First published on the BFD and republished here with permission.
In his latest book, prolific author John Robinson once again presents straightforward arguments supported by well-referenced facts about New Zealand’s history. As you read, you begin to understand the need to rethink our national identity and question the actions of successive governments, particularly their implementation of ill-conceived and racially divisive policies.
Robinson starts with a stark assertion: “By its actions, New Zealand is a racist state.” He provides evidence that we are a divided nation, with a BIG LIE at the centre of much of what we believe about ourselves. As I have done in my previous books, Robinson denounces the concept of race and questions the definitions of the social constructs of ‘Maori’ and ‘Indigenous’.
Robinson closely analyses the content and meaning of the 1840 James Busby English draft of the Treaty of Waitangi. He lists numerous examples of various tribes engaging in activities that contravened the Treaty, revealing who and what truly breached the agreement.
My initial impression of the book is that Robinson offers a new perspective on our history; one that is closer to actual events and likely to be very controversial.
Robinson’s main argument is that funding biased academics to distort historical events and fabricate acts of oppression against the Maori race has created a ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ situation. This involves social constructs, deception, and the gullibility of the New Zealand public. In this book, Robinson exposes these fabrications, positioning himself as the speaker of an innocent truth. He draws parallels between the Big Lies, deception and gullibility imposed on the New Zealand public and the indoctrination of the German people by the Nazis. Once you read Robinson’s truth, it cannot be unread. Be warned: this book will anger you.
Robinson argues that, rather than being oppressed by the government, some tribes were often the oppressors. He cites leaders such as Te Rauparaha, Te Rangihaeta, and Hone Heke, who went unpunished for treasonous acts. He lists, over two and a half pages, the names of settlers in Taranaki whose homes and outbuildings were burned by rebels who received no punishment; the settlers receiving no compensation from the Crown.
Compensation (money and extra rights) to anyone other than Maori in New Zealand would be considered racist by mainstream media, academia, and many politicians. Robinson outlines seven examples of Treaty breaches, mostly involving rebels rising against the sovereignty established by the 1840 Treaty. He notes that these rebels were a small minority, yet their legacy persists, including the existence of the Maori King.
Robinson concludes the book with an analysis of where our nation is headed and the potential consequences if we do not halt this slide into apartheid and the belief in what he calls “The Big Lie”.
At his book launch in Kapiti, I asked Robinson if he believes the Government is breaching Article Three of the Treaty by granting separate and additional rights to people who identify as Maori. He agreed. However, those granted these separate rights are unlikely to challenge this breach, and the deceived and gullible public have been taught that this is the New Zealand way – until we change it.
Robinson includes, in that change, disestablishing the Waitangi Tribunal; removing the Treaty from legislation; ending treaty settlements; and withdrawing from the 2001 United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution and the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Who Really Broke the Treaty? John Robinson, Tross Publishing, 158 pages, illustrated, $35 (including postage), available at www.trosspublishing.com or trosspub@gmail.com.
It wasn’t the Crown that repeatedly broke the Treaty of Waitangi, and $4.3-billion has been paid to “settle” grievances that had been fabricated, according to commentator Dr John Robinson.
Career scientist Robinson, who has authored a series of works on racism in New Zealand, puts a blowtorch on New Zealand’s treaty industry in his new book titled Who Really Broke the Treaty?
He has seen the inside of that industry, worked for it, and knows exactly how it functions.
You would be surprised at the scale of a massive scam that has been going on for nearly 50 years – in broad daylight, and funded by you.
How many New Zealanders understand that words uttered by the Maori King in public on January 20 this year demanded that our unified nation be dismantled and replaced by two separate parliaments based on race, Robinson wrote.
The Treaty of Waitangi, as agreed in 1840, handed the sovereignty of New Zealand to Britain. Land in Maori possession remained in Maori possession. All Maori people living in New Zealand were given British citizenship, he wrote.
That agreement gave the right to govern. British law prevailed thereafter. The absolute rule of the chiefs was gone, he wrote.
But when the Treaty of Waitangi Act created the Waitangi Tribunal, naïve politicians gave radicals free reign to twist the treaty, plunder the coffers, and try to seize control of New Zealand.
This 50-year grand scheme centres on allegations that “the Crown” (meaning you and I), broke the treaty and should pay compensation.
But if the treaty gave the government the right to govern according to the rule of law, what is it to break the treaty?
That would be action against the sovereignty of the united nation, and action taken outside the rule of law.
Robinson shows that the Crown did not breach the treaty at all, and that all breaches were done by rebellious chiefs, and here they are:
1. Mass murder of settlers by chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata at Wairau in 1843.
2. Rebellion incited by Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata in Wellington in 1846.
3. War waged by Hone Heke against the government in the north in 1845-56.
4. Rebellion at Waitara by Wiremu Kingi over the sale of the Pekapeka block in 1859.
5. The establishment of a rival Maori monarch in 1859, rebellion, and war.
During these events the Crown and the governors never broke the treaty. All actions taken were in accord with the accession of sovereignty and the assertion of British law, Robinson wrote.
Firm government action that defeated tribal rebels during the 1860s was not to break the treaty. It was to uphold the treaty, he wrote.
Land confiscations did not breach the treaty. They were a consequence of rebellion.
There were numerous efforts by the government to bring the second Maori King, Tawhiao, and his supporters, back into the New Zealand community after their defeat in 1864.
But Tawhiao continued to insist that he had “the sole right to conduct matters in [his] land from the North Cape to the southern end”.
“All treaty settlements are based on the Crown breaking the treaty. Since that is not so, all such settlements are a fraud,” Robinson wrote.
There is no justification for the continued existence of either the settlements or the Waitangi tribunal, he wrote.
If you wonder why the demands for race-based preferential treatment are ubiquitous and unrelenting, Robinson’s list of 17 institutions including the Waitangi Tribunal and the Supreme Court helps explain why.
Here’s an interesting fact Robinson has turned up.
The Government’s definition of Maori is based on the same metric as used in the “Jim Crow” laws abandoned by the United States in the 1960s.
That metric, used by nine southern states, defined as black anyone with black ancestry, even “one drop”.
The New Zealand government’s definition of Maori, as a “person of the Maori race of New Zealand and includes any descendant of such a person”, is a “one-drop” definition.
But while southern states in America used that one-drop definition to discriminate against black Americans, the New Zealand government uses it to discriminate in favour of Maori.
The perverse reality is that treaty is all about equality, yet for the past 50 years New Zealand governments have been practising racial discrimination.
Robinson shows how and when the treaty was twisted, the government gave birth to the monster that is the Waitangi Tribunal, and suggests a roadmap for ending racial division.
Early steps by the coalition government are heartening, most especially the proposed Treaty Principles Bill and the opportunity for a referendum on it.
However, doubts remain regarding the courage of the Prime Minister on race, and the presence of a tribal activist as a Minister.
The book, Who Really Broke The Treaty? by John Robinson is available here.
This is a chapter from the Tross Publishing book, New Zealand; the Benefits of Colonisation.
This chapter explains how tikanga was never a system of law and exposes some of the present day judges who are perpetrating this lie in order to undermine our long-held rights.
Chapter 16 INTRODUCTION OF LAW “That wonderful construction of good sense and good judgement”. Winston Churchill on English common law.
O ne of the things that Captain Cook noticed about the people of New Zealand was that they were “without any settled form of government”. 1
When Samuel Marsden and John Nicholas visited New Zealand in 1814-5 they too noticed the total lack of laws or a system of law. Of the natives’ superstitions Nicholas wrote, “It serves them in the absence of laws as the only security for the protection of persons and property, giving them an awful sacredness which no one dares to violate.” 2
While staying at Kerikeri on his last visit to New Zealand in 1837 Marsden was approached by Wiremu Hau, a young chief who had succeeded Hongi. Hau presented the missionary with a letter, appealing for the establishment of some form of law in New Zealand. “Sir, will you give us a law. This is the purpose of my address to you.
First, if we say ‘let the cultivation be fenced, and a man through laziness does not fence [and] should pigs get into his plantation, is it right for him to kill them? Do you give us a law in this matter.
Second, Again, should pigs get into fenced land, is it right to kill or rather to tie them until the damage they have done is paid for? Will you give us a law in this.
Third again, should the husband of a woman die and she afterwards wish[es] to be married to another, should the natives of unchanged heart bring a fight against us – would it be right for us to stand up to resist them on account of their wrongful interference? Will you give us a law in this also.
Fourth, Again, in our wickedness one man has two wives but, after he has listened to Christ, he puts away one of them and gives her to another man to wife. Now, should a fight be brought against us, are we in this case to stand up to fight? Give us a law in this.
Again, should two men strive, one with the other, give me a law in this. My mode is to collect all the people together and judge them for their unlawful fighting, and also for wrongfully killing pigs. Therefore I say that the man who kills pigs for trespassing on his plantation, having neglected to fence, ought rather to pay for the pigs so killed. Will you give us a law in this.
Sixth, but there is another. Should a man who is in the Church come in a fight against us. Give us a law in this. Another thing…..slaves exalting themselves against their masters. Will you give us a law in this also.” 3
From this discussion it was obvious that the concept of law was something that the natives were ignorant of but wanted to learn about. This fits in with what Rev. J. Buller wrote of them. “Their own rude law had been one of brute force.” 4
“Without the aid of iron the most trifling tool or utensil could only be procured by an enormously disproportionate outlay of labour in its construction and, in consequence, became precious to a degree scarcely conceivable by people of civilised and wealthy countries. This great value attached to personal property of all kinds increased proportionally the temptation to plunder; and, where no law existed or could exist of sufficient force to repress the inclination, every man as a natural consequence became a soldier……
Their intelligence causes them theoretically to acknowledge the benefits of law, which they see established amongst us; but their hatred of restraint causes them practically to abhor and resist its full enforcement amongst themselves…..people to whom, for their own safety and their preservation, we must give new laws and institutions,” wrote F.E. Maning, who also said, “At the time I am speaking of [pre- 1840] the only restraint on such people [violent ones] was the fear of retaliation.” 6
“The disunited state of the tribes and their jealousy of each other render it impossible to enact laws,” wrote Captain Hobson to Governor Bourke of New South Wales after visiting New Zealand in 1837 on HMS Rattlesnake. 7
“Pre-February, 1840, with no law and order, New Zealand was literally in a state of anarchy. Without law there could not be property rights; property could be taken and you could be killed without consequence,” wrote Andy Oakley in his book, Once We Were One. 8 And John Robinson in When Two Cultures Meet; the New Zealand Experience: “In the absence of any codified law or higher authority, there was no rule of law, no guarantee of safety. The response to a perceived wrong would be either to attack and thus to revenge that wrong, or to face one another, starting with warlike challenges, or following with argumentative dispute.” 9
In 1842 Te Whero Whero, who later became the first Maori “king”, speaking of the changes brought about by the Treaty of Waitangi, said to his people at Kaitohe, “And now I bring you this new treasure. We have brought law, a new law, to save us from killing and robbing each other. I will take this, my treasure, up Waipa, through every bend in the river. Friends, do not think little of what I say.” 10
“It was the law of Christianity that put an end to our cannibal practices,” Tamihana Te Rauparaha told the Kohimarama conference of chiefs in 1860. 11 Another chief, Hapurona Tohikura of Ngatiapa told the same conference, “My heart embraced the laws of the Pakeha….The law put an end to our evils.” 12 And Wiremu Te Whero of Ngatinaho: “The Governor came, bringing with him the laws”. 13
Himiona (Tuhourangi, Tarawera) told the same conference, “After this came the law. I saw its benefit and adopted it forthwith. The reason why I approved of it was a means of correcting all that went wrong.” Pererika: “Missionaries were sent to us, and then the Law appeared”. 14
In the words of Sir Apirana Ngata, probably the greatest mind that Maoridom has produced and whose face adorns the current $50 note, “Many claims were made [pre-1840] by various Europeans for the one piece of land sold to each of them by various Maori chiefs. Where was the law in those times to decide what was right?…..The Maori did not have any government when the European first came to these islands. There was no unified chiefly authority over man or land…… How could such an organisation as a Government be established under Maori custom?” 15
There was no government. As Charles Darwin observed in 1835, “It is, however, incorrect to use the term ‘government’ where absolutely no such thing exists…Proper laws are, of course, quite unknown.” 16 And Augustus Earle in 1827, “I could not discover that the New Zealanders had any universal form of government.” 17
“They [the natives] regarded with admiration the peacefulness established by our habits of law and order, and displayed an almost unhoped-for degree of good temper in yielding their assent to the new order of things, which forbade the infliction of summary punishment as vengeance by the offended party according to their former customs,” wrote Edward Jerningham Wakefield. 18
It was certainly an improvement on their “former customs”; a dispute between two chiefs in Northland pre-1840 resulted in a hearing at the house of one of them. In the words of F.E. Maning, “The arguments on both sides were very forcible; so much so that in the course of the arbitration our chief and thirty of his principal witnesses were shot dead in a heap and sixty others badly wounded, and my friend’s house and store blown up and burnt to ashes.” 19
In view of these many and largely eye-witness accounts that there was neither laws nor a system of law in New Zealand prior to the Treaty of Waitangi it is both astounding and alarming to record that there are forces in the current Maori sovereignty movement and its supporting cast that propagate the utterly false statement that there was a system of law in New Zealand prior to the Treaty.
Among the worst offenders are three judges of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, Joe Williams, Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann and
Susan Glazebrook who, in the Peter Ellis appeal of 2020, said that “tikanga was the first law of New Zealand” which, as this chapter shows, is not true.
Williams is the first part-Maori judge of this, the highest court in the land since the Labour government of Helen Clark so unwisely ended our age-old right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London – a more objective and competent court than the gimcrack institution that replaced it. Williams is a former chairman of the Waitangi Tribunal, where he “distinguished” himself by enthusiastically pushing the WAI 262 Report, recommending that ownership of all New Zealand’s native plants and animals be taken away from the public and handed over to that small group of New Zealanders who can claim a smidgeon of Maori blood. This Report is the epitome of racism, vengeance, nastiness and theft.
In a 2013 speech titled Lex Aotearoa, Williams “described tikanga Maori as Aotearoa’s first law; for 700 years it governed society on our islands. When English colonisers imported their common law system – Aotearoa’s second law – tikanga was mostly pushed aside. The Treaty of Waitangi was supposed to bring the two systems together.” 20
This is completely untrue. Tikanga was not a system of law before
1840. It was merely a word for the customs of various tribes and it differed from tribe to tribe, from place to place, and from time to time.
Tikanga was more a collection of cultural habits of these Stone Age people and it was heavily laced with revenge (utu), superstition (tapu), plunder (muru), violence and bloodshed. In an 1825 meeting at Kerikeri between missionaries and seven leading Ngapuhi chiefs Hongi Hika “described how the imperatives of tikanga prevented them from giving up war as a way of life.” 21 Is this what Williams wants? A “system of law” tikanga certainly was not. It did not have courts, cases, precedents, clarity or consistency. Or even writing!!!
“We do not want to share the failure of current law, where key words such as tikanga shift around, with the meaning chosen according to the requirements of a Maori litigant. It is poor law when groups
can plunder the public purse behind a smokescreen of ambiguous language,” wrote Dr. John Robinson in When Two Cultures Meet; the New Zealand Experience. 22
And as for Wiliams saying that the Treaty of Waitangi was meant to bring this non-law system of tikanga together with the common law; that is not only false but utterly preposterous as the whole point of the Treaty was to bring to New Zealand a system of law that hitherto it had not had. There is not a single word in the Treaty or its Preamble that states or even implies that tikanga was to have any place in the new British colony. Even if tikanga was a “system of law”, it could not co-exist with English common law since it is not possible to have two different systems of law operating side by side in the same jurisdiction.
Despite being ruled by the same monarch since 1603 and being the same nation since the Act of Union of 1707 England and Scotland have different systems of law – the common law in England and an amalgam of common law and Roman law in Scotland. Completely separate jurisdictions. No one has ever tried to run them together as that would never work. It would work even less were English common law in New Zealand to run side by side with the non-law system of tikanga, which is not much more than the primitive practices and beliefs of pre-1840 tribal witch doctors.
In making the false assertion that tikanga was a system of law Williams was either woefully ignorant of the law, history and constitution of New Zealand or he was being deliberately deceitful. In either of these events it is questionable as to whether Williams is a fit and proper person to be a lawyer, let alone a judge.
Williams tried to introduce the fiction of tikanga in the Peter Ellis case in the Supreme Court and was supported in his error by another judge, Susan Glazebrook. In this case these ignorant and mischievous judges applied the non-law tikanga instead of our common law – “the greatest disgrace in our legal history” (Sir Robert Jones) while prominent lawyer and ex-ACT M.P., Stephen Franks, said, “They [the judges] have made, without any mandate from the people they now intend to rule, the right to make law. They are judges who want to be kings.” 23
And, just as cancer spreads, so too does this judicial falsehood that tikanga was a pre-1840 “system of law”.
In the High Court case of Edwards (claims by tribes for large swathes of foreshore and seabed in the eastern Bay of Plenty) Judge Peter Churchman ignored the clearly stated intention of the democratically elected Parliament of New Zealand by putting the non-law tikanga above the requirement in the Marine and Coastal Area Act (s. 58) that a claimant must prove that its members have “exclusively used and occupied their claimed area from 1840 to the present day”.
“Up until the assertion of sovereignty by Great Britain in 1840 the sole system of law in New Zealand was tikanga Maori,” he falsely asserted before waffling on about the “earth mother” and the “sky father”…… “with the earth being created when these two were thrust apart by their children” and other such juvenile Maori witch-doctory which should have no place in a modern court of law. By basing his judgement on a fictional “system of law” that never existed Churchman’s whole rotten judgement seems to be based on a lie.
Since the claimants could not succeed in accordance with the clearly stated words of the Act, that should have been the end of it. Instead, Churchman said, “The task for the court in considering whether the requirements of s. 58 (1) (a) of the Act have been met is therefore not to attempt to measure the factual situation against Western property rights or even the tests at common law for the establishment of customary land rights. The critical focus must be on tikanga and the question of whether or not the specified area was held in accordance with the tikanga that has been established.”
He then passed the whole thing over to a couple of part-Maoris, Hiria Hape and Doug Hauraki, who are not part of the justice system but who have spent their careers in advancing Maori culture and Maori interests, as to whether these applicants, who failed to succeed under the Act, held their claim “in accordance with tikanga”. So, why do we have judges on Churchman’s salary of $471,100 plus unbelievable perks when the case can be more or less decided by two outsiders?
In the words of former judge, Anthony Willy, commenting on this judgement, “It is simply not tenable to import spiritual beliefs and ancient codes of conduct into the fabric of the contemporary common law of New Zealand. The law must be certain.” 24 In the not too distant past New Zealand had judges – like Judge Willy – who knew, understood and valued the law. Now we have types like Churchman who ignore the law and in the process take away the rights of the people of New Zealand so as to indulge the greedy claims of small, private groups of iwi. Churchman’s mistake was based on the premise that tikanga was a system of law when it plainly was not.
Another deeply flawed judge who ties his flag to the non-law system of tikanga rather than to our tried and tested common law is Grant Powell who, before he became a judge was deeply involved in acting for claimants to the Waitangi Tribunal. One has to wonder whether he was the best choice to be the judge in the case of Reeder and Others, dated 12th October, 2021, which gave some tribal groups rights of customary marine title to the coast near Tauranga.
Powell also ignored the Marine and Coastal Area Act and said that the test of whether the claimants could prove exclusive use and occupation of the claimed area must be viewed “through a tikanga lens that reflects the continuity of customary relationship with the land” and that the nature of tikanga colours the words”, thus allowing a lower threshold than in the Act. 25
He really gave the game away and seems to have exposed his own bias when he said that the court must take a protective approach to customary rights and interpret these liberally in favour of indigenous groups (and against the rest of us). The Act does not say that. This judgement is every bit as dodgy as that of Churchman and does nothing to arrest the rapidly sinking trust in the judiciary by ordinary New Zealanders who have had their traditional rights shafted in so many ways by defective, if not biased, judges.
This nonsense and injustice of accepting tribal hearsay stories in violation of the well-established rules of evidence was even applied to private property in the case of Raikes v Hastings D.C. et al. (23
November, 2022) by High Court judge Christine Grice. She restricted the use of land on a private farm on the mere hearsay of a greedy bunch of 21st century Europeans with a small amount of Maori blood in them masquerading as a “tribe”.
Without critically evaluating their “evidence” (tribal sayings and songs, proverbs and carvings), she accepted or did not discard their uncorroborated stories in support of their claim, including the lie that a tohunga once threw a stick up to the top of a mountain, which accepted this “gift” which then caused a proliferation of bird life, which caused the “tribe” centuries ago to walk across the Raikes’ farm. In taking the side of these shameless opportunists Grice violated the property rights of the owners of the farm. Such are the depths of ignorance and backwardness that our once rational and trusted law have reached on the watch of types like Christine Grice.
These judges – Winkelmann, Williams, Glazebrook, Grice, Churchman and Powell – are playing fast and loose with the law so as to advance the interests of one minority race group at the expense of all other New Zealanders. The whole basis of law is being overturned by judges who are effectively carrying out a coup d’etat against both the law and the constitution. The function of a judge is to apply the laws that are enacted by the democratically elected Parliament and not to make the law and certainly not to break the law. They have discarded the very law which their oaths of office require them to uphold. They need to be reminded of their proper function very forcefully if they are not to become the enemies of freedom and democracy.
In choosing to ditch tikanga, utu and other forms of violence, and embrace for the first time a system of law that provided enforceable personal and property rights, the chiefs of 1840 were acting wisely; in fact, they were going for the top prize in exchanging their Stone Age culture for the legal system of England that was the most advanced and civilised in the whole world and which placed more importance on individual rights and humane values than any other. The rigid Code Napoleon of France was not – and still is not – a better system than English common law. As Sir Apirana Ngata said in his speech at
Waitangi on the centenary of the Treaty in 1940, “Let me acknowledge first that, in the whole world I doubt whether any native race has been so well treated by a European people as the Maori.”
It beggars belief that, after nearly two centuries of living successfully and prosperously under English common law, a clique of out-of- control judges like Winkelmann, Churchman, Powell, Williams and Glazebrook should try to reverse the wisdom of the chiefs of 1840 by falsely insisting that tikanga was a “pre-1840 system of law.”
In the words of John Robinson, “The Maori were fortunate that it was the British, at that time when the ideas of equality and universal humanity were flourishing, who were the dominant new force in the South Pacific. There were many people who would have used their superior weapons to kill them and take their land without a second thought, to conquer and enslave them (Cortez in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru and the Belgians in the Congo), slaughter them (as Alexander the Great did to all who opposed him, as Maori did in the Chathams). If we consider all societies throughout history – like the Spanish in the seventeenth century – the British were remarkably considerate.” 26
Article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi gave all the people of New Zealand
native and settler – all the rights of British subjects and so liberated the natives from a state of fear and anarchy – something that Joe Williams, Grice, Glazebrook, Winkelmann, Churchman and Powell should be celebrating instead of trying to switch the clock back to a past that no one except those of ill-will could possibly want.
The rule of law not only guarantees individual rights such as habeas corpus and free speech but, through the law of contract, etc. has provided the foundation for the economic growth and improvement in living standards that have transformed New Zealand into the modern and comfortable society that we know today. As Apirana Ngata stated, “British law has been the greatest benefit bestowed by the Queen on the Maori people”. 27Not tikanga which, based on the power of the chief and the emotion of the tribe, does not recognise personal rights, private property or any civilised standards of behaviour and which, in its application, crushes the individual. The facts are very simple.
Before 1840 there were no laws or system of law in New Zealand; since 1840 all New Zealanders have lived under English law, the finest system of law yet conceived by man. It is a treasure that must be preserved.
New Zealand; the Benefits of Colonisation, of which this chapter is a part, is available from Tross Publishing for $30 (incl. postage within NZ). See: www.trosspublishing.com
