Labour in a nutshell

In February 2024 the racist regime breached te Tiriti o Waitangi by disestablishing Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority. The agency had been established in response to a previous Waitangi Tribunal inquiry into pervasive racial inequalities in the health system, effectively making it part of a Treaty settlement, so the regime broke that as well.

At the time the Labour party promised they would reverse this, and re-establish the authority. But now they've changed their minds and won't bother. Why not? Because National might just disestablish it again.

This is Labour in a nutshell: pure chickenshittery. Refusing to do anything that National might object to effectively surrenders in advance to the far-right. So what's the point in them holding power if they're not going to actually do anything with it? Its obviously great for the pyramid-climbing Labour apparatchiks who will get huge Ministerial salaries and free housing and transport for doing nothing. But what's in it for the rest of us? Absolutely nothing.

A party which pre-emptively commits to not changing anything, even when it is a blatant injustice and violation of our constitutional foundations is not worth your vote. It is that simple. If you want change, vote for a party which will actually deliver it. In this case, that means voting Green or Te Pāti Māori.

NZ First's Nazi problem

Over the weekend The Post had a piece about Nazis finding a home in NZ First. The initial article exposed two "Remigration NZ" activists, one of whom is a former member of Action Zealandia. For those who don't know, Action Zealandia are Nazis linked to a spate of crimes, while Remigration NZ demands that migrants or the descendents of migrants "go back to where they came from" (white people, of course, are not migrants in their ideology, but somehow belong everywhere). With Winston demanding the same thing, its pretty clear that their ideas are finding fertile ground in the party.

Today's followup exposes a senior member of the party's youth-wing as an outright Nazi:

Nicholas Newport, 23, was named as a member of the executive of Young New Zealand First in late 2024, and last month spoke at the party’s national convention.

Under a former name, Nicholas Wells, he appeared at two protests involving far-right activists and was linked to accounts expressing support for the National Socialist Network (NSN), an Australian neo-Nazi organisation that later rebranded as White Australia. The Australian Government designated White Australia a prohibited hate group in May.

The accounts repeatedly posted “Hail Hitler”, used slurs against non-white and gay people and made derogatory comments about women. One invoked a claim commonly circulated by Holocaust deniers. Another described its user as a Nazi.

Winston has responded with bluster, claiming it is all a media smear. But its all verifiable. And you have to wonder why Winston is going into bat for a Nazi, when most political parties when confronted with something like this would at least attempt to plead ignorance, drop the person like a hot rock, and try and cauterise the wound. And the natural conclusion is that he at the least thinks there's nothing wrong with Newport's views, or explicitly agrees with them.

Hopefully the media will now start asking other NZ First MPs and candidates how they feel about Nazis in their party, whether they agree with their views, and (if necessary) whether they are Nazis themselves. And we're definitely going to need proper due-diligence on any NZ First candidates for Nazi links.

Meanwhile, the real question is how voters feel about voting for a Nazi party...

His place is in Parliament

Its 100 days to the election, so NZ First is going all-in on gutter racism to whip up its base of racist zombies. First, we had Winston Peters telling Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan to "go back to your own country", and now we have Shame Jones saying he should "know his place". Both of which are just fucking boggling. Xu-Nan has lived here since he was eight, and is a New Zealand citizen. Aotearoa is his country. He belongs here just as much as any other kiwi. As for Winston's suggestion that he opposes democracy because of his ethnicity, I think he's shown a far greater commitment to it than the urgency-abusing, vote-suppressing, racist zombie currently serving as foreign minister. Not least because he's part of an actually democratic party, where power is held by the members, rather than one which is an autocracy where all decisions are made by a withered corpse smothered in hair gel.

As for "knowing his place", the implicit assumption here is that there is a natural hierarchy in Aotearoa in which some people are or ought to be in charge, and others should be subservient and not question them. And I think when you put it that nakedly, most New Zealanders would have a very simple response to that proposition: fuck that. And fuck the parties who advocate it. Lawrence Xu-Nan is a kiwi who was elected to Parliament by Green voters. His place is in the House.

No freedom to question power

That, apparently, the Free Speech "Union"'s definition of "freedom of speech":

The Free Speech Union ‒ which exists to defend free speech ‒ has attacked a journalist for asking Health Minister Simeon Brown questions over email, after it obtained questions sent by a Post reporter about one of his appointments.

On Monday, The Post’s national affairs editor Andrea Vance emailed a series of questions to Health Minister Simeon Brown about his appointment of Dr Manoja Kalupahana to the Medical Council.

The appointment was gazetted on Friday and put on the Beehive website on Monday morning.

Before an answer was received and within three hours of the query going to the minister, the Free Speech Union issued a press release attacking Vance for even asking the questions.

The context here is that Kalupahana is an unprofessional racist weirdo, and that seems to have been treated as a qualification for public office by Simeon Brown. Meanwhile, from their past record, the FSU seems to exist primarily to protect such repulsive people from the natural consequences of their actions (which include people naming and shaming them for being exactly what they are). And that now extends to attacking the media for trying to get a public explanation for why such weird appointments have been made (the answer to which is probably "the FSU talked to ACT, who talked to Brown, and suddenly someone gets a fat board salary and a platform to sabotage a public institution").

But whatever influence peddling is going on behind the scenes, its a pretty weird definition of "freedom of speech" which says that the media can't question those in power. Some might take it as suggesting the FSU wasn't interested in freedom of speech at all, but merely using it in bad faith as a weapon to wage their weirdo far-right foreign-funded culture war on the rest of us.

In a democracy, everyone gets to vote

Its election year, so Winston is back on his bullshit, spewing racism in an effort to pander to his voting base of mostly old, mostly white racists. His latest idea? That only citizens should be allowed to vote:

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has announced a policy to restrict voting rights to only those with New Zealand citizenship.

Peters announced the policy at a public meeting in Warkworth on Sunday afternoon.

Currently, legal residents living in New Zealand continuously for a year or more, and whose visa does not require them to leave within a certain time are eligible to vote.

Announcing his new policy on Sunday, party leader Peters said voting "should be a privilege of those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand, and who have made the commitment to make New Zealand their home and their future".

"If you haven't made that commitment or sworn that allegiance, we are happy to let you live here permanently, but why should you get a say in how this country is run or governed?" he said.

To which the short answer is "because they live here, you disgusting zombie".

The longer answer is that Aotearoa has a long tradition of recognising that everyone who lives here should have a say in the future of this place. Its been the case for over 50 years now, and its part of our democracy. And one of the reasons for it is that we were late to establish our own citizenship, and thus had to deal with a huge population of migrants from the old imperial center, who had made lives here, belonged here, but never had to do any formal paperwork to do so. And so, when we had to seriously grapple with that in the 1970's (thanks to Britain deciding that people it had invaded and oppressed and passed laws saying they were British whether they liked it or not, suddenly weren't British after all, especially if they might actually want to exercise their right to live in Britain), the easiest way of doing so was simply to delete the words "He is a British subject" from the 1956 Electoral Act, reducing the qualification to simply being "ordinarily resident in New Zealand" (plus the usual stuff about living here for a year and in the relevant electorate for a month etc). And then, once we'd passed our own citizenship legislation, the law assumed the form we know today, recognising voting rights for New Zealand citizens as well as permanent residents.

Ironically, the group protected by that transition - old British migrants who came here in the 1950's and 60's - are one of the cores of NZ First's support today. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if some of them still aren't citizens (because they have never had any need to be; they live here and they belong here).

The other irony is that when Winston talks about how voting "should be a privilege of those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand", he would effectively exclude almost all native-born New Zealanders from the electorate. Because if you were born here, you've never had to do anything of the sort! The only people who have actually "sworn allegiance to New Zealand" (in reality, to a foreign monarch who lives on the other side of the world) are immigrants who have made a conscious choice to become citizens, and weirdos (soldiers, police officers, and MPs). That might be Winston's vision of a perfect democracy, but it isn't mine - or, I think, Aotearoa's. In a democracy, everyone gets to vote. Its that simple. And people who try and undermine that need to be de-elected.

"Full and final" goes both ways

Last week National introduced its plans to privatise the conservation estate and allow miners free reign to dig up our taonga places. One of the ways it does the latter is by gutting the Conservation Authority and local Conservation Boards, which act as independent advisors to DoC and the Minister on a number of crucial decisions. But having Fucked Around, they're now about to Find Out, with Ngāi Tahu signalling that any change will require a renegotiation of their Treaty settlement:

Ngāi Tahu kaiwhakahaere Justin Tipa said the amendment strips power from the iwi “by turning those boards and the Authority into advisors only and handing decision-making powers to the Minister.”

“Ngāi Tahu was guaranteed a voice on the New Zealand Conservation Authority and conservation boards which currently hold decision making powers.”

[...]

“The Bill includes proposed arrangements to uphold Treaty Settlements, but it puts iwi in the position of being forced to renegotiate important parts of their settlements to fit within a narrow framework.

“Under the new regime, where elements of a settlement do not fit neatly within that framework, the Crown would only be required to meet them ‘to the greatest extent possible’. In no world does that align with a ‘full and final’ settlement.”

They're not the only iwi affected. The bill amends 57 different Treaty settlements to reflect the regime's preferred new way of doing things - unilaterally and without consultation. Those settlements are literally the work on an entire generation of politicians and iwi leaders. And the overall change - to remove iwi voices and make settlements binding only "to the greatest extent possible" - is an overall weakening of them. It is impossible to see this as anything other than the regime trying to cheat on its agreements, something that is both a clear breach of the state's duty of partnership and consultation under te Tiriti, and which invites renegotiation.

But that's not the only problem. Every settlement made has been negotiated against the backdrop of a strengthening web of Treaty clauses which have variously spelled out the state's obligations and embodied the Treaty principles of partnership, consultation, and active protection. These Treaty clauses have meant that a lot of things which might otherwise have been formalised in settlements has been able to be taken as read. And those clauses have been crucial in protecting Māori rights, including rights under Treaty settlements. For example, the Treaty clause in the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 was crucial in stopping seabed mining because it required decision makers to protect existing interests, which included customary interests.

The regime has already attacked these clauses and removed several (notably in the Oranga Tamariki Act, and Education and Training Act), and now they are coming for the rest. Which again seems to be cheating on the settlements, removing a key way for them to be enforced and protected. And that in turn invites renegotiation, including renegotiation on redress for losses. Because the redress you negotiate with a party which at least makes a show of working in good faith and wanting the settlement to endure is very different from what you demand from one which works in bad faith and gives every sign that it will cheat.

I've said before that Treaty settlements are only "full and final" by Māori goodwill, and whether they stick or not is a political question for each generation of Māori, no matter what the law says. In such a situation, the state would be wise not to call those settlements into question. If it wants them to have any chance of enduring, the state needs to uphold the settlements, including their wider context. Because "full and final" goes both ways, and if the government cheats, the settlements are neither.

Luxon dogwhistles racism

Prime Minister Chris Luxon gave a pre-budget speech to the Auckland business community today, in which he promised even more austerity. But he also made a play for ACT and NZ First's racist, anti-immigration voters, with a warning to his listeners:

"And you should expect to see careful policy on immigration from National as we get closer to the election ... when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time."

Which is bullshit, firstly because immigration is not a threat to "social stability"; and secondly because the greatest historic threat to social stability has been inequality, the greed of the rich. But on that front Luxon has their back. He's perfectly willing to destabilise Aotearoa's society to enrich his mates, promising austerity and asset sales while doing nothing to limit inequality or the runaway wealth of the few, preferring instead to rely on ever-more tyrannical anti-protest laws for protection. And of course when it comes to coalition parties pushing white supremacy, tearing up te Tiriti, and attempting to eradicate te reo from public life, he's all in.

But I don't think an unequal, racist tyranny, divided between a small clique of rich Auckland arseholes and a mass of renters forced to work minimum-wage jobs is the sort of society most kiwis want to live in. And hopefully we will tell Luxon that forcefully in November.

More culture-war bullshit

That's the only way to describe the regime's announcement today that new citizens will be forced to pass a test on the "responsibilities and privileges" of citizenship, "covering topics like the Bill of Rights Act, voting rights and the structure of government." Which is a bit rich coming from a regime which has shat all over the BORA, restricted voting rights, and abolishes core government agencies and capabilities at a whim because they said something a Minister doesn't like (or applied the law to someone the Minister does).

Winston Peters says this is because "some of the people who have come here who don't salute our flag, don't honour the values of our country, don't respect the people living here", which again shows how out of touch that fossil is. Real kiwis don't "salute the flag" unless they're in a job which requires it. Anyone who does is some sort of weirdo. We're not Americans, and we don't want to be like them.

But Winston is right about one thing: there are people here who don't honour the values of our country or respect the people living here. They're in the Beehive, running the place, doing shit like this. And the sooner we vote them out on their arses, the better.

More racism from National

When National voted down its own Treaty Principles Bill last year, they claimed it was because they understood that "seek[ing] to impose a particular interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi by simple majority and referendum" was not an appropriate way to handle the foundation of our constitution. But the racist party never sleeps, and a year later, they're back, seeking to impose a particular interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi by simple majority, without the referendum this time:

The Government has quietly agreed to repeal a number of references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi within laws, while amending others to be more specific.

Cabinet has also decided that, going forward, these provisions in legislation will reference both the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

[...]

The Herald learned of Cabinet’s decisions after discovering a memorandum filed by the Crown at the Waitangi Tribunal on March 12.

"Amending others to be more specific" of course means imposing a particular interpretation of the state's obligations under Te Tiriti, naturally without any consultation with the other party (or, for that matter, the public). Which is exactly what they were trying to do with the Treaty Principles Bill they denounced as illegitimate. But if the Treaty Principles Bill was illegitimate, then so is this - and so, if this passes, is the state. Because Te Tiriti is the fundamental bargain which legitimises the state in Aotearoa, and it is not one which can be unilaterally altered. A regime which reneges on that bargain cannot be regarded as having any legitimate authority over the country.

That's the sort of shit the regime is meddling with here, and why a sensible government wouldn't touch it. Meddling with the fundamentals of the state ought to be anathema to conservatives. But national is now dominated by radical white supremacist fundie weirdos, half of whom seem to have a hard-on for Armageddon. And if they're allowed to remain in power, then all of us are going to pay the price for their stupidity.

Brownlee is a partisan, misogynistic hypocrite

Yesterday parliament saw one of its worst incidents of racism, as Winston Peters questioned the right of Teanau Tuiono to ask questions because he is "someone who comes from Rarotonga". Tuiono is from Northland, like Peters, but even were he from Kent, like Winston's colleague Andy Foster, it doesn't matter: he's a New Zealand citizen and an elected MP, and that's the end of it.

This rightly caused outrage, but Brownlee claimed not to have heard it and promised to review the Hansard and get back to the House on it. Today he did, and made the obvious ruling that this sort of racism is unacceptable and will be treated as highly disorderly (which you'd hope would mean apology or ejection). But he refused to require Winston to apologise because "the moment has passed". People with a political memory longer than a goldfish may recall that he made a completely different ruling back in August, when he required Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick to apologise for something he had already punished her for the day before, and named her and banned her for a week when she refused. But there are obvious differences between the two cases: specifically, Winston is a member of the regime, and he is a cis-man.

In other words, Brownlee has one rule for the government, and one for the opposition; one for men, and one for women. He's nothing but a partisan, misogynistic hypocrite, and his continued presence in the chair brings the House into disrepute.

More racism from the regime

Another day, and more racism from the regime:

The government's decision to axe schools' obligation to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi has shocked groups representing school boards, teachers and principals.

The government had been moving to change the emphasis on the requirement in the Education Act, but on Tuesday announced it would remove it altogether.

Education Minister Erica Stanford said the treaty was the Crown's responsibility, not schools'.

Except schools are agents of the state, and the law is how the state meets that responsibility. So what does repealing it - and all the other similar laws by which the state implements that specific responsibility - tell us about the state's future intentions towards meeting its obligations?

(Hint: look at climate change policy pre-Zero Carbon Act, where we had promises, but no implementation or accountability. Yeah, that...)

Worse: Rimmer says this will be enacted "by the end of the year". Which means no real select committee process or consideration, let alone public consultation. I guess their experience with the Treaty Principles and Regulatory Standards Bill has led them to double down on stomping on our democracy as well...

Which just means that this law is illegitimate, like the regime which passed it. And its just another thing which will have to go into the Treaty Restoration Bill which will have to be passed by the next government under all-stages urgency as its first order of business. Because we have an "undo" button too, and we will need to use it.

Raupatu

That is the only way to describe last night's passage of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. Drafted in a response to a Māori court victory over the foreshore and seabed, the bill changes the rules, making successful claims all but impossible, and forces already determined cases to be reheard under the new test. It is simply a confiscation. it is a violation of te Tiriti o Waitangi, the ultimate law of this land. It is immoral and it is wrong.

Like all raupatu, it must also be reversed. To their credit, the opposition are making the right noises about this, and you would hope that they will make it (and the reversal of National's other odious, Tiriti-violating legislation on Māori wards, section 7AA, the elimination of Treaty clauses, and the "de-Māorification" of the health and education systems) a high priority. Of course, mere reversal will not be enough: any cases reheard under National's racist new rules will need to be reheard under the proper ones. But that waste of judicial resources is squarely on the present regime, who apparently could not tolerate Māori winning in court even once.

Meanwhile, in another test of how racist the colonial parliament is, Speaker Gerry Brownlee is again threatening Te Pāti Māori for burning a copy of his regime's racist bill on Parliament steps. Which is interesting, because when Rimmer drove a land-rover up those same steps, Brownlee said he could do nothing. It simply was not a violation of Parliament's rules. Those rules have not been changed, so either Brownlee is going to have to invent some in order to punish his enemies in a nakedly arbitrary and racist way, or he will have to admit that what goes for the white supremacist also applies to Māori representatives.

Sadly, the former path can't be ruled out under this Speaker. But if Brownlee wants to set fire to Parliament's legitimacy and social licence, then I guess he can. And all future governments will pay the price for that.

National wants to eradicate Māori from the law

One of the major legal changes of the last fifty years has been the increasing recognition of te Tiriti o Waitangi and tikanga in law, both through statute and caselaw. The present white supremacist regime, with their Treaty Principles Bill, Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Act, and plans to repeal Treaty clauses, have made it clear that they want to remove statutory recognition. And now they're going after caselaw as well, threatening legislation to simply overturn decisions they don't like:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says the judiciary is creating a “bespoke” legal system that’s not internationally transferable and could deter foreign investors.

These comments – made to an audience of lawyers at a Law Association function last week, and first reported by Law News – came with a commitment to create legislation that would essentially overwrite certain judicial decisions where tikanga and te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations are involved.

The Government is already doing exactly this in regards to its Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Amendment Bill, which seeks to tighten the law around Māori claims to customary rights following significant court decisions.

And according to the Law News report, Goldsmith revealed at last Wednesday’s breakfast event that he planned to go further.

Which you'd think would be an even bigger threat to the legal system and deterrant to foreign investors than the "problem" Goldsmith purports to be solving. After all, a government which overturns decisions which benefit Māori could also overturn decisions which benefit foreign investors. But weirdly racists never think they'll be the victim (because white supremacy).

Not that there is actually a problem here to solve at all. A "bespoke" legal system? You mean a country's laws reflecting the society and historical circumstances of that country, rather than a foreign one on the other side of the world? Quelle horreur! And yet people have no problem accepting this when talking about the USA, or France, or Germany, or Canada, or pretty much anywhere else. It is only when they're only talking about Māori that it becomes a problem. And we all know why.

But Māori are the first people of this country, and tikanga is its first law. Under accepted and completely orthodox legal principles, that law remains until extinguished. And it is a matter of historical fact that parts of it have not been extinguished, and therefore effectively remain in force, to influence the rest of the legal system. This may offend the sensibilities of richwhite lawyers from the fancy suburbs of Auckland, but the fact remains. And if they don't understand it, maybe they should adhere to their professional responsibilities and learn, rather than seeking to eliminate it.

(As for Goldsmith's threat, if this gets to the stage of legislation and passes into law, it just goes on the list of things to be immediately repealed under urgency by the next government. We have a revert button too, and we will use it, so if you want "stability", then stop fucking around and let the judges do their job).

Chipping away at National's gang-patch ban II

The regime passed its racist gang-patch ban a year ago, with great fanfare. and since then, the police have used it with great enthusiasm, ignoring domestic violence and retail crime in favour of attacking funerals and kicking in doors to seize banned clothing, assert their dominance, and humiliate gang-members. Except the humiliation may be on them: a district court judge has ordered a seized patch to be returned (depaywalled):

Ultimately, the judge opted to give the vest back.

“Mr Leef made it very clear to the court when he pleaded guilty that he placed such value in his patch that there is no way that it would leave his house again.”

The judge noted the Gangs Act had only recently come into force on November 21. Leef would have been aware of it, but was unlikely aware that it could result in him permanently losing his patch.

There was no information in the summary of facts to suggest any member of the public was caused fear, intimidation or disruption.

“Mr Leef clearly places considerable personal value in his patch. It signifies, for him, a sense of belonging and family that he does not find in the community.

“While Mr Leef has previous convictions, he has not committed a serious offence since the 1990s. His offending more recently has been irregular and at the minor end of the scale.”

Which makes sense. The government told us that the purpose of the gang-patch ban was to prevent intimidation in public places. That's not inconsistent with returning forfeited items where there was no intimidation in the offence and where such intimidation seems unlikely in future. And in fact a rights-consistent interpretation of the law seems to demand it.

(The police were also forced to return two other items which they had seized, but not laid charges over - because only items charged for are forfeited. Which invites the question of how often this has happened, and how many times they have used one charge to cover the theft of multiple items...)

I expect the police and government to go apeshit about this, but its the law they passed, and they have to live with it. If they don't like it, they can of course amend it to require destruction without trial, on the say-so of a police officer, but I think the courts would take a very dim view of that too. You'd think the ACT Party might have a few things to say about it as well, being supposedly the party of property rights and the rule of law...

(There's another similar case from Palmerston North, with the added spice of excessive force, but I haven't seen any news on how that one has turned out yet).

A terrible idea

RNZ reports this morning that the regime is conspiring to abolish the "demographic ministries":

The Public Service Commissioner is considering a major shakeup of several government agencies, including the Ministries for Women and Pacific Peoples.

Sir Brian Roche is refusing to rule out that they would be absorbed into larger ministries and said "all options are on the table" and he was "not going to get into ruling things in or out".

To point out the obvious - which the white men running this government don't seem to have noticed - these ministries exist for a reason. They exist to give a formal voice in government to people that the power structure systematically ignores. Like women, who are ignored distressingly often, despite being a majority of the population.

Abolishing them wil remove those perspectives. It will mean that women, Pasifikia and the disabled will not be heard in government, and policy about them will be made without them. This isn't just misogynist, racist and ableist - it is also a mistake. The lack of those perspectives will lead to worse policy and expensive but unexpected (to the bland white econodudes in the regime) outcomes.

The fundamental problem here is that said bland white econodudes do not recognise that they do not know everything - that there are entire worlds outside their experience, which they don't bother to model because they're "not important" (to them and the things they care about). We've known this for decades - Marilyn Waring literally wrote the book on it - but they prefer their models of perfectly spherical people in a vacuum, and if reality doesn't match, well, it is reality, and the annoying reminders of it, which must change. This is not a recipe for good policy. It is not a recipe for good governance. And it is certainly not a recipe for happy politics. And this regime needs to have that rammed home when we vote them out at the next election.

(Meanwhile, as for Rimmer and his cries that we shouldn't have ministries for specific types of people, that's rather rich, coming from a guy who had a whole ministry for weirdo libertarians created just for him. He should just smeg off back to the far-right thinktank which spawned him and stop fucking up our country).

"An illegitimate exercise of kāwanatanga"

That was the Waitangi Tribunal's assessment of the National regime's plans to gut the Marine and Coastal Area Act and steal the foreshore and seabed for its greedy fishing-industry donors. It found that the regime had violated te Tiriti of Waitangi by failing to consult iwi and hapu, and failed to identify any actual policy problem requiring the changes, and warned that continuing would "significantly endanger the Māori–Crown relationship".

So of course racist National are doing it anyway:

The government is forging ahead with plans to change the law governing New Zealand's foreshore and seabed, despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that appeared to undercut the rationale for the change.

The proposed legislation stems from a clause in National's coalition deal with NZ First, which promised to revisit the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act.

That commitment was driven by fears that a 2023 Court of Appeal decision could have made it significantly easier for Māori groups to win recognition of customary rights over parts of the coastline.

[...]

On Tuesday, Goldsmith confirmed to RNZ that Cabinet had agreed to press ahead with the law change regardless and to pass it before October.

Let's be clear: the underlying motive here is racism, pure and simple. Māori were having their rights over the foreshore upheld by the courts, and the white supremacist government did not like that. Neither did their donors and cronies in the aquaculture and commercial fishing industries, who did not want to pay iwi and hapu rent for the coastal space they want to use, or face an iwi veto over that use (because apparently property owners shouldn't get to decide what happens on their property if they're brown). So, they're overturning the law, and forcing the courts to revisit and overturn their decisions (rather than letting settled decisions stand as usual).

I do not expect Māori to take this lying down. We've already seen one hikoi which outnumbered the entire NZ police force five to one; I expect there'll be another. And it won't just be Māori. Modern Aotearoa recognises that Te Tiriti is the foundation of our constitution. It gives the government its right to exist. If the regime wants to rip that up, they will effectively be ripping up their own legitimacy and undermining their own foundations. And that seems like a very stupid and dangerous thing to do.

One thing is clear: if we are allowed to have a free and fair election next year - something the regime has also put in doubt - then this government must go. Whatever it does must be reversed by the next, with the courts required to revisit (again) any decisions they have been forced to revisit in the meantime. Racism and corruption cannot be permitted to stand.

A parliamentary lynching

I have spent the afternoon watching the debate on the outrageous and anti-democratic privileges committee report on Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, and Rawiri Waititi. And after three hours, Waititi moved closure to get it over with. The government, which used its majority on the privileges committee to recommend an unprecedented punishment of Māori MPs for being Māori, has just used its majority to suspend them for 7, 21, and 21 days respectively.

I could talk about a dark day for our democracy, and so on, but fuck that. This is nothing less than a parliamentary lynching. The silencing of Māori MPs for being Māori violates the fundamentals of our democracy, stripping 210,000 people of their representation, precisely because it was too effective for the government's taste. Our government has now become a shitty Putinist tyranny, and it should be treated as such.

As for parliament, by deliberately excluding these MPs, it can no longer make any claim to represent Aotearoa. It has lost any shred of legitimacy it had. Instead, its just a shitty, colonial, white supremacist institution – a Westminster by the sea. Let it burn.

Aotearoa should not have places named after slavers

What do Picton, Ashburtn, Stokes Valley, and Ellice St in wellington have in common?

They're all named after slave-owners.

This is abhorrent. Naming stuff after foreign imperialists is bad enough, but slave-owners were participants in one of the greatest crimes against humanity in human history. We should not be naming our towns and suburbs and streets after them. Renaming these places seems like the least we can do.

Unfortunately, given the attitude of land information minister Chris Penk, who today refused to return Russell to its original name of Kororāreka, that seems unlikely to happen under this racist dogshit regime.

A desperate delay

So, that was a bit of a damp squib. Everyone having geared up for an epic filibuster battle which would upset the government's legislative program for at least the day, National has now abused its parliamentary majority to adjourn the debate on its outrageous and anti-democratic punishment of Te Pāti Māori MPs until June. Officially this is to allow those MPs to participate in the budget debate, but Chris Bishop said the quiet part out loud: it's to "allow this week to focus on the Budget", rather than on a tyrannical government abusing parliamentary processes to effectively lynch its primary opposition. In other words, to ensure the government gets to control the headlines, rather than having to deal with the "distraction" of its own abuses.

The government is clearly hoping that public anger over this will dissipate. I am hoping it won't. And hopefully that anger will be shown to government MPs where-ever they go. This is a government which seriously suggested arbitrarily imprisoning its political opponents, merely for the opposing them. As Chris Hipkins noted in his speech, this regime is departing significantly from the democratic norms of Aotearoa. It is acting like a tinpot dictatorship. It is directly attacking our democracy. And that is not something the people of Aotearoa should tolerate or forgive.

(And yes, I'm glad to have been wrong about Hipkins on this; he moved that the penalty be reduced to a 24 hour suspension, in line with past practice, and seemed to be willing to fight for that).

National's move to ram through an adjournment caught everyone by surprise, including Brownlee. It was yet another abuse of parliamentary procedure to prevent debate and stifle opposition. Which is the central feature of this government: urgency and abuse of process all round. They are the worst, most abusive government we have had since Muldoon. And we should kick their arses out at the first opportunity.

Which side are you on, Labour?

Today will see an unprecedented moment in Parliament. A racist government whose leader opposes the "Maorification" of New Zealand is using its parliamentary majority to suspend opposition MPs from the House for being Māori, silencing them and the people they represent for up to 21 days. It is outrageous and anti-democratic; their own Speaker knows it is wrong, and they clearly do too. They're so ashamed of what they are doing - and scared of the public's reaction to it - that they have closed the public gallery, preventing anyone from watching their abuse of power.

This is a golden opportunity for the opposition Labour Party to stand up for our democracy and against this racist abuse of power. To show their voters which side they're on. To actually stand for something. So of course spineless jellyfish Chris Hipkins doesn't want to. Oh, he agrees the punishment is "too extreme", but he says Labour is "pretty unlikely" to filibuster the debate. So, he's going to take the leverage the Speaker handed him to force the government to compromise and adopt a more appropriate penalty, and he's going to do... nothing. Which is perhaps why the racist prime minister is now declaring there will be "no compromise" - because he knows Hipkins is weak and won't do anything other than whine and wring his hands.

But the Labour caucus isn't just Hipkins, and its MPs can speak even if its leader won't. And they should, if they want to continue in their gold-plated careers. Because their voters will be watching. And they will be judging. And silence, cowardice, and collaboration is unlikely to impress anyone.