Common Ground That Created This New Coalition Government

Now that the dust has settled on the establishment of the new coalition government of National, ACT and NZ First, we now know what their common ground was that brought them together.

During the election process you couldn’t get three more opposed politicians on a raft of issues. These three party leaders are the best of the worst partners you could pick. ACT’s David Seymour can bury his integrity and credibility after doing a flip just days after the special votes were released when he reached out to Winston Peters. The same Seymour who on September 25th of this year publicly stated that Peters, “Is the least trustworthy person in New Zealand politics” and that same month, “We’re not going to sit around the cabinet table with this clown”. I find that bizarre.

What drives people to walk back and summersault against their principles, integrity and credibility like this? What does that? It’s who puts them there. It’s the resources and the people who are manipulating them to do this at all costs, their funders.

When they got in a room together they had to find common ground – that is the key to any negotiations. For these three parties their common ground is their dislike for Māori-related peoples and matters. Once they found that mutual safe space they could then build off their coalition negotiations. What anchors these three parties and these three men together is their anti-Māori sentiment.

The reason for that is they did not go out on a Māori-related program or try to affirm anything Māori – all three of them. It was all about nanny state overseeing Māori evolution and development rather than to Māori, for Māori by Māori. Peter’s and Seymour’s claims that because they have Māori ancestry they can speak for Māori is ludicrous. Their voter base were 95 percent non-Māori who are now sitting back knowing they will be taken care of by this coalition at the expense of Māori.

So the problem we have with this new government is the fact that white folk know better than brown folk on all matters and therefore we have to be subjugated and treated as second class citizens because we know no better.

The net result of that is you are going to have to hire more police; you are going to have to build more prisons and you are going to have to manage the Māori population by way of a criminal justice system. That’s the net result of all of their policies.

There is some nervousness because this is a three pronged attack on Māori. What’s the response of Māori to that? It lies with where they voted. The mandate was with a very strong liberated Māori voice to oppose those three parties.

What we as a people have to do is demonstrate who we are, where we are and not just what we’ve achieved, but show we are worth equal treatment in this country. That is something that is not going to come easy to us, and we know it. We are nowhere near arriving at the equality promised by the Treaty of Waitangi. We are nowhere near the retention of our rangatiratanga and yet we have a kawanatanga in there who want to try and turn back 35 years of all this pain and suffering of my parents, your parents and our grandparents.

It is not going be done easily over the top of us. I don’t have any trepidation, but to have to be forced to lower ourselves just to stand up for ourselves is the unacceptable nature of what’s going to happen shortly in this country.

In oppressive times like these come opportunities and it tests the leadership, the metal and the resources of Māori up and down the country. We will soon see who has the stomach and the backbone to keep this coalition honest, but more importantly to protect our people against it.

Just because some people in National, ACT and NZ First have whakapapa Māori, it’s not a proxy to say they can hammer other Māori. That’s Uncle Tom on steroids, that’s collaboration with the oppressor. That’s assimilation. Maranga mai e te iwi.