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Why are conspiratorial parties so worked up about co-governance?
Co-governance between Māori and the Crown has a long history in this country. So why has it been turned into an election issue for conspiracy theorist parties and an apocalyptic vision by an end-times preacher?
Co-governance is a term referring to a range of ways to have Iwi representation on the governance boards of natural resource management and local government bodies. It is difficult to discuss co-governance in absolute terms as there are many implementations of the concept.
Co-governance aims to honour New Zealand’s commitments to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi by involving iwi and hapu in decision making at the highest level.
Like any political issue there are reasonable and unreasonable critiques to make of co-governance. This article is concerned with the extreme, fanciful and apocalyptic claims made by the loudest, most reactionary voices that try to dominate this debate by weaponising conspiracy theories.
“Co-Governance is code for the takeover of New Zealand by tribal companies and their representatives, the end of democracy, the installation of apartheid and separatism into everyday life, leading eventually to full blown government by tribal rule.” – STOP CO-GOVERNANCE: What it is, why it’s wrong, and why it must be stopped, by Julian Batchelor.
- Co-governance arrangements are aimed at creating partnerships, where power and responsibility are shared between government and other stakeholders
- Co-governance has a long history in New Zealand, and has been supported by people from both the right and left of politics.
- Fringe parties are using conspiracy theories to leverage pre-existing racial tensions into electoral support
- The most extreme critics of co-governance are actually opposed to the Waitangi Tribunal process in all its forms
Fairness and equality are key “kiwi values”: it is only fair for the Crown to admit when it did wrong, and treaty settlements are meant to help Māori re-establish ownership and control of property improperly appropriated, or to be compensated for loss. However, during the wave of Māori rights protests in the 1960s and 1970s that led to the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal, there was a large and vocal backlash against the very concept of the state redressing past colonial violence. As time has passed the treaty settlement process has had some measure of bipartisan support from major parties on both the left and the right. Those who see any recognition of Te Tiriti as inherently illegitimate have mostly been without mainstream representation – until now.
Julian Batchelor is a millionaire Evangelical pastor who has made himself a leading opponent of the co-governance by spending his (and donors’) money on a series of controversial public meetings up and down the country. After purchasing land for an international Evangelical preacher-training centre he became embroiled in a dispute with local iwi, who passed through a section of this property to visit urupa nearby. He turned to an anti-Treaty conspiracy theory for justification.
Conspiracy theories that seek to delegitimize Maori as indigenous to New Zealand have a long history. Batchelor promotes Tross Publishing, a wingnut vanity press that trafficks in pseudo-archaeology claiming a race of Celt-derived giants inhabited Aotearoa before Maori arrived. International agreements such as the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), and New Zealand’s efforts to meet these obligations also play into conspiracy theories about the United Nations as a vehicle for “globalist” elite takeover and installation of a satanic New World Order.
What these conspiracy theories seek to do is to remove the moral, humanitarian, and historical justification for the Waitangi Tribunal process. If Maori were not indigenous to Aotearoa, they have no right to complain about colonisation. If Maori willingly ceded sovereignty to the Crown, their rights were not violated by land confiscation and alienation.
Batchelor believes that the commonly accepted English translation of Te Tiriti is fraudulent, and that a secret true English translation, the Littlewood translation, has been deliberately suppressed by a conspiracy of academics, politicians and Māori . He prefers the Littlewood translation because it does not mention forestries or fisheries. Batchelor also asserts that the signatories of Te Tiriti knowingly and gratefully ceded sovereignty to the Crown, relying on a motivated reading of the text and defining words to support his preconceived conclusions.
In reality, the Littlewood translation is freely available to anyone who wishes to see it by making an appointment with Archives New Zealand. Historians who have examined the text think it is most likely a translation prepared by an American diplomat reporting on the Waitangi proceedings to the United States Government. While it’s an interesting historical artefact, it has had no bearing on the jurisprudence and interpretation of the Treaty over the years. The Littlewood translation is not the version signed by chiefs and has no legal standing.
It is important to Batchelor and his fellow travellers to establish that Māori ceded sovereignty to the Crown because this places Māori firmly in the role of a subjugated people. If Māori ceded sovereignty, then their resistance during the New Zealand Wars becomes an unjust and illegitimate revolt against the Crown, and the ensuing land confiscations an appropriate and just penalty for sedition. This in turn justifies colonial land sales, which conveniently includes Batchelor’s own property. At his lectures Batchelor will urge his audience not to vote for any party that doesn’t promise to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal and compel iwi to return their settlements to the Crown: Anything less, he argues, will see New Zealand slide into Apartheid, becoming the “Zimbabwe of the Pacific.”
Most New Zealanders accept that Māori culture is an intrinsic and important part of our cultural identity. Most New Zealanders also accept that acknowledging and redressing past colonial violence is a good thing on both a practical and moral level.
What Batchelor is trying to do, though, is to use a conspiracy theory to create a wedge issue. By claiming that co-governance is a sinister force undermining democracy tantamount to a modern apartheid, they position Māori rights and issues in opposition to egalitarian “kiwi values”. In this view, the Waitangi Tribunal is not a venue for truth and reconciliation: it is a feeding trough for corrupt elites to line their own pockets. In this telling, the benefits of Treaty settlements do not flow through to benefit ordinary Maori people.
This view ignores the practical and material differences iwi and hapu have made to the lives of everyday Māori. Inequities in earning power, education and health, for example, can be addressed locally. Iwi businesses employ Māori at all levels. Scholarships and joint investment funds have been established to give opportunities for education and home ownership to iwi members. Some hapu and iwi are providing private health insurance to members to address the shortcomings and inequalities of the public health system.
The reality of co-governance arrangements – whether that’s instituting Maori wards in local government or reserving seats on resource management boards for mana whenua – deserves robust and honest public debate, rooted in facts and with reference to currently existing co-governance examples. Questions about the distribution of benefits from treaty settlements, this is a question to be debated by Māori, not by a self-appointed Pākeha commentator who wants the Waitangi Tribunal abolished and all Treaty settlements returned to the Crown.
If the current debate about co-governance is is ‘divisive,’ it is because some of the loudest self-appointed voices in the debate are making it divisive, relying on conspiratorial rhetoric and apocalyptic visions to drown out reasonable voices on either side of the issue.
Correction: a commenter has noted that UNDRIP is not a treaty. It’s a declaration that New Zealand supports. We have updated the article to reflect this.
- Co-governance – it’s nothing like you think
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/co-governance-its-nothing-like-you-think - Inside Julian Batchelor’s long-simmering property spat before his divisive co-governance tour: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/stop-co-governance-tour-julian-batchelors-rawhiti-northland-land-feud-before-his-divisive-national-tour/IPDN6PWV3JA7TMWCXLOQR2UQPY/
- Ancient giants and old delusions: a history of mysticism and racism in Aotearoa: https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/25-02-2020/ancient-giants-and-old-delusions-a-history-of-mysticism-and-racism-in-aotearoa
- Company accused of anti-Māori publishing promoting books at schools:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/12/12/company-accused-of-anti-maori-publishing-promoting-books-at-schools/ - ‘Racist propaganda’: The undercover campaign to infiltrate school libraries:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/300899633/racist-propaganda-the-undercover-campaign-to-infiltrate-school-libraries - Treaty of Waitangi denialism: a long, dark and absurd history:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/28-11-2017/treaty-of-waitangi-denialism-a-long-dark-and-absurd-history - Stop Co-Governance tour has ex-National Front organiser who believes ‘white people’ are being targeted: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/stop-co-governance-tour-has-ex-national-front-organiser-who-believes-white-people-are-being-targeted/6FLNXOQA6BESVFLVHLNMTCKR6I/
Letters & resources
Read the FACT Aotearoa guide to managing disruptive candidate meetings and debates during the Aotearoa New Zealand 2023 General Election.
Open letter from FACT Aotearoa (Fight Against Conspiracy Theories) to the political parties in the 2023 General Election.
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