Coalition Government & Co-Governance
The new coalition government that was elected in 2023 promoted the deletion of co-governance from the statute books as part of the various parties’ campaign promises.
What we are now seeing is the exact opposite; in fact under the new Fast track Approvals Bill they are proposing to cement co-governance into the legislation and to give new legal rights to Iwi only, at the expense of democracy.
One of the critical issues facing New Zealand prior to the election in 2023 was the Labour Government’s interpretation of the so-called ‘Treaty principles’, centralization of control & accountability, and so-called ‘partnership obligations’.
It was clear to many of the public that the Labour Government's interpretation of the Treaty and the so-called Treaty Principles was race based, undemocratic and very divisive.
Let’s just take a short time to understand how the question of co-governance has raised its ugly head into our democracy.
Labour’s Minister for Local Government at the time, Nanaia Mahuta told us that the government had received advice from the Crown Law office that stated ‘co-governance’ was required for the Crown to comply with its obligations under the Treaty yet this legal advice from Crown Law has never been released publically.
Over recent times a number of politicians and other parties with possible vested interests in the decisions around co-governance, have justified this by quoting the erroneous claim that the Treaty of Waitangi created a partnership between Maori and the Crown and as a result there is a requirement for co-governance.
This claim has over recent years been repeated so many times that in the minds of many within the government bureaucracy it is truth, when in actual fact a short study of the Treaty document shows that Maori ceded sovereignty to the Crown on signing the treaty, and gained all rights as a British subject by doing so.
The whole co-governance concept was supposedly based on the original piece of Crown Law advice that co-governance was necessary for the Crown to comply with the Treaty.
If that is the case then all New Zealanders ought to know what the Government has been hearing from its own lawyers on the alleged Treaty Partnership obligations – especially now that the same argument is being used to undermine the promises made by the Government prior to the election.
The majority of New Zealand electors voted for a change of government and a change in policies in the hope that the new coalition Government would (as the parties had claimed in their pre-election manifestos) reject the Labour government’s moves towards race-based legislation that undermined democratic accountability. The election gave a very clear democratic mandate for change.
But the new Government appears to be following into the same undemocratic, disastrous decision making of the previous Labour government.
Under the new Fast Track Approvals Bill the coalition government is (rather than deleting co-governance from the statute books) proposing to give local Iwi the same rights of representation as local councils. This proposal intentionally shuts out the public
While the Fast-track Approvals Bill gives the final decision to ministers, the Minister must rely on what is called an "Expert Advisory Panel" that will evaluate each project before making a recommendation to approve or reject the project.
Here’s what the legislation says about the makeup of the panels:
This Bill reserves a seat on one of the most influential bodies in the planning process – a panel of just four members – for an unelected representative of an ‘iwi authority’.
And check out what skills are required: Treaty of Waitangi expertise – is required; Conservation expertise– only "if appropriate".
By having a sole representative from a council alongside a representative of an iwi authority, the new Government is giving unelected, unaccountable iwi authorities the same power as our democratically elected local councils.
Under the Bill, the public will be cut out of the decision-making process in the interests of speeding up decision making, but Iwi get special consultation rights while the public is shut out
Before an application is lodged, applicants must consult with the following groups:
Iwi, hapū, Treaty settlement entities, applicant groups for customary marine title, and, where relevant, ngā hapū o Ngāti Porou gets enhanced consultation rights, denied to all other citizens.
In fact, only local councils get the same right to be consulted for applications under the 'fast-track' regime.
Neighbouring land owners – who will be directly impacted by an application – don't get an input. But the local iwi do, as of right.
The role of councils is to represent everyone living in the local area – not just non-Maori, and whether you think skipping public consultation or not is justified, what surely cannot be right is to exclude some members of the public from the process but not others based solely on their ethnicity.
All New Zealanders should have the same rights in the planning process.
While a case can be made for temporarily limiting public consultation to get on and build stuff, it is simply not tenable to do this for most people, while letting iwi authorities – who only represent a very small section of the population – continue to be consulted and have a seat on the expert recommendations panel of equal standing with elected councils.
The election was an opportunity for change, but it seems that the new Coalition Government, instead of promoting the basic idea of equality before the law, one-person, one-vote, and the principle of democratic accountability, are now moving along the same direction as the Labour government did in proposing a system of co-governance which is undemocratic and nothing more than Apartheid by another name.
New Zealand had, up until the election of the previous Labour Government, had one of the oldest democracies in the world both national and local in which central government and local bodies were answerable to the ballot of one person one vote. All government policies were shaped against the certain knowledge that democracy was sacrosanct.
With the re-election in 2020 of the Labour government with a simple majority, we saw democracy replaced with race based decisions allowing tribal elite of Maori to gain an unprecedented, undemocratic position in government on the basis of a perceived partnership provision under the Treaty of Waitangi that in actual fact has never existed in law.
“Co-governance” is nothing more than a way to take control away from all of us irrespective of race, and transfer control to the undemocratically-selected Maori, so-called partners.
Co-governance as proposed is nothing more than the implementation of a system of Apartheid and it should be met with fierce resistance.
There is no desirable alternative to our democracy where we have one person one vote with all votes being equal.
The only other option is to end up with civil warfare when the non-maori 87% of NZ’s population realise how badly they have been lied to by this government and recognise what has been stolen from them and handed over to the control of a small section of Iwi in the name of Co-Governance.
There is no right of partnership under the treaty of Waitangi and consequently there is no right of Co-Governance.