TOW REFERENDUM: "EQUAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES"

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David Seymour doesn't know which way is up. That is to say, he's a self-confessed agnostic - but an intelligent, articulate agnostic who wants a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi principles, who got his wicked way with the End of Life Choice Act so media pundit Graham Adams (who sounds like an agnostic also) thinks he'll succeed with a Treaty vote too. Eventually (shades of Fawlty Towers' Manuel).

Adams would seem to be reckoning without UNDRIP. The National Party signed up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and unless our coalition government quits this sorry charade of international unity, we're saddled with creeping tribalism, superstitions and Maorification of the nation. 

New Zealand is at war, openly declared by the treasonous Willie Jackson, with ammo supplied by his not so obvious cohorts in the judiciary, academia and bureaucracy.  Strange that the LSM (Lame-stream Media, to use a borrowed expression) have joined forces with the above to oppose something that would supply readymade headlines. And please don't say the media are above such pragmatism. Not after they were paid to support the Covid scam. 

Anyway, to Graham Adams (who in spite of his evident agnosticism mostly gets it right):

 

 Underestimating David Seymour is a mistake.

Anyone who followed David Seymour’s patient championing of assisted dying will have a sneaking suspicion that history may well repeat itself in the Treaty principles debate. As Winston Peters might put it, this is not his first rodeo.

 

It took five years after Seymour lodged his bill in Parliament’s biscuit tin in 2015 for the End of Life Choice Act to be ratified in a referendum at 2020’s general election and he was fighting very powerful opponents all the way — including the Catholic Church and its proxies, as well as influential doctors’ unions.

The Catholic Church is tragically not the powerful opponent of evil that it once was. Call this blog a proxy if you like, but if the Church were fulfilling its mandate from Christ to preach the Gospel in season and out of season instead of its bishops championing - as they do - LGBTQ and worse, Seymour wouldn't even have tried to legalise killing the old and infirm.  

 

He entered the arena as the underdog, with even some of those pushing for a law-change initially seeing him as a poor representative to lead the campaign. Little by little, however, his critics were obliged to concede his persistent advocacy was highly effective.

 

Despite that success, few commentators rate his chances of progressing a Treaty Principles Bill beyond a first reading and its associated select committee hearing, let alone securing a referendum to ultimately ratify or reject a Treaty Principles Act. The consensus seems to be that angry protests will frighten Christopher Luxon into making sure Seymour’s proposed bill is summarily shot down after the select committee process.

 

And it’s easy to see why opponents of a referendum believe Seymour’s bill will never get near a ballot box.

 

Despite a Curia poll in October showing 45 per cent support for holding a referendum, there has been precious little — if any — commentary in favour of one. In fact, a lot of it has been hysterically opposed and some little short of apocalyptic, including Labour MP Willie Jackson’s warning in early November of “war”.

 

When Ardern announced her new Cabinet. How much damage did they do?

 

“I’m just giving a warning. I work amongst our people, I’m amongst people who will go to war for this — war against Seymour and his mates. I’m saying to you what Māori have been saying to me.”

 

Former Prime Ministers have denounced it. Jim Bolger called it “bloody stupid”, “a total sideshow”, and “a no-go”, while Helen Clark said a referendum should not even be contemplated, and that it would be “incredibly divisive”.

In other words, a referendum is the way to go. 

 

Anthropologist Dame Anne Salmond has described Seymour’s proposal to redefine the Treaty principles and put them to a vote as “disrespectful” and “arrogant”, as well as “unjust and unwise, and should not be entertained by any responsible government”.

Does Salmond consider that the redefinition of Treaty principles sought for years now by unelected and far from disinterested anachronistic tribal entities and promoted by the LSM (lame-stream media, a borrowed expression) has been just and wise - in other words, 'tika'?  

 

It has also been said that the average voter is not capable of understanding the subtleties of constitutional law, and that prejudice and racism would skew the vote.

 

Not to mention babykillers getting gongs too 

 

Predictably, the media has been damning of the proposal and quick to dismiss its chances.

 

Stuff’s chief political correspondent, Tova O’Brien, has referred to the “lunacy” of a referendum.

 

Stuff’s political editor, Luke Malpass, told the podcast Newsable in late November: “We will almost certainly not see a Treaty referendum.”

 

Newstalk ZB’s political editor, Jason Walls, similarly asserted on Newshub Nation that the bill would be killed after the first reading and the select committee process.

If the LSM hate the idea, that's perhaps a good reason to love it. 

 

It’s hard not to think they are seriously underestimating Seymour’s tactical skills and persistence. It has gone mostly unnoticed that he told the NZ Herald’s Audrey Young in November that he wants a long period for select committee consultation, possibly as much as nine months.

 

That is the mark of a canny and confident democrat, who believes that, given time, he will be able to persuade a majority of voters to his way of thinking.

 

Seymour’s pitch is simple yet powerful: New Zealand needs a discussion about Treaty principles and people should have a say on them alongside the courts, the Waitangi Tribunal and public servants. And rather than a “partnership between races”, his principles aim to give all people “equal rights and duties”.

 

As he told RNZ, Act thinks the principles “should be codified in legislation and New Zealanders should be allowed to vote on them, rather than allowing the courts to surreptitiously change our constitution… Act would promote the Treaty as it was actually signed, not the divisive version invented by judges and academics.”

 

It should be noted that the binding referendum to ratify the End of Life Choice Act was held at the insistence of Winston Peters and NZ First. It turned out to be an inspired political move. Seymour no doubt learned from his experience of that contentious bill that if a politician wants to lock in change, a law passed after extensive debate both in Parliament and in public and then offered to voters to confirm or reject is an unimpeachable template for determining the will of the people. 

Which goes to show what evil the voters' unimpeachable template can achieve, when the voters do not acknowledge the God Who gave them life, the God Who alone may take their life away. 

 

Seymour wants the discussion to be as wide-ranging as possible. Consequently, when King Tūheitia declared a national hui to be held at Turangawaewae on January 20 to discuss the bill and the government’s Māori policy agenda, he welcomed it.

 

Seymour (like Peters) believes in the decency and intelligence of the ordinary voter. He doesn’t see many as unrepentant bigots, racists and deplorables — as some politicians and journalists seem to — but rather as largely rational people who will respond to intelligent arguments, including around issues of fairness, equal suffrage and the nation’s constitutional path.

Decent, yes. Intelligent, yes. Because God created them so. But abysmally ignorant because the Church has failed to inform them of the supremely, ineffably, divinely intelligent arguments of the Gospel and Church doctrine and dogma. 

 

It is an approach that paid off handsomely in 2020 when a significant majority of voters were clearly convinced by his appeals for compassion towards those suffering intolerably at the end of their lives and voted accordingly in the referendum.

And in so doing consigned them to hell for all eternity. So much for 'compassion'. 

 

It is ironic that some of his most prominent opponents are enthusiastically — albeit unwittingly — helping his cause. After all, is there any better way to ensure voters will end up demanding a referendum than insisting they can’t have one — particularly when they are told they are too dim to understand a constitutional question?

 

Voters were certainly considered smart and responsible enough in 1993 to decide in a binding referendum held alongside that year’s general election whether MMP should be adopted as the nation’s voting system.

 

Meanwhile, Te Pāti Māori is doing excellent work on Seymour’s behalf. Notably, its MPs organised protests during morning rush-hour within the first fortnight of the formation of the Luxon-led government to protest against its policies towards Māori. The party’s secretary bizarrely predicted the protests would likely cause “millions of dollars in lost productivity” as if that would help it win favour with the public. 

 

The media appears to have been very impressed by Te Pāti Māori’s show of power after thousands of protesters turned out to support it, and have been very happy to present the party as representing the voice of Māori. However, as researcher Lindsay Mitchell observed in a column in December, Te Pāti Māori gained support from no more than one in six enrolled Māori voters. All up, it won just 3.08 per cent of the party vote.

 

However, it is the activist group Te Waka Hourua who have shown themselves to be Seymour’s most devoted allies. Vandalising a display of the Treaty of Waitangi in English showcased in one of the nation’s most cherished cultural institutions, Te Papa, is a stupendous own goal. When English is New Zealand’s only common language, it defies belief that any protest group would think it was a good idea to deface the version written in the language everyone speaks.

What is undeniable is that David Seymour is intelligent. One would like to say the same of Te Waka Hourua but honesty demands that one refrain.  

 

As one social media commenter put it: “If elite Māori say the English version has no standing, then the Treaty is no longer intelligible or relevant to at least 87 per cent of New Zealanders.”

 

Te Waka Hourua’s claim that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the Crown is as poorly thought through as their vandalism. If that were true, there would be no basis for Treaty settlements, which rest on the acknowledgment Māori surrendered sovereignty in return for successive governments protecting their property rights. As political commentator Grant Duncan put it: “Any community on these islands that rejects the Crown’s assumption of its sovereignty today weakens any claim they may make for compensation from the Crown in future. Indeed, they may be forgetting that the Waitangi Tribunal was a creature of a Parliament that had sworn loyalty to the monarch.”

 

Te Waka Hourua’s assault on the museum exhibit was effectively an attempt to insist there should be no debate, unless it is held on terms that suit them. Unfortunately for them, less than six weeks into the coalition’s term a fiery debate is already well under way. And even a quick look at social media shows all aspects of the Treaty / Te Tiriti are up for robust discussion.

 

Agiosoritissa Icon (Mother of God), artist unknown

 O Sanctissima, O piisima Dulcis Virgo Maria

Mater amata, intemerata,

Ora, ora pro nobis!

 

ST PETER'S HALO, KEY, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

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A statue of St Peter at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of San Nicolas, Buenos Aires where Jorge Mario Bergoglio aka Pope Francis was bishop for many years, was struck by lightning, obliterating the halo and the key of St Peter and his right hand, on  Bergoglio's's birthday, December 17. It preceded, by only a few hours, the publication of Fiducia Supplicans which gives the go-ahead to blessing sodomy. (As a reader notes, allowing for the 4 hours' time difference the lightning strike could have been simultaneous with the signing of FS.)

Now whatever could that mean? The halo is the symbol of St Peter's holiness. The key signifies his juridical authority. His hand means blessing.Oh, you say, it's just coincidence. Really? What about the lightning that struck St Peter's Basilica the night Pope Benedict XVI abdicated, paving the way for Bergoglio's illicit election to the papacy? What about the crows and seagulls killing the doves released by Bergoglio into St Peter's Square in 2014 as a gesture of peace for Ukraine?

Tens of thousands watched in St Peter's Square as doves released by Bergoglio in 2014 as a gesture for peace in Ukraine were mauled by a huge seagull and a crow

God will not be mocked. Especially not by an antipope who has now liberated the heresies of the German Church's 'Synodal Path' to the entire Catholic world; an antipope who has precipitated the worst crisis in the Church EVER - the effective installation of the heresy of modernism, "synthesis of all heresies" (Pius X). With God there are no coincidences.   

On Sunday December 17, 2023, lightning literally pulverized the key and halo of the statue of Saint Peter, located on the facade of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Rosary of San Nicolas , north of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

The news was reported by the Telegram channel "The Pope's Pearls" : it seemed to be fake, given that no news could be found on the web, but the event has just been confirmed by the Reverend Father Justo Lofeudo, a priest who is certainly a Bergoglian.

A typical "Ratzinger effect", evidently, that particular phenomenon whereby the Bergoglians or the una cum, (Bergoglio's legitimist conservatives) unconsciously offer information, documents and testimonies that are very useful for the reconstruction of the Magna Quaestio. In this case it would obviously only be a "sign from Heaven" which, however, has been interpreted by many Catholics without too much difficulty.

Father Lofeudo certainly did not realize the effect that the disclosure of the photo would have.

The priests of the Sanctuary have issued a statement that rejects the symbolic interpretation of the fact, but not the fact itself: “The Sanctuary does not agree with the interpretation that has been given with respect for the damage produced in the image of the apostle Saint Peter.”

What is striking, in fact, is that the event occurred on Jorge Mario Bergoglio's birthday, the day before the publication of the "Fiducia supplicans" declaration which opens up blessings for gay couples.

This measure marked a sort of point of no return: the faithful are starting to understand that something isn't working.

Even the place where the accident occurred is rich in meaning: first of all, the Sanctuary of San Nicolas is in Argentina, homeland of the anti-pope, a few kilometers from Buenos Aires, the city of which Bergoglio was bishop for a long time.

The channel “The Pope's Pearls” reports: “Above all, it is a place of worship and veneration because inside there is the beautiful statue of the Madonna of the Rosary, which appeared for years to the visionary Gladys Quiroga de Motta, starting from early 1980s, giving her more than 1800 messages. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/33982/a-marian-apparition-has-been-approved-in-argentina-and-its-a-big-deal

In them, the Holy Virgin says she has returned to continue the Apparitions of Fatima, and many of these clearly speak of the terrible struggle between the devil and the Church."

Since February 11, 2013, various "suggestive" events have dotted the story of the usurpation of the Chair of Peter reconstructed in three documentaries in The "Ratzinger Code" investigation.

 

We can remember the lightning that struck the Dome the same night as Pope Benedict's "resignation"; the inexplicable blocking of the bells of Castel Gandolfo following the invalid election of Francis; the killing of the doves released by Bergoglio by crows and seagulls;

 

A crow gets in amongst it 

 

...the fire of the Bethlehem chapel a few hours after Francis' visit; the fire in the Consistory Hall of Castel Gandolfo a few months ago, in the same days in which we published this appreciated report and many other events that Catholics of just a century ago would have interpreted as unequivocal "press releases" from the Eternal Father.

Well, from a faith perspective, how to interpret the lightning that struck the statue of St. Peter on December 17th?

It seems that the time for antipope Francis is coming to an end: heaven would have symbolically destroyed his halo of sanctity and disintegrated the key, which represents the pope's authority. Strange that the statue only held one key, it seems. Symbolically, the golden key alludes to power in the kingdom of heaven and the silver key indicates the spiritual authority of the papacy on earth. The rope connecting the key eyelets alludes to the link between the two powers.

*The una cum traditional Mass is, in all cases, an implicit recognition of the Vatican II religion as the Catholic religion, and as the Conciliar Church as the Roman Catholic Church https://www.traditionalmass.org/articles/article.php?id=46&catname=12

It is well past time now for faithful, traditional Catholics (yes, the very ones that Bergoglio persecutes) to offer daily prayer and penance to Almighty God in reparation for his misdeeds, if only in the hope of averting the infliction of more disasters and more heresies on the Mystical Bride of Christ. It is an honour and a privilege to do so, remembering Christ on His Cross praying forgiveness for His enemies.

 

"But I say to you that hear: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them that calumniate you." 

- Lk 6:27,28 

HIPKINS DOESN'T KNOW WHY HE LOST, DO YOU?

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Apparently it was the wealthy and the powerful who were responsible for the 'No' vote in Australia's recent referendum. Who sez? The new Chris Hipkins, NZ Herald, that's who.

And there were we, thinking it was the commonsensical, the intuitive and the fair-minded wot got rid of indigenisation. Speaking of Hipkins (although we'd rather not), the man who doesn't know what a woman is doesn't know why Labour lost the election, either. 

Ah, let's think ... Maybe the Abortion Law Act and subsequent slaughter of the unborn on the altar of convenience. Maybe awarding all sorts of privileges to the brown-skinned (not Indians, though, just Maori, so maybe racism). Maybe forcing the entire nation to take an experimental gene serum and getting the Catholic Church in behind on it, thereby crippling, maiming and killing Kiwis left, right and centre (although not so many as are killed by abortion). 

All of which is by way of a lead-in to the hopeful comments of the unlikely-named pundit Lushington D Brady of the BFD: 

As I’ve previously observed, New Zealanders are fast learning the truth of Paul Keating’s claim that “when you change the government, you change the country”. For once, the changes seem to be trending in the right direction.

The new government is repealing Three Waters, promising to bin the Auckland Light Rail white elephant, the ute tax and more. It’s being dragged, however reluctantly and slowly, into a likely referendum on co-governance and clawing back the ‘interpretations’ of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Luxon, no doubt prodded by Winston Peters, is also re-orienting New Zealand’s foreign policy back to the West, rather than pandering to Chinese communism. Notwithstanding, of course, his gutless signing of an anti-Israel “joint statement”.

So why wasn't Winston prodding Luxon into refusing to sign that disgusting document?  Was it a trade-off? 

If Matthew Hooton is to be believed, Luxon will also be New Zealand’s “most pro-Australian PM ever”. Which seems like a pretty strong call – though it’s not hard to at least better the sneering condescension of Jacinda Ardern. But “pro-Australian” is, if nothing else, just part of a general re-orientation, ‘back to Canberra, Washington, NATO, Tokyo and Seoul’.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s emphasis on Australia was underlined by his visiting Anthony Albanese in Sydney the same day his Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, was revealing the financial debacle left by Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins.

That prioritisation reflects Luxon’s view New Zealand has become too inward-looking and it needs to “hustle” globally.

It’s hard not to suspect that much of it is being driven by New Zealand’s new foreign minister.

His Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, has already dropped New Zealand’s childish insistence since 1984 that it runs an “independent” foreign policy. Peters points out the slogan was smug, implying other countries don’t, and meaningless, since every country does.

 

 

“Smug” and “meaningless” seems a pretty apt description of NZ foreign policy under Ardern and Nanaia Mahuta, after all.

 

There, there, dear reader - it was just a nightmare and it's over

 

It will be interesting to see how Peters, if not Luxon, reacts to the inevitable diplomatic bullying from Beijing.

The message to Beijing is that Wellington backing democracy over dictatorship is its independent choice, despite China menacingly warning New Zealand of the “risks” of seeking closer economic ties with India.

Somehow, I suspect that Peters will be easily a match for anything Beijing’s “wolf warriors” have to throw around. The bigger question will be whether the PM will have the backbone to resist, not just the pressure from China but the panic from business interests terrified at the prospect of having all that sweet, sweet Yuan yanked from their sweaty hands.

So far, though, Luxon is making all the right noises about the AUKUS (Australia, UK, USA) alliance.

 Australian officials surely noticed that Luxon didn’t demur when Albanese said the two countries didn’t just share common values but “a common strategic outlook”. Luxon was the first to refer to the military alliance, promising Wellington would do its share of the “heavy lifting” in what he called “a more challenging and complex world” and emphasising greater military interoperability.

Given the AUKUS defence pact, which Luxon called “a very important element in ensuring peace” in the region, greater interoperability implicitly extends to the US and UK. Albanese denies pushing for New Zealand to join Pillar Two of AUKUS, but he doesn’t need to. Luxon confirmed New Zealand is interested and will decide over the next year. It’s unthinkable his government would choose no.

 

Dare we hope this uni has closed? Probably not

 

There remains, of course, the legacy of Lange.

New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy will stay. The baby boomers will need to pass before it can reconsider that matter rationally. Albanese astutely emphasised Australia’s new submarines will be nuclear-powered but not nuclear-armed. Some New Zealand voters make that distinction.

Both sides’ message was clear: New Zealand and Australia do better the more they co-operate.

Australia’s prodigal cousin continues its journey home.

The Australian

 The best Luxon could do in the short term is show up, by contrast, the lily- livered Albanese government.

 

The Vision of St John Evangelist (Alonso Carno)

 

St John, Evangelist, pray for us