A FEW THINGS THAT NEED TO BE SAID

October 6, 2024
, , , Maori, Treaty of Waitangi

By Bruce Moon, co-author of Tross Publishing’s books, Twisting the Treaty, and One Treaty, One Nation.

We must all by now have a pretty good idea that politics and political discussions, however necessary they may be, have a malignant effect on many things which are undoubtedly true and should be accepted as such by all. Nowhere is this more true than in the current and seemingly endless debate on the Treaty of Waitangi: what it meant and its consequences today.

There can be no doubt that the British Government of the day was acting from the highest principles of
international law and practice and goodwill in despatching Captain Hobson to New Zealand in 1839 with
the express objective of establishing British sovereignty over New Zealand with the free consent of the
native population.

Lord Normanby’s 4200-word written instructions given to Hobson on the 14th of August 1839 in England
will undoubtedly have been studied with much care by him on his passage to Sydney by HMS “Druid” en
route to New Zealand. This document is easily obtained on the Internet and should be studied with care by all persons professing to have an informed interest in the Treaty of Waitangi and other related
developments

There had been other significant events in New Zealand in preceding years. Almost the whole country
was coming to the end of decades of lethal combat amongst the Maori tribes themselves; the so-called
“Musket Wars”. As Paul Moon noted, this had caused “almost unbearable anxiety experienced by all
Maori communities” (“This Horrid Practice”, p.151. ISBN 9780143006718,”Penguin”, 2008). Nearly a
third of the population had been killed, this being particularly lethal amongst those of breeding age (and a consequent drop in the Maori population in the subsequent colonial decades, as recorded by John
Robinson; “When two cultures meet, p.66, ISBN1872970311). A common, if understandable,
misconception in colonial society of the times was that Maoris were a “dying race”, a situation remedied
in large part by extensive interbreeding with the “wicked white colonials” themselves, to the extent that
probably all people who describe themselves as Maoris today do have white colonial ancestors, in many
cases the considerable majority!

So come off it, you jokers, who carry on about the agonies suffered by your Maori ancestors from
colonization. If it were not for your white forebears, you wouldn’t be here at all! By contrast, Waikato

tribes could recall the merciless depredations they suffered in pre-colonial times at the hands of musket-
wielding Ngapuhi (Robinson, “Unrestrained Slaughter”, ISBN978187297068, 2020, pp55ff) and Kati

Mamoe (if there are any left) at the hands of Kai[1] Tahu. (though in Timaru in 1988 I did meet one woman who said she was Kati Mamoe). At Goat Island (Mapoutahi), it is said that Kai Tahu slaughtered Kati Mamoe to the last inhabitant, while at Dusky Sound they left a few of their bones in the ashes after a
cannibal feast. (A.C.Begg and N.C.Begg, “Dusky Bay”, 1966, pp113ff.) One young woman remarkably
survived for many years until they went and killed her off too!

And the French?

It would seem that the French were rather slow to learn from the discoveries, principally of Cook, that
fresh and suitably preserved vegetables, especially sauerkraut, in the diet of sailors were the secret of
protecting their health from the dreads of scurvy and other dietary deficient diseases. Thus was the state
of the two vessels of Frenchman Marion du Fresne which limped into the Bay of Islands in April 1772.
He proceeded to set up a hospital for sick crewmen and did his utmost to establish friendly relations with
the local tribe, Ngati Pou. In due course, Marion set off to enjoy his favourite pastime of fishing.
However, in doing so, Marion unwittingly broke a local tapu and his fate was sealed. All but one of his
party who escaped by swimming ashore. were summarily killed and eaten by the tribesmen, one of whom
bedecked himself with Marion’s uniform jacket. After further skirmishing, a large body of Maori
warriors proceeded to attack the Frenchmen’s hospital. Of course the French defended themselves
valiantly with firearms, killing a large number of chiefs who wore a distinct headdress, and saving their
hospital. It was this incident which led to Maoris developing a mortal fear of the French which soon
became widespread. For the full story, see “The Great Divide” by Ian Wishart, ISBN97809876573-6-7,
2012.

This fear endured – thirteen powerful Ngapuhi chiefs writing on 16 November 1831 to King William of
Britain, saying “we pray thee to become our friend and the guardian of these islands.” So, a variety of
developments occurred in the succeeding decade. James Busby was sent to the Bay of Islands but with no
ability to back up his authority he was soon dubbed by observant Maoris as “the man o’ war without
guns”, as every schoolboy knew in my far off day!

Well, events moved on. These included a well-meaning but futile attempt, principally by Busby and missionary Henry Williams, to get some sort of order out of chaos in Maoridom, concocting in 1835 a so-
called “Declaration of Independence: He Whakaputanga” by “A Confederation of United Tribes”. Michael King, was scathing about this effort (“The Penguin History”; ISBN0-14-301887-1, p.155), saying
it “had no constitutional status [and] also had no reality”. King was confirming the earlier words of E
Jerningham Wakefield[2] that the so-called “confederation” was “a mockery” which never met nor
transacted any business and soon war broke out amongst its tribes and senior chief Titore was killed. All
that doesn’t stop some latter-day part-Maoris lauding it to the hilt!

Getting nearer to a formal British presence

In 1837, Captain William Hobson, RN, commanding HMS “Rattlesnake” was sent to New Zealand to
assess and report on the situation. Hobson recommended the establishment of a set of “factories” such
had been developed in India in order to establish British presence.

Paul Moon, singing a somewhat different tune in “Hobson, Governor of New Zealand 1840-1842”, ISBN
0-908997-5425, 1998, remarks “the meagre schooling Hobson received might have suggested that he was not the most suitable person to be devising recommendations on the future of this part of the British
Empire.” (page 19).[3] Be that as it may, it was Hobson who was selected by Lord Normanby of the
Colonial Office to proceed to New Zealand to establish with the Maori chiefs the conditions for the
establishment of a British colony in New Zealand. The 4200-word brief that Hobson received from
Normanby was actually written initially by James Stephen, his Permanent Under Secretary. Note that it is
easily “googled” on the internet and any person with pretensions of knowledge to the subsequent Treaty
of Waitangi should, indeed must, become conversant with its contents. Paul Moon does indeed quote
from this document (Bay of Plenty Times, 18/9/24): “acknowledging New Zealand as ‘a sovereign and
independent state’” – but omitting Normanby’s further words: “so far at least as it is possible to make that
acknowledgement in favour of a people composed of numerous, dispersed, and petty tribes, who possess
few political relations to each other, and are incompetent to act, or even to deliberate, in concert.”
Readers may make up their own minds up about the significance of my namesake’s very selective
quotation!

Well, on Christmas Eve 1839 Hobson duly arrived in Sydney where Governor Gipps proceeded to provide
him with support staff “selected for their known incompetency”[4] and of whose services he wished to
dispose. One of these was JS Freeman, a product of Eton and Oxford and, to put it bluntly, a snob who
was to be Hobson’s private secretary. So equipped, Hobson arrived in the Bay of Islands on 29th January He contacted the Paihia mission station immediately and by next day, mission printer, William Colenso had produced two important documents for him. The first proclaimed Hobson “to be Lieutenant- Governor in and over any Territory which is or may be acquired in Sovereignty by Her Majesty…” The second, concerning land stated in part: “Her Majesty… does not deem it expedient to recognise as valid any Titles to Land in New Zealand which are not derived from of confirmed by Her Majesty”. Nothing could be fairer than that.

    And the Land??

    Much – too much – has been written about the dispossession of Maori land by ruthless white men.
    NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH! In fact, Maori chiefs had been almost
    falling over themselves in their haste to exchange European consumer goods for land they did not need
    with their hunter-gather lifestyle becoming obsolete with the development of European farming methods.
    [5] In fact no less than 179 South Island sales had been registered in Sydney by 1840 with reserves set aside for the former Maori owners. In Taranaki, multiple sales of the same land were frequent, in one
    case, five times over![6]

    Now land was indeed confiscated from defeated rebel tribes following the various rebellions in the North
    Island, this being a well-recognized Maori practice, and some was actually returned to former rebels to
    provide adequately for their livelihoods. In fact 90% of the land was freely sold by Maori tribal owners,
    about 4.5% confiscated and the remainder left in their hands. (Mike Butler, “Tribes treaty MONEY
    power”, 2014, ISBN187290389.These figures do not include normal land purchases since in the ordinary
    course of business.

    Indeed the bleating about land loss seems to have intensified since one Sacha McMeeking, then a member of the Council of the University of Canterbury, claimed[7] with reference to settlement of Ngai Tahu claims “the decision was to settle cheaply – accepting $170 million when even treasury value of
    dispossessed lands lay between $12 and $15 billion”. Note well that in 1840 nearly all her “dispossessed
    lands” were an uninhabited wilderness, not remotely like its condition today. A1996 study of Ngai Tahu
    claims by Alan Everton[8] concluded that they were fraudulent. Why does the Government today not
    pursue an investigation of this activity perpetrated under the aegis of the Waitangi Tribunal upon
    the taxpayers of New Zealand?

    And the Treaty itself?

    I cannot imagine that anywhere else in the world but New Zealand, such a short, succinct and
    straightforward document as the Treaty of Waitangi should be as manipulated and misrepresented, nearly
    200 years after being written, as that rat-eaten specimen!

    It was translated overnight on 4-5 February 1840 into the Ngapuhi dialect of Maori from Hobson’s
    English text written the previous day, by Henry Williams and his son Edward, 17-year residents in New
    Zealand and both competent in that language. Both texts were read out to the assembly at Waitangi the
    following day, the English by Hobson and the Maori by Henry Williams and nobody said their meanings
    were different.[9] Since Article Third was inapplicable to existing British subjects and not intended to
    apply to those of other nationalities, one word, “maori”, was indeed added to it by the Williams,
    compelling evidence that Hobson’s English text had been written previously and indeed correctly dated
    4th February.[10]

    The history of Hobson’s English text is full of irony. A virtually verbatim copy was sent to the United
    States Secretary of State later in February by Clendon, in whose house it had been written, in his capacity
    as United States Consul. It was subsequently lent to Commodore Charles Wilkes, visiting commander of
    the USS Vincennes who wished to “enquire into the state of these islands.” Wilkes, or his writer, copied it
    to the extent of including Busby’s spelling mistake “sovreignty” while adding a few of his own. This was
    included in Wilkes’ despatch No.64 to the US Authorities.[11]

    In the stressed state of affairs in New Zealand following Hobson severe stroke on 1st March, his final
    English text came into the possession of Henry Littlewood, Clendon’s solicitor. It reposed in the hands of
    the Littlewood family until found by Beryl Needham among the effects of her late mother, Ethel
    Littlewood, in March 1989.

    Authorities in this country have largely ignored or seemingly done all they can to discredit this pivotal
    document, Margaret Wilson, then Associate Minister of Justice, writing on 27th September 2004 with the
    absurd excuse that it was not signed.[12] She goes on to extol the validity of the rejected copy of
    Freeman’s own ideas in English of what the treaty should say, used in an exigency at Waikato Heads by
    missionary Maunsell to gather chiefs’ signatures when the official copy in their own language intended to
    be used had not arrived. In the 1975 “Treaty of Waitangi Act” this deeply flawed document was legislated
    to be “the Treaty in English”.

    Thus have New Zealanders[13] been hoodwinked, misled and deceived at many crucial moments in their nation’s history!

    THE CRUCIAL MESSAGE

    It is absolutely critical that the true facts of our nation’s constitutional history be straightened out and
    accepted before any effort in made to establish second order derived hypotheses about what may be the
    “Principles of the Treaty”.[14] Anything else would only lead us more deeply into the mire.

    29 September 2024 Copyright ©
    [1]South of the Rakitata River, with rare exceptions, “k” replaces the “ng” of the north. Thus: ‘Waitaki’,’Waitangi’.
    [2] “Adventure in New Zealand from 1839 to 1844, London,1845, Vol 1, p.11
    [3]Holding a commission as an instructor officer in the RNZNVR (now retired) I can testify from my own experience that naval
    education at sea was both rigorous and extensive, perhaps more so in pre-Internet days than today!
    [4]T.L.Buick, “The Treaty of Waitangi”, 1914,p.94
    [5] J.Jackson,”Mistaken Maori Land Claims”, Book Seven, Treaty Series, Vol.2.,2007
    [6]B.Wells. “The History of Taranaki”, Edmondson and Avery, 1878.
    [7]“The Press”, p. C5, 2nd July 2011
    [8]Free Radical 26-8 August-December 1996
    [9]Proceedings were carefully minuted by Colenso and checked by Busby at the time though not published until 1890
    [10]As pointed out by Martin Doutré
    [11]Full details may be found in Doutré, “The Littlewood Treaty Found”, ISBN 0-473-10140-8, 2005, shunned by authorities in this country..
    [12] Ibid, p.127
    [13]With possibly the said former minister amongst them!
    [14]Several excellent and informative books exist on topics covered here. The author may be contacted for details.

    New Zealand Nonsense – 1. The Maori Race

    August 20, 2024
    , , , , Maori

    The author of this article is John Robinson, author of the recently published book, “Who Really Broke the Treaty?” published by Tross Publishing.

    “Once when Maori called me racist, I would say “No, I am not.” Then I thought a bit about
    what racism is, and I realised that they were the racists. I had entered dangerous grounds, for
    it did not take long to see that my country is deeply racist. I do not belong here.”

    What is New Zealand? This is a country that has defined itself out of existence. It is no
    longer one sovereign nation. Instead, sovereignty rests with many race-based hapu and iwi
    scattered across the country, ruled by unexplained tikanga based on the ways of a past
    warring tribal society.

    Who are these special ones who hold the sovereignty of our lands? This is the Maori, people
    whose identity is fundamental to government and laws. The definition of Maori is then basic
    to any understanding of the country. Here is, written into law in 1974.

    “A Maori is a person of the Maori race: and includes any descendant of such a person.” 1

    Here there is a Maori race. There is no thing as a race, yet here it is written into law. So,
    what is this? It is a race consisting of Maori. We are none the wiser – keeping in mind that
    key words in legislation and in international treaties must have a clear, well-defined meaning,
    leaving no doubt of what is implied. We are back where we started, and can go on round in
    circles as long as we like, but will never get anywhere in an effort to find a clear definition of
    ‘Maori’ in our law. This is nonsense, but it is the basis of much New Zealand law, and of
    increasingly divisions in many spheres of government.

    Despite the lack of any clarity on the meaning of ‘Maori’, the above definition insists on the
    inclusion of all who have any degree of ancestry. This is a wider definition of racial identity
    than those of apartheid South Africa (which referred to the full blooded as black, with those
    of mixed ethnicity defined as coloured), Nazi Germany (at first requiring half or more
    ethnicity for a Jew), being that of the ‘Jim Crow laws’ re-establishing racial segregation in
    the American South. 2 Here is the affirmation of a very wide definition of race as the basis of
    a national ideology, to be written into all law.

    In practice these Maori are descendants of some Polynesians who came in the 13 th century
    (including now anyone with any degree of such ancestry, no matter how small). Research in
    the early twentieth century by the distinguished Maori scholar (doctor, military leader, health
    administrator, politician, anthropologist, and museum director) Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi
    Hiroa) identified three series of migrations to New Zealand; Buck referred to the first group
    as the ‘tangata whenua’. Each new influx of settlers found numerous people living here;
    many were killed so that the newcomers could possess the land, often in wars of
    extermination, resulting in the practical extinction of the men, while the women and children
    were absorbed by the conquerors. The first to come, according to Buck, was around the 9 th
    century; later research has suggested a much earlier date for first human settlement. The
    canoes bringing the ancestors to today’s Maori were probably the third of these migrations. 3

    But all reports of settlers preceding the Maori have been deleted from history, with an
    insistence that they only are the first people, tangata whenua’, and the ‘indigenous’ people.
    That assumption is then held to support a claim that they are a special race, demanding higher
    status and better treatment.

    Such division by ancestry or first settlement, with race-based privileges, has been universally
    condemned. This is made clear in the introduction to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes a powerful rebuttal of inherent differences between peoples.4

    “Affirming further that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating
    superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious,
    ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally
    condemnable and socially unjust.”

    This statement of a condemnation of superior status based on national origin or ethnic
    difference and refutes the many claims of that Declaration which demand special race-based
    rights for the (undefined) indigenous people. Nonsense is not unique to New Zealand.

    There is no such thing as race. Humans cannot be, and should not be, divided by race. To do
    so is to reverse the struggle over past centuries in opposition to division by race and the
    subsequent racism, a struggle that brought equality to New Zealand when this nation was
    founded.

    This is the first of four short articles noting the nonsense that is driving New Zealand ever
    further into apartheid, with different treatment based on race and two race based governments
    and sets of law. Only a ship of fools would sit back and allow this happen.

    1 Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974
    2 Robinson J 2024. Who really broke the Treaty? Tross Publishing, page 41
    3 Buck P (Te Rangi Hiroa) 1938. Vikings of the sunrise. Whitcombe and Tombs, republished
    as Vikings of the Pacific in 1959 by University of Chicago; Buck P (Te Rangi Hiroa) 1949.
    The coming of the Maori. Reprinted 1982, Whitcoulls Ltd.; and Robinson J 2020.
    Unrestrained slaughter, the Maori musket wars 1800-1840 Tross Publishing, page 9
    4 United Nations 2007. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
    https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf

    A Selection of the Lies/Deceit of Jacinda Ardern

    August 3, 2024
    , , , , , , , Jacinda Ardern

    “The vaccine we are using in New Zealand is safe and effective”. As this book has shown, this is not so.

    “Not only will there be no forced vaccinations, but those who choose to opt out won’t face any penalties at all”. This was proved to be a lie by her own words a month later when she said on 22nd October, 2021, “Anyone who is not vaccinated right now will not be able to enjoy the freedoms of other New Zealanders”.

    During a protest against the vaccine at Wanganui on 3rd November, 2021, Ardern denied that the government had “flip-flopped” on its promise not to mandate vaccinations when it had already mandated them for border workers, health workers and teachers.

    “We will continue to be your single source of truth.” This would have to be her biggest lie to date as the contents of this book amply show.

    “There is no mandate around children being vaccinated – it is up to a parent or caregiver”. No, it’s not as 12 to 18 year olds were being vaccinated at school without their parents’ consent.

    When it was announced in January, 2022, that New Zealand’s cost of living had had its biggest annual jump in three decades the ACT leader, David Seymour, said, “The government’s relentless borrowing and spending has also added to the cost of just about everything. Locking the economy down and borrowing $50 billion so far has left us with a mountain of debt and rising prices”. This statement was supported by the economist and former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Doctor Don Brash, who wrote, “No single factor explains the rise in inflation but the scale of the Government’s borrowing is certainly one contributing factor”. As Newshub reported, Ardern who, unlike Seymour and Brash, knows little, if anything about economics, “absolutely refutes claims that the Government’s billions of spending on Covid led to record inflation”. Not so.

    On Election Night, 2020, Ardern promised, “We will be a party that governs for every New Zealander”. Instead, she has caved in to the bullying demands of her “Maori caucus” to pass large public resources to the tribal elite and grant more and more special, race-based rights to “part-Maoris”. This is not governing “for every New Zealander” but for the few with a bit of bullying power. Nor is her removal of ordinary freedoms and long held basic rights from those who choose not to have the Covid jab “governing for every New Zealander”.

    At the same time she promised that her government would be “the most honest, most transparent government that New Zealand has ever had”. So why is she implementing the He
    Puapua Report under the radar and having it discussed by her officials only on marae and not at this stage in public?

    “This government will….strengthen transparency around official information”. In the words of senior journalist, Andrea Vance, “Since then the number of faceless communications specialists has skyrocketed. The Government’s iron grip on the control of information has tightened. And it is harder than ever to get information. In my twenty years as a journalist this Government is one of the most thin-skinned and secretive I have ever experienced. Many of my colleagues say the same…..
    At every level the Government manipulates the flow of information.”

    The Treaty of Waitangi was a “partnership between the Crown and Maori”. No, it wasn’t. It was a full cession of sovereignty by the chiefs (Article 1) in return for granting all the people of New Zealand full rights as British subjects (Article 3). When Ardern was asked by a journalist to state what the three short, simple articles of the Treaty said, she was unable to do so.

    At the 2020 Election Ardern and her Labour Party promised that “Labour will ensure that the major decisions about local democracy involve full participation of the local population from the outset”. Shorty after being elected to government Ardern allowed her Minister of Local Government (some would say her puppet-master). Nanaia Mahuta, to remove the right of ratepayers to call for a poll of local people whenever a council should go down the road of apartheid by voting for one or more race-based “Maori wards” in a municipality.

    “We are one”, screamed Ardern in the wake of the mosques massacre as she pranced around in front of the cameras wearing an Islamic veil, the centuries old symbol of the suppression of women in Islam.

    She knew that this was a lie because, at the very time she was uttering it, her government was trying to promote a racist piece of legislation, the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngai Tahu) Representation Bill, to enable this small private tribe to have two permanent seats on the otherwise democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council.

    To burnish the racist credentials of her government even further, Ardern’s Budget of May, 2019, handed over $593 million of taxpayers’ money to specific race-based programmes that support not the poor and needy but people purely on the basis of their race, including $42 million for “Maori” students in education, $27.4 million for students of Pacific Island blood and their families, $98 million for “Kaupapa Maori”, $11 million to boost the Pacific Business Trust, and $12 million for rheumatic fever programmes purely for Maori and Pacific Island children. What about other children?

    To compound her racism, hypocrisy and deceit she said in Christchurch on 20th March, 2019, “Let New Zealand be a place where there is no tolerance of racism”. With her usual contempt for the intelligence of New Zealanders she was brazenly saying one thing and doing the exact opposite.

    In 2021 she misled local councils by telling them that the Government’s proposed theft of council owned water assets in the form of “Three Waters” would be “voluntary” when the decision to make it compulsory had already been made, according to a document dated July, 2021. She compounded her dishonesty by then denying that she had misled the councils.

    “I haven’t seen evidence of the kinds of issues [China’s interference in Australian politics] in Australia here in New Zealand” or that “foreign nations [read: China] had any undue influence in New Zealand”. Is she blind, crooked or stupid? What about all the six figure donations to the National Party by China Inc., the commercial arm of China’s dictatorship, ($180,000 from Oravida, $63,500 from China based Xiao Miao Fan, $150,000 from Gao Wei through his Alpha Group Holdings, $35,000 from Che Weixing (a.k.a. Christine Chee) and to Phil Goff’s first campaign for the Auckland mayoralty when the bulk of his funding ($416,115) came from China Inc, including $50,000 from Fu Wah International, the Peking based company building the $200 million Park Hyatt Hotel in Auckland which was about to seek building consents from Auckland Council for around $500 million of property development. These are evidence of China, New Zealand’s only potential enemy, interfering in our politics of which Ardern has seen nothing.

    “I haven’t read the He Puapua Report”. Well, you wouldn’t see it if you instructed your officials not to show it to you. How can such an important document, the biggest proposed change to our constitutional arrangements since 1840 as it proposes the destruction of our unitary system of government and its replacement by a new, apartheid like structure in which the tribal elite will have the whip hand over all other New Zealanders, not be seen by the Prime Minister unless she instructed them not to show it to her?

    “I’ve given you my word. You will not have a capital gains tax under a Labour led government that I lead,” she said during the party leaders’ debate before the 2020 Election” A few months later her government forced parliament into urgency to ram through a doubling of the “bright-line test”, doubling the length of time that investors have to hold a property in order to avoid paying tax on its capital gain when they sell. This was simply a capital gains tax by another name.

    “My primary goal is to manage Covid with as few restrictions on our daily lives as possible…and to accelerate our economic recovery”. Her actions belie her words – as shown throughout the book. “All of us actually want to move on [and return to normal]; we’re putting ourselves in the best possible position to do that”. So, why continue the colour “red” on the traffic light system, why persist with mandates and vaccine passes when they are unnecessary since with Omicron the fully vaccinated
    are just as likely to contract the virus as the unvaccinated – as the Government’s own figures show (See page 157).

    Christopher Luxon: ” Ardern leads the most divisive government in recent times”.

    Ardern: “I totally disagree with that“.

    This is Appendix A of the book, “A Jab in the Dark; Covid Vaccines and the new Health Dictatorship”, by Ron Asher. Published by Tross Publishing and available for $35 (including postage within New Zealand).

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