than New Zealand has gathered more than 18,700 signatures.

Click here to sign  https://www.hobsonspledge.nz/new_zealand_not_aotearoa and like and share the page. Please share this email with others and ask your friends to sign.

Coastal petition grows

Our petition which asks Parliament to amend the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 to restore public ownership of the coastal area, put all claims through the High Court, and repeal customary marine title, while affirming customary rights, has picked up more than 43,300 signatures. We need your support. The petition may be signed at https://www.change.org/beaches4all

To share this message on social media, please use this url https://www.hobsonspledge.nz/

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