Co-Governance is still quietly bubbling away

Whether it knows it or not --whether by Coalition design or by bureaucratic subterfuge -- it appears that legal implementation for co-governance has been strengthened under this Government's term rather than diminished.

A recent post pointed out that the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights, the underpinning that creeping implementation, was a poison pill quietly smuggled in with the Indian Free Trade Agreement (FTA ). It was Gary Judd KC who spotted the clause in the signed Agreement calling on the parties to "affirm" NZ's commitment to this race-base Declaration. As Judd notes this morning, this is an escalation on previous Free Trade Agreements with the UK, which called for the parties to "note" the commitment, and with the EU to "further note." 

This is not simply harmless playing around with words. In legal terms, as Judd himself notes, it is "a significant escalation."

And it's not the only escalation towards co-governance. 

Remember that what underpinned the moves made by Ardern's Labour Government towards co-governance -- towards sharing government power with tribal leaders -- was that UN Declaration. That gave legal strength towards their quiet moves towards what Elizabeth Rata calls "re-tribalisation."

In 2007, the position of Helen Clark's Government was in opposition. Clark was many things, but she wasn't stupid.

John Key was. In 2010, his Government sent Pita Sharples to the UN to "support" it. That "support," when ratified here, underpinned the Ardern Government's support for He Puapua and for every flavour of co-governance emerging since.

And then in 2023, Hipkins's Government moved from endorsing the UN Declaration to a commitment “to upholding the rights affirmed in the Declaration.” These weren't just a small change in words. As a result, the Hipkins's Government then sought advice “to support the drafting of a plan to achieve the ends of the UN Declaration in Aotearoa New Zealand.” Those ends, of course, called for "self-determination" for so-called indigenous people. As Judd explains it, this is when "Non-binding aspirations morphed into affirmed [legal] rights." Once the NZ Government regarded self-determination as a cornerstone of the UN Declaration it then meant tribal participation in government decision making.

As the New Zealanders who claim indigenous status are Māori and governmental decisions affect all New Zealanders including Māori, this means the New Zealand position had become one where Māori should have the right to participate in all or most decision making. That is co-governance between a democratically elected government for all New Zealanders and Māori. Māori protocols ensure they are represented by an essentially self-selected elite.

Words, in politics, are so much fluff. Words, in law, do matter. 

[B]y the affirmations of the declaration and New Zealand’s position, has confirmed that the UN Declaration has binding status (for that’s the meaning of affirm in legal parlance) with a double whammy by confirming New Zealand’s position when that position at the UN and in international law is the July 2023 position.

The Minister and MFAT officials may try to justify themselves by claiming that New Zealand saying in an international agreement that it is bound by the UN Declaration and committed to upholding the rights contained in it is not the same as acknowledging that it has binding effect in New Zealand but that is sophistry which will not wash.

For reasons given in [my earlier post], there is little doubt that the courts will take the affirmations for what they plainly are: New Zealand’s acceptance that the UN Declaration is binding such that its principles may be utilised in the interpretation of legislation and as influencing the common law.

As Rata says in her own post on this, "today's politicians [should] look closely at all re-tribalisation language." Especially if it is being smuggled in through political stealth.

The poison pill smuggled in with the Indian FTA

Another Constitutional Trojan Horse: advancing change through political stealth

FOR ALL THE FOOLISH NONSENSE about "tsunamis" talked about the Indian-NZ Free Trade Deal, there is a genuine issue that Gary Judd KC has identified in reading through it, and it's not about free trade or butter chicken. It's about a poisonous clause inserted at the obvious behest of the NZ negotiators. 

"The striking feature of this Free-Trade Agreement," notes Judd, "is that it brings the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into the text of a trade treaty. That is not a side issue. It is a political and constitutional declaration inserted into an agreement that is supposed to be about trade. ... New Zealand’s Free-Trade Agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union refer to indigenous rights and Māori participation. But the India agreement goes further. It is the first to affirm UNDRIP expressly. That is a significant escalation."

Why the hell is it there?

Everything points to this UNDRIP wording having been included at New Zealand’s initiative, not India’s. India appears to have agreed only on condition that its longstanding reservation was recorded. There is no obvious reason why India would want UNDRIP written into a trade agreement with New Zealand. ...

If it truly changed nothing, it would not be there. The obvious reason for including it is not trade with India but politics within New Zealand. A trade agreement is being used to advance a domestic constitutional and political agenda. That is an abuse of the treaty-making process. A provision with no real trade function, but clear ideological value at home, has no legitimate place in a Free-Trade Agreement.

Once this affirmation is in a ratified treaty, it will inevitably be invoked inside New Zealand as proof that the country is committed to UNDRIP in a serious and operative way, not merely in some airy symbolic sense. Lawyers, activists and judges will be invited to treat it as yet another marker of state commitment. To dismiss that as mere technicality would be naive.

You'll remember that Helen Clark, as Prime Minister, was astute enough to have her UN representative vote against the Declaration -- one of only four nations to oppose.  (As Judd notes: "India voted in favour (see here) but immediately made it clear that it did so subject to an important reservation. That same reservation now reappears in the FTA.")

It was John Key who blithely acceded to signing up simply in order to bolster his parliamentary support from Pita Sharples's Maori Party. 

What Key casually signed away was not trivial, as we saw when Ardern's Labour Government began drawing up the He Puapua document under UNDRIP's impetus. "He Puapua is not a minor discussion paper," Judd reminds us. "It is a blueprint for major constitutional change, including forms of co-governance. One example is paragraph 15: 'If they choose, Maori must be able to participate in Crown governance."

Clark's objection to the Declaration was principled, and what Clark's UN representative  Rosemary Banks said about it then is as valid now: Four provisions in the Declaration in particular were [and still are] "fundamentally incompatible with New Zealand’s constitutional and legal arrangements, [with] the Treaty of Waitangi, and [with] the principle of governing for the good of all its citizens."

What were those four provisions?

• Article 26 stated that indigenous peoples had a right to own, use, develop or control lands and territories that they had traditionally owned, occupied or used. For New Zealand, the entire country was potentially caught within the scope of the article, which appeared to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous, and did not take into account the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned. The article, furthermore, implied that indigenous peoples had rights that others did not have.
• The entire country would also appear to fall within the scope of article 28 on redress and compensation. The text generally took no account of the fact that land might now be occupied or owned legitimately by others, or subject to numerous different or overlapping indigenous claims.
• Finally, the Declaration['s articles 19 and 32] implied that indigenous peoples had a right of veto over a democratic legislature and national resource management, she said. She strongly supported the full and active engagement of indigenous peoples in democratic decision-making processes. New Zealand also had some of the most extensive consultation mechanisms in the world. But the articles in the Declaration implied different classes of citizenship, where indigenous had a right to veto that other groups or individuals did not have.

In short, the Declaration set up two standards of citizenship based on race, and a legal veto over other's property based on ancestry. Clark understood that. Key was too dim.

And so too are Luxon and Todd McClay, who either called for this clause's insertion in the Indian FTA themselves, or were insufficiently astute to have seen it there and taken out.

The He Puapua programme itself was begun without explicit acknowledgement of its goals. Those goals, indeed its very existence, were only revealed when it began to seem that some underlying framework was at play in Willy Jackson's and Nanaia Mahuta's legislative agenda.  Turns out there was. Media organisations uncovered the document, who then obtained it under the Official Information Act, and it was finally released only in April 2021 after pressure from the Ombudsman. "That is not transparent government," points out Judd. "It is disclosure dragged out by resistance."

The irony is that the same thing is happening here. 

Neither Government appears ready to argue openly for setting up two standards of citizenship based on race and ancestry.

Instead, they have to do it by stealth.

Gary Judd explains the danger in detail here, including illustrations "why ratifying the FTA in its present form is not a harmless gesture." I recommend the read.

He concludes:

What is most objectionable in all this is the contempt it shows for ordinary New Zealanders. Constitutional change of this magnitude should be argued for openly, defended honestly and submitted to democratic judgment. Instead, it has been advanced by ministers, officials and sympathetic elites through opaque processes, delayed disclosure and legal increment. That is no way to alter the foundations of a country.

The obvious remedy is greater democratic control. If politicians, officials or judges wish to drive constitutional change, they should have to defend it before the public in clear terms and win consent for it, not smuggle it through advisory reports, bureaucratic process or the fine print of a trade treaty.

That is the real issue raised by this agreement: not trade, but whether constitutional change in New Zealand will occur by democratic choice or by political stealth.

"The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves"

"It has become starkly obvious that the Maori seats are being used by activists to [ghettoise Māori: to isolate them, separate them, cut them off, according to a cultural identity]. ...

"Ghettoisation can be done to a person or group, or people or groups can do it to themselves. ...

"Israr Kasana, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the Canadian city of Calgary, explains why he and his family rejected the temptation to adopt the comfortable way of establishing themselves within a Pakistani community. He says 'Ghettoisation or marginalisation of any kind is bad for society. It creates exclusion, imbalance, envy, anger, ignorance and, more importantly, distrust.' ...

"The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves according to cultural identity, whereas what we must surely want is a society in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law." ...

"[Then National leader Bill] English said [in 2003] the National Party 'stands for one standard of citizenship for all.' ... 'That’s why a National-led Government will abolish the Maori seats.” Of course, it did nothing of the sort when National came back into government in 2008 under John Key. Instead, the Key government abetted the infiltration of all parts of New Zealand society by elements who would substitute authoritarian tribal rule for a free and democratic society, a process which was accelerated by the Ardern/Hipkins governments. ...

"Under pressure from ACT and New Zealand First, the coalition government has walked this back a bit but not to the extent needed to offer meaningful restraint of the authoritarian tendencies which unthinking acquiescence by most of us has unwittingly allowed. ...

"Leadership is needed. We need a Prime Minister who will say loudly and clearly what English said in 2003 ... Today, when NZ First has advanced a Bill for a referendum and ACT says get rid of the Maori seats now, the opportunity is ripe for that sort of leadership.

"Getting rid of the seats, especially by or endorsed by referendum to show it is peoples’ will, would not only remove an anti-democratic excrescence, but also be a signal that enough is enough and that henceforth we shall be a 'multiracial society [where] people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law.'

"Yet the National Party is silent. ..."

~ Gary Judd, composite quote from his posts 'Ghettoising the mind' and 'National could signal its support for democracy'

SOME HISTORY: 

"[T]he Māori seats were created to bring Māori into the parliamentary system and guarantee representation, rather than exclude them.
 

"By 1867, when the Māori Representation Act 1867(1) passed, Europeans outnumbered Māori roughly four to one. ...

"The Māori seats addressed a real problem: under the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 [2] voting required individual property or household qualification. Most Māori land was communally held, leaving Māori largely unable to meet the franchise. ...

The Māori electorates solved the voting problem by granting all Māori men over 21 the right to vote, decades before universal male suffrage applied elsewhere in New Zealand [3]. Far from limiting Māori rights, the law expanded them. ...

"The seats also guaranteed meaningful participation. Four electorates—three in the North Island, one for the South—were superimposed over existing electorates. Māori with qualifying property could still vote in European electorates, giving many a dual vote. [4] Officials went to extraordinary lengths to ensure participation: in 1890, a returning officer undertook a six-day trek through dense Urewera bush to establish a polling station at Maungapōhatu. [5] Such efforts are hardly consistent with a strategy to suppress Māori voices. ...

"Seats were originally intended as temporary until Māori qualified under the general property franchise [6] ...

"While Māori were under-represented by modern proportional standards [when the Māori seats were created in 1867, each European electorate represented roughly 3,500 people, while each Māori electorate represented around 12,500 people [7]], the four seats ensured guaranteed parliamentary representation, at a time when European immigration was rapidly outpacing Māori numbers. This was enfranchisement, not suppression.' ...

"However today the original rationale for the Māori electorates has disappeared. In the current Parliament 33 MPs identify as having Māori heritage — about 27% of the House — far exceeding Māori’s roughly 17% share of the population. Even without the seven reserved seats, Māori representation would remain substantial, the historical purpose of the Māori electorates has now been fulfilled and, consistent with the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System and with Article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi, they should now be abolished in favour of equal representation for all voters."

NOTES

1. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats

2. New Zealand Parliament, “History of the Electoral System,” https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/history/history-of-the-electoral-system/

3. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
4. McRobie, Alan, Electoral Atlas of New Zealand, GP Books, 1989.
5. New Zealand History, “Polling in isolated Māori communities,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
6. Ibid.; New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats

7. Te Ara, “Māori representation,” https://teara.govt.nz/en/nga-mangai-maori-representation

More than a covid's-worth of fiscal incontinence

"[W]hen the pandemic hit Ardern and Robertson had a decision to make. Respond in a fiscally prudent manner or borrow seventy billion, at least thirty of this was spent on non-pandemic frippery, and wrap themselves in a cloak of virtue while leaving an economic calamity to a future set of politicians. ...

"Ardern and Robertson used the pandemic to advance their own agenda ... [John] Key saw a crisis and, lacking an economic agenda or political philosophy, ran to the international money men to maintain the status quo rather than attempt meaningful reform.

"Given the content of the Covid Report the current government is right to highlight Robertson’s fiscal incontinence; pointing to the 70.4 billion total spend as a contrast with their own rectitude.

"Except. Well. ... [Nicola] Willis, who has managed to add over twenty billion new debt in her first two years in office, is projected to increase sovereign debt by more than Robertson achieved over the next five years.

"And this is without a pandemic, major earthquake or outbreak of foot and mouth. ...

"Imagine a company director who has seen revenue fall but maintains payroll by borrowing. Eventually the line of credit ends, staff lose their employment and the director is forced to sell the family home.

"That is our economic policy in one paragraph."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'John Key and Jacinda Ardern both turned to debt when disaster hit'

National is a party for business. For *specific* businesses.

"[S]ince we begin this week’s column at this beautiful [convention centre] let’s take a moment to remind ourselves how it was paid for...

"John Key wanted a convention centre. Since he couldn’t get a flag he needed something to show for his eight years in power. To induce SkyCity to build him a legacy, his government increased the number of permitted slot machines, extended their license, and gave the listed operator a regional monopoly until 2048.

"This is how National believe economics is done. Deals. Haggling. Concessions. Foreign visits and handshakes with oligarchs. National is not a party of free enterprise, it is the party of business."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'ACT is in a death match with NZ First, and the stakes couldn’t be higher'

Pay no attention to the (mad) men behind the curtain [updated]

Readers here might remember I got some stick for calling John Key a fucking moron a while back. A fucking moron, specifically, for repeated calls for the Reserve Bank to juice up house prices again, just so home-owning voters will feel better again. Feel better again, and then vote National.

"The guts of what’s wrong," explained the moron, "is that the housing market is going down, not up" — and "then you have a negative wealth effect," and voters feel bad. And when they feel bad, they vote for the other team.

Classic short-termism.  Stuff rocket fuel into the economy, and then all things will be jake for the governing political parties. This, by the way, was Key's "one simple trick" while Prime Minister: ensure massive house-price inflation, no matter the economic and social dislocation, and then sit back and watch home-owners fooled into feeling better off, and borrowing and consuming more, regardless of the economic consequences. (Consequences for which we're all still paying, by the way.)

In the US, the discredited "wealth effect" — "a gussied-up version of Keynesian stimulus, only targeted at the prosperous classes rather than the government’s client classes" — is generally felt in the stock market. Pundits there are starting to get nervous about a soaring stock market with anaemic growth in the economic system itself, with "important implications for the path of America’s stockmarket boom and its economy."

The good times could continue, at least for a bit longer [says 'The Economist']. ... [But] might a wealthier society also take a harder fall? Bears would point to the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000, when a brutal stockmarket slump pushed America into recession. ... The stockmarket might be more of the economy. It still is not all of it.

It's not. And nor is the housing market. We can't get rich just by selling each other houses. (And kudos to one National minister at least who understands that.)

Yet David Stockman is concerned that nothing has been learned from the last major crash. 

Roughly 15 years ago it was reasonably well understood that the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 had been case of speculation run amuck on both Wall Street and main street alike. These credit and housing bubbles, in turn, had been fuelled by the massive money-printing sprees of the Greenspan and Bernanke Fed.

It might have been presumed, therefore, that the mad money-printers [at the US central bank] would have had second thoughts about the underlying cause of these great economic disasters—that is, the dubious Greenspan policy known as the “wealth effects” doctrine. In simple terms the latter held that if people felt richer owing to soaring home prices and their stock market winnings, they would spend more freely and fulsomely, thereby goosing the Keynesian cycle of ever more spending-sales-production-income-and spending, which was to be rinsed and repeated in an endless round of rising prosperity.

At the end of the day, of course, Greenspan and his heirs and assigns at the Fed turned out to be unreconstructed Keynesians and the wealth effects doctrine a monumental economic con job. The latter did not make society richer; it just made the rich richer. Or stated more directly, main street got inflation at the grocery store, gas pump and doctor’s office—even as the asset-holding class experienced unspeakable windfalls in their brokerage accounts.

Let's not repeat the same mistake again here — especially when local interest rates are already below our trading partners, with no noticeable effect on genuine economic progress. Please: pay no attention to the mad men behind the curtain.

UPDATE:

"The advocates of annual increases in the quantity of money never mention the fact that for all those who do not get a share of the newly created additional quantity of money, the government's action means a drop in their purchasing power which forces them to restrict their consumption. It is ignorance of this fundamental fact that induces various authors of economic books and articles to suggest a yearly increase of money without realising that such a measure necessarily brings about an undesirable impoverishment of a great part, even the majority, of the population."

~ Ludwig von Mises from an interview 'On Current Monetary Problems'

"The apocalypse was always a decade away. ."

"In 2006, Al Gore’s 'An Inconvenient Truth' was peak climate fear-mongering.

"He showed maps of cities underwater, claiming melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica would displace hundreds of millions. He said our maps 'would have to be redrawn.'

[He brought his map porn to New Zealand in 2006,  John Key confessing afterwards "all his buttons had been pushed" having undergone a Damascene conversion at the feet of Al Gore's slides.]

"18 years later, none of it has happened. Not even close. The apocalypse was always a decade away. 

"Meanwhile, the man selling the panic got rich. Very rich. 

"While you were told to feel guilty and lower your standard of living, Al Gore built a $300+ million personal fortune from the climate industrial complex. 

"He became the first 'climate billionaire.' 

"He made his money from: 

• Green investment funds (Generation Investment Management) 
• Board seats & advisory roles 
• Massive speaking fees ($200k+ per speech) 
• Carbon credit trading 

"He didn't save the planet. He monetised your anxiety. 

"The truth is, the predictions were always more profitable than they were accurate."

~ Camus

Helen Clark & John Key: Politically and historically tone-deaf [UPDATE]

It's hard to overstate how politically and historically tone-deaf Helen Clark & John Key are for showing up at a Chinese Communist Party "victory" party, complete with the world's biggest dictators, celebrating the end of the Second World War.

Politically tone-deaf for all the many reasons rolled out by mainstream commentators: being responsible for cementing New Zealand's free-trade deal with China (for which much credit to both) doesn't require attending the biggest Asian military parade since the Japanese army rolled into Manchuria.

Far from any credit going to Mao Zedong's Communist Party for resisting that invasion, it was instead the CCP's salvation. It gave them their best chance of survival, which they grabbed with both hands.

Far from fighting a patriotic war, Mao's rabble instead withdrew into Yenan, coming back from near-extinction far from the war zone while lighting joss sticks and praying to Marx for the destruction of Chiang Kai-Shek's Republican army at the hands of the Japanese.

So it wasn't "China" that fought off the Japanese. Because by and large the only "China" fighting there  was Chiang Kai-Shek's Republican army, forced to fight the Japanese invasion while Mao's forces largely sat on their hands hoping for the best—keeping their powder dry ready for the civil war they started after the Japanese surrender and the exhaustion of Chiang Kai-Shek's army. 

After resting up for several years while building its materiel and men, on the very day following Japanese surrender in China Mao's party headquarters issued orders to advance — taking over the country from north to south, finally seizing full control in 1949. (You can read all about the sorry tale in Anthony Kubek's brilliant How the Far East Was Lost.)

That neither Helen Clark nor John Key appeared to know anything about that history says very little for either, but their attendance at the revisionist parade would bring a quiet chuckle to Chinese organisers delivering the Big Lie to an international audience.

It would be even worse if Clark or Key did know the real history. That would be worse than a disgrace. It would be damning.

A brief history of Victory Day: 

• 1937-45: Kuomintang (KMT) exhausts itself fighting Imperial Japan. CCP "hides its strength bides its time." 
• 1945: Imperial Japan surrenders. 
• 1947: US cuts back on aid to KMT. 
• 1949: CCP, supported by Stalin, defeats an exhausted KMT. Captures China by Oct 1. KMT flees to Taiwan.

UPDATE: Historically tone-deaf to the CCP's stolen valour (the point of the cartoon above), and politically inept: just consider how the Financial Times, for example, summarises the event that Key and Clark endorsed. In short, it wasn't about free trade :

Chinese President Xi Jinping was selling his vision for a new world order this week. Hosting a regional security summit on Monday, Xi called on attendees including India’s Narendra Modi — Trump’s latest tariff target — and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to join China in leveraging their economic influence to challenge the west.

Bolstering that message was a massive military parade in Beijing yesterday ... to show off the latest weaponry in China’s arsenal. Xi was joined by fellow strongmen Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — the first time all three leaders have been in one place.

15 YEARS AGO: Here's how Key helped fuel the gravy-train

One advantage of having blogged so long is having written about so many things.

One disadvantage of having blogged so long is watching things you've warned about being ignored.  Here's from 2010, with Eric Crampton's warning in particular now looking especially prescient....

AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED, the Government you voted for has signed you up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—something Helen Clark herself was opposed to, citing fears it would create “two classes of citizenship and … give indigenous people veto rights over laws made by Parliament.” 

But we already have two legal classes of  citizen, don’t we—something confirmed by Doug Graham when, as Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations, he told taxpayers, “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better." 

So one law for all is officially dead. Pita Sharples grand-standing announcement merely throws another shovelful of dirt on that particular colour-blind aspiration. 

Instead, we now have another aspiration. One endorsed by your government without any conditions whatsoever, despite John Key’s insistence that the Declaration itself is “aspirational and non-binding.” 

Now naturally, Hone Harawira and co have a different view.  Hone has already been on radio insisting the Declaration will be used to support a gravy train of claims for other people’s property, and for truckloads of taxpayers’ money—and one suspects he speaks for many others when he says that, including those who will sit in judgement on such claims. 

And Mai Chen, eager to get in on the gravy, insists the declaration will “have an impact.”

   "‘Declarations … are international obligations and they do form part of the backdrop, the context within which courts do interpret, but it's not just courts its the Waitangi Tribunal and its also direct negotiations… [T]he entire country would appear to fall within the scope of the article, and [the text of the Declaration] generally takes no account of the fact that the land might be occupied or owned legitimately by others.’ 
    “Ms Chen said the Declaration would 'shape Maori expectations in negotiations.”

And the Declaration itself begins by affirming its “good faith in the fulfilment of the obligations assumed by States in accordance with the Charter.” 

So one suspects that this government signing up to the Declaration is going to involve more than just a little “aspirational” window-dressing. 

SO WHAT DOES IT CONTAIN,THIS DECLARATION? It should be no surprise to find that a UN Declaration with “rights” in the title contains a welter of manufactured “rights” that trample over genuine rights.  And if it were simply an enumeration of genuine rights—rights to life, liberty, free speech, the pursuit of property and happiness—it would hardly need the modifier “rights of indigenous people” added to it, as if by virtue of their indigeneity some individuals are more endowed with rights than others. 

As if to confirm that, The Declaration’s preamble talks about being “the basis for a strengthened partnership between indigenous peoples and States”—affirming as clearly as one could that “there are laws for one & laws for another.” 

It speaks of affirming to “peoples their right to self-determination”—ignoring that such a right pertains only to individuals, not to a collective. 

And the Declaration itself outlines specific “rights” which it says shall be upheld by “the States” which have affirmed it: 

• “the right [of indigenous people] to freely determine their political status”

Which “right” is a recipe for separatism.

• “the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs”

Which “right” is a guarantee that separatism will be upheld by “the State.”

• “the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture… States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for [this]”

Which “right” requires the State to subsidise for ever whatever parts of indigenous culture claimants will assert are being destroyed.

• “the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation, in accordance with the traditions and customs of the community or nation concerned”

The “right” to subsidised separatism, in whatever form of tribalism that will manifest itself.

• “the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.”

A “right” to the subsidised education of tribalism and mysticism, and to the re-naming of New Zealand.

• “States shall … take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children… to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.”

The “right” to kohanga reo for ever.

• “the right to establish their own media in their own languages”

The “right” to Maori TV for ever.

• “the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions.”
  
• “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

The explicit creation of two classes of citizenship, and the “right” to veto that Helen Clark was so concerned about.

• “the right … to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including, inter alia, in the areas of education, employment, vocational training and retraining, housing, sanitation, health and social security. 
  States shall take effective measures and, where appropriate, special measures to ensure continuing improvement of their economic and social conditions…”

The “right” to special racist welfare. 

• “the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources”

The “right” to dream up a new basis of land claim for any part of New Zealand whatsoever.

• the right "to own use, develop or control lands and territories they have traditionally owned, occupied or used"

As New Zealand's former permanent representative to the UN, diplomat Rosemary Banks, says “the entire country was potentially caught within the scope of that article. ‘The article appears to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous ... Furthermore, this article implies indigenous peoples have rights that others do not.’"

• “the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensation, for the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.”

Providing the basis for a whole new cycle of claimants to ride a new gravy train. 

I COULD GO ON, BUT I suspect you already get the point. 

This is simply a whole litany of bogus “rights” with which the Hone Harawiras and Tame Itis of this country will have a field day.  For them and their lawyers, this is like Christmas in April. 

The affirmation of these bogus rights is John Key writing a blank cheque on taxpayers to buy the Maori Party for a generation. And just in case you think this isn’t the sound of someone putting their hand in your pocket, take a look at Article 39…

    “Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to financial and technical assistance from States and through international cooperation, for the enjoyment of the rights contained in this Declaration.”

The Declaration is nothing less than a manifesto for subsidised separatism. 

As Ayn Rand said of a similar list of entitlements “rights”: 

    “A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense?     “[These so-called rights] do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?     “If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.     “Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.”

Take note here that “The State” itself has no money of its own—every dollar must first be taken from others. The bogus “rights” affirmed here, to which New Zealand is now a signatory, require of taxpayers that they provide a cradle-to-grave ATM machine for whatever tribalists want, including the property of taxpayers, creating “two classes of citizenship and … giving indigenous people veto rights over laws made by Parliament,” just as Helen Clark feared it would. 

One law for all is officially dead. 

And parliament’s One-Law-For-All party?  The party propping up a government giving tribalists more even than Helen Clark was prepared to? What about them? Fear not, punters, for fearless leader Rodney Hide says the Declaration and the secrecy with which it was announced “is not a deal-breaker." 

Given what ACT supporters have already swallowed, one wonders if anything ever would be.

NB: Eric Crampton sees informative parallels “between New Zealand signing on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and Canada's constitutional wranglings over Quebec as a'"Distinct Society'." 

    “In the Canadian case, folks inside Quebec had the impression that being granted ‘distinct society’ would give them everything they ever hoped for (at least during the Meech negotiations) while folks outside Quebec were told it ‘means dick.’ Here, Key says signing the Declaration is meaningless; Hone says it's powerful.     “If this starts working its way into judicial and regulatory decisions, Parliament would have to come in and explicitly state that it was the intention of Parliament that the Declaration is a legal nullity; Parliament would be unlikely to do that as it would be a pretty big slap to Maori…”

John Key is still a fucking moron

Cartoon by Richard McGrail from The Free Radical

I've been reminded this morning about what a clueless fucking moron we had as a Prime Minister for two-and-a-half terms. Back a few years ago when we were "rock stars." Remember that?

Anyway, here's John Fucking Key last month giving his considered analysis of what's wrong with New Zealand's economy now:

"The guts of what’s wrong is that the housing market is going down, not up,' he said.
    “When house prices go up, everybody tells the pollsters, ‘Oh that’s terrible, my son or daughter can’t buy a house. I feel really bad.’ The technical term for that is ‘bullshit’.
    “What they really do, is they say to their wife – or the wife says to her husband – ‘God, we paid $1 million for this house and it’s worth $1.7 million now.’ Quietly they go, ‘Oh, we feel rich’.
    “And then they go and borrow a bit from the ANZ and they go on holiday and they upgrade their kitchen, they feel good about life. So when you have a negative wealth effect, they feel bad.”

And I bet the roomful of home owners and property "investors" and National Party political advisors — no to mention all his former colleagues on the ANZ board —had a smug little chuckle into their at their man's shrewd witticisms. It's hard to know where to begin at his economic acumen however, 'cos apparently it's never begun.

Let's make it simple, since that's the best description of Key's grasp of things. Trump's been called a fucking moron for not understanding the economic destruction of tariffs. And rightly so. But Trump doesn't pretend to be in any way clued up about economics. Key does. And yet the fucking moron apparently knows nothing about a simple enough concept: capital consumption. It's a process of converting someone else’s wealth into your income.

And this is his one simple trick to fix the fucking economy.

You wouldn't believe it.

Here's what the fucking moron either doesn't know, or doesn't care to know.

That fucking "wealth effect" the moron talks about is paid for by one thing: it's paid for by eating the fucking seed corn. The seed corn is the part of your harvest you put aside to plant again next year. Without that seed corn, you have nothing to plant, and nothing further to harvest. What Key wants to "fix" the economy, the simple guts of it, is for is to eat the fucking seed corn. That's his recipe for success. 

Any fucking moron could get a "wealth effect" (and a poll bump) by consuming the seed corn.  But ultimately the farmer will pay a price; he'll no longer have anything to farm.

Fellow on the right enjoys Key's "wealth effect." Not so much farmers on the left.

But the difference in what Key proposes is even worse: he wants home owners to consumer other people's seed corn. Hayek used to call this "forced saving." Savers have to save more, or else, because the "seed corn" being consumed is theirs. 

Here's the thing: When mum and dad borrow a bit from the ANZ and go on holiday and upgrade their kitchen and put in another fucking ensuite, that's paid for by what was, or would have been, accumulated capital. The accumulated capital of those other savers. It's called "forced saving" because what pays for John Key's fucking borrowing is new counterfeit capital: i.e., new money that's been borrowed into existence to pay for the holiday, the new kitchen, the fucking ensuite. That counterfeit capital means savers are forced to save more just to keep up.

That's because this new borrowing is new money "injected into the economic system at a specific point" that advantages those consuming the counterfeit capital while disadvantaging those trying to save.

If the money or credit were evenly distributed among all economic agents, no “expansionary” effect would appear, except the decrease in the purchasing power of the monetary unit in proportion to the rise in the quantity of money. 

However if the new money enters the market at certain specific points, as always occurs, then in reality a relatively small number of economic agents initially receive the new loans. Thus these economic agents temporarily enjoy greater purchasing power, given that they possess a larger number of monetary units with which to buy goods and services at market prices that still have not felt the full impact of the inflation and therefore have not yet risen.

The purchasing power of these home-owners is paid for by the losses of savers. 

Hence the process gives rise to a redistribution of income in favour of those who first receive the new injections or doses of monetary units, to the detriment of the rest of society, who find that with the same monetary income, the prices of goods and services begin to go up. “Forced saving” affects this second group of economic agents (the majority), since their monetary income grows at a slower rate than prices, and they are therefore obliged to reduce their consumption, other things being equal.

In a nutshell Key's quick-fix for poll-driven success, and economic growth, is to grant home-owners purchasing power by quietly, secretly and unobserved, stealing from savers. ("By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." ~ John Maynard Keynes)

Recall that he said something similar when the problem erupted of paying to repair leaky homes. He said quite bluntly, not to worry,  inflation would fix that. Remember that when housing unaffordability was bad before he took office, and he promised to fix it. He didn't, of course. Instead, he did everything he could to put rocket fucking fuel under house prices. It would, he claimed, 'fix" the problem of paying for the problem. 

This prick has form.

He's either a calculating Machiavellian.

Or he's pig ignorant.

My money's on the latter.

RELATED:

• Key on housing affordability and elsewhere - NOT PC, 2007
• Counterfeit capital - NOT PC, 2008
• Mr Key’s dirty little secret - NOT PC, 2009
• We’re rock stars! - NOT PC, 2014
• How Do People Destroy Capital? - Keith Weiner, SNBCHF, 2015
• Housing bubble is consuming our capital - NOT PC, 2015
• The Reserve Bank’s war on capital - NOT PC, 2016
• Key admits to ‘crisis theatre’ and talks up house-price inflation - NOT PC, 2016
• John Key has had an unbelievable solution for affordable housing - NOT PC, 2017

John Key: "...he served himself and not the nation."

Cartoon by Richard McGrail from The Free Radical

"Something which has puzzled me in recent years is the ... dismissive attitude to the John Key government as wasted years. ... The light dawned when 'The Herald' published an astonishingly ignorant but revealing article by Key on why, if an American he’d vote for Trump. ... In a nutshell Key said ... Trump’s promised tax cuts would suffice to determine his vote.
    "The extraordinary thing about Key’s article was its astonishing shallowness. ... 
    "It was only after reading Key’s article that I finally comprehended [the] steadfast derision for the Key years, specifically the wasted opportunity to make meaningful and desired changes ...
    "His likeable affability aided by a wallowing Labour Party saw him able to coast along, enjoying being Prime Minister but blowing the opportunity to make meaningful change. In that sense he served himself and not the nation and ... condemnation has been 100% correct.
    "It’s now evident Key saw being Prime Minister solely in the context of a personal career highlight experience rather than any wider desire to build a better nation."

~ Bob Jones from his post. [Link added]

Foreshore and Seabed issues aren't going away

So they're doing it again.

Anyone — anyone! — has the moral right to assert their ownership of something — and, under a common law system, they have the ability to go to court to try to prove that assertion. To make their claim. (Or try to.)

Common law recognises that not all legitimate claims to land or water use or ownership come as grants from a fictional entity called "the crown." Instead, it recognises the imperfection of that system, and allows claims to be made on occupation, on long use, on recognised practices.

Our common-law system however has been so buried by statute law that it's now hard to find it. And in recent years successive governments of both hues have been desperate to avoid anyone — anyone! — making any sort of common-law based claim of ownership.

That seems to go double for iwi.

The kerfuffle over foreshore and seabed began when Helen Clark rejected the right to Ngati Apa to go to court to try to assert its right to part of the Marlborough foreshore and seabed based on long use and occupation. She decided instead to nationalise it, trumping both court and claim. Ironically now, she sent out John Tamihere to sell the poisonous solution to unwilling Māori buyers.

Bear in mind Ngati Apa were simply arguing for the right to appear in court to try to make a claim. (As they and others of every hue were fully entitled to.) But that was enough for Clark.

The rights rort continued with the John Key Government's further politicisation of the foreshore and seabed, coming up with a bastardised replacement of the Clark Government's Foreshore and Seabed Act that tried to square an illegitimate circle.

Didn't work, said the Court of Appeal last year. Property rights remain legitimate even in the absence of government recognition, they suggested. And iwi, they agreed, are entitled the chance to claim legitimate rights in court (even if National's replacement Act bars full recognition).* And so the Luxon Government is now all a-scramble trying to keep the illegitimate cork in the bottle, acting to legislate away the court's decision.

It's not a good legal look.

Ironically (ironies abound here) the politician promoting the politically-expedient pre-emption, Paul Goldsmith, is a historian by profession. I can't help wondering how different New Zealand's history may have been if principled common law had won out over political expediency over the last one-hundred and eighty-five years.

We may be a different, and better. place for it.

* * * * 

* No Right Turn summarises the court decision, and National's (over) reaction: 

"The decision ... basically reinterpreted section 58 of National's Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act to make it consistent with its purpose clause and te Tiriti o Waitangi by allowing "shared exclusivity" according to tikanga. The upshot is that it would become significantly easier for iwi and hapū to gain customary marine title over their foresore and seabed - a fact confirmed in subsequent court decisions. National doesn't want that to happen - in fact, they don't want Māori to be able to gain customary title at all, despite what they promised Te Pāti Māori when they passed the law in 2011 - and so they plan to legislate it away (which they disguise as "restoring the intent of Parliament" - which is effectively an admission that they dealt in bad faith with their coalition partner in 2011). Of course, they're pitching this as being about beach access, like they always have, even though that is not and never was under threat. But they're quite open in the Herald about what its really about: protecting the aquaculture industry. So Māori rights are going to be sacrificed to protect National's donors and cronies. Which sounds just a little corrupt."

It does a bit, doesn't it.

As I've said before, when the Foreshore & Seabed Act was repealed, it should have just been left where it was at before.

And where it was at before was with Maori needing to prove to the courts that they possessed a common law property right in their portion of NZ’s foreshore & seabed. And if they could prove such a right to a legal standard of proof, then why on earth should anyone object?

What could possibly be wrong with recognising the right of people to claim the property in which they have a right? Everyone, including divers, miners, aquaculture owners, and iwi.

What could possibly be wrong with the protection of property in which people can prove that right, which is all that a repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act could have done.

And that’s all there really is to it. See how uncomplicated it really is? Or could still be.