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| TPM's Ngarewa-Packer, Kaipara after the haka in Parliament where protocol evidently doesn't matter as it does on the marae.
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The Western world is worried about antiWhiteism. It's a thing. Because white people are on the verge of extinction. 100 years ago 35 percent of the global population was white; today it's eight percent. The white replacement theory is real and the question is whether New Zealand is playing its own small role (consciously or unconciously), in a globalist scheme, by its privileged treatment of brown people.
Ironically, it's white people who've made a god of Diversity and fall over themselves to rescue minorities (in New Zealand, Maori being by far the highest profile variant, from 'colonialism'). New Zealand has spent so many billions expiating white guilt over Te Tiritu Waitangi, straining unsuccessfully to lift Maori out of sickness and poverty, it's now approaching the third world status that Indian and Philippino immigrants think they're escaping.
Anti-White animus, fostered by the Left who frequent the media, incites white guilt and white depression. White people almost apologise for living and they certainly refrain from breeding more white people whose capacity for offending brown and black people is apparently unlimited. In the US it's a worse crime to call a black man by the N word than it is to k*ll a white one.
In Canada for example, 95% of those committing suicide by a legal, lethal shot (Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), are Caucasian. White. As the feast of the Christ Child comes close, the worried world should go to Bethlehem in spirit and adore His mercy and mildness in the flesh, in the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist.
That little rant (above) is merely by way of introduction to an eminently sane gentleman, one John Robertson, writing for Bassett Brash and Hide on the issue of preference for Maori (or Maori fatigue, if you like):
New Zealand
likes to tell itself a comforting story: that we are a modern, secular
democracy where the state stays neutral and citizens are free to believe - or
not believe - without pressure. In theory, that sounds right. In practice, it
increasingly feels untrue.
Across
schools, councils, universities, hospitals, courts, public workplaces,
environmental law, research funding, museums, and national ceremonies, a single
belief system has been given a status no other belief enjoys.
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| Te Pati Maori's Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Oriini Kaipara after the haka in Parliament where protocol evidently doesn't matter as it does on the marae.
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Māori spiritual
concepts—tikanga Māori (customary rules), wairuatanga (the spiritual
dimension), mauri (life force), tapu (sacred restriction), and related
ideas—are routinely embedded into public institutions. Participation is
expected. Opt‑outs are rare or non‑existent. Questioning it is discouraged.
Compliance is assumed.
The crucial
detail most people miss is legal, not cultural. Māori spiritual beliefs are not
treated in law as a religion. They are classified as culture, heritage, or
partnership obligations. That classification acts like a legal bypass switch.
It allows practices that would be prohibited if they came from Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or any other recognised religion.
A Christian
prayer in a state school requires consent. A Māori karakia does not. A
religious ritual at a council meeting would raise immediate objections. A
spiritual acknowledgement framed as tikanga proceeds as standard procedure. The
distinction is not neutrality—it is preference, dressed up as culture.
Supporters
insist these practices are harmless, symbolic, or merely respectful. But
symbols stop being harmless when they are compulsory. When students are led in
prayer-like rituals without parental consent, when staff are expected to stand
silently for spiritual invocations at work, when courts and government agencies
incorporate metaphysical concepts into decision‑making, the state is no longer
neutral. It is endorsing a belief system.
And let us
be honest about definitions. Any worldview that includes spirits, sacred
forces, ancestral presence, and existence beyond death occupies religious
territory. Calling it culture does not change its nature. Spirituality and
religion are not opposites; they are overlapping categories. Pretending
otherwise may be politically convenient, but it is intellectually dishonest.
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This is
where public frustration sets in. People are not objecting because they hate
Māori culture. They are objecting because they are tired of being told
participation is not optional while being assured it somehow isn’t religious.
They are tired of a system where one set of beliefs enjoys automatic access to
public power while all others are confined behind consent forms and opt‑in
rules.
What we now
have, whether intended or not, looks like a two‑tier framework. One belief
system is permitted to permeate public life under the banner of culture. Others
are restricted in the name of secularism. That is not equality. It is
secularism by exception.
No
democracy should operate like this. The state should not decide which
metaphysical claims count as culture and which count as religion. It should not
pressure citizens into rituals they did not choose. And it should not silence
dissent by implying that objection equals hostility.
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| Maori fatigue |
The
solution is neither radical nor hostile. It is boring, legal, and fair.
First,
acknowledge that Māori spiritual beliefs are beliefs. Treat them as such under
the law. Second, apply the same rule to everyone: no compulsory participation
in spiritual practices in public institutions. Third, restore a genuinely
neutral public sphere where belief is private and consent is paramount.
This does
not diminish heritage. It protects freedom. It does not erase culture. It draws
a boundary the state was always meant to respect.
New Zealand
does not need more symbolism. It needs consistency. It needs the courage to say
that equality before the law means exactly that—no favoured beliefs, no quiet
exemptions, and no spiritual coercion disguised as culture.
People are
not confused. They are fed up. And the longer this loophole remains open, the
louder that frustration will become.
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| The haka: not neutral, not cultural |
Why Calling
the Haka “Just Culture” Is a Legal and Intellectual Evasion
One of the
most persistent evasions in this debate centres on the haka. Many New
Zealanders have been conditioned to believe the haka is a neutral cultural
performance, stripped of any spiritual content the moment it entered schools
and public ceremonies. That belief does not survive even basic scrutiny.
The haka is
not a gym warm‑up, nor a secular team‑building exercise. Its origins are
explicitly spiritual. Traditional haka draw on atua (gods or supernatural
beings), wairua (spirit), mana (spiritual authority or power), tapu (sacred
restriction), and ancestral invocation.
These are not poetic flourishes. They
are core metaphysical concepts within Māori cosmology. Early haka were
performed to summon spiritual strength, align performers with ancestral power,
intimidate opponents through sacred force, and invoke protection from the
unseen realm.
No amount
of administrative relabelling changes that reality. A ritual does not cease to
be spiritual because a ministry decides to call it “bicultural practice.”
History, theology, and anthropology do not bend to policy documents.
The same
applies to the hongi (nose-rubbing), often described as a friendly greeting. In
Māori cosmology, the hongi represents the sharing of ha—the sacred breath of
life—directly linked to the creation narrative (actually myth - ed) in which Tāne breathes spiritual
life into the first human. That is not metaphor. That is doctrine. It is
mythology, spirituality, and religion rolled into one physical act.
Yet these
practices are routinely introduced into state schools, councils, and public
institutions without consent, without opt‑out mechanisms, and without the
scrutiny applied to any other belief system.
If a Christian prayer, Islamic
supplication, Hindu mantra, or Buddhist chant were imposed under the same
conditions, it would rightly provoke outrage. The only reason this does not
happen here is because the belief system has been granted a cultural exemption.
This is the
loophole at the heart of the problem. Māori spiritual beliefs are treated in
law as something other than religion, allowing them to pass straight through
the secular firewall that restrains all others. The result is a system where
participation is expected, dissent is socially punished, and neutrality is
quietly abandoned.
Pointing
this out does not diminish Māori culture. It challenges state overreach. It
asserts a simple principle: the government has no mandate to decide which
spiritual beliefs count as culture and which count as religion, nor to compel
citizens—especially children—to participate in rituals rooted in metaphysical
belief.
If New
Zealand is serious about secularism, the solution is straightforward.
Acknowledge spiritual belief for what it is. Apply the same rules to everyone.
Restore consent, neutrality, and equal treatment under the law.
Until that
happens, claims of secularism will remain hollow. What we will have instead is
a system where spirituality is enforced by exception, silence is mistaken for
agreement, and frustration continues to grow—because people can see, plainly,
that the rules are not being applied equally.
https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/john-robertson-secularism-by-exception-why-new-zealand-needs-one-rule-for-all?utm_campaign=
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| Hugo van der Goes Mary and Joseph on the Way to Bethlehem (1475) |
Mary and Joseph, please pray for the world
