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I am Ivor Jones, The Māori Green Lantern. Ko Te Arawa, ko Ngāti Pikiao ōku iwi. I carry Welsh whakapapa too. I am a tohunga mau rākau wairua and a kaitiaki of evidence. I do not raise the taiaha because a politician irritates me. I raise it when power scrubs its own fingerprints from the weapon and tells whānau the bloodstain is “cohesion”. _Tika_ means what is correct, just, fair and appropriate, while _pono_ means what is true, honest, genuine and sincere, according to Te Aka Māori Dictionary and a Te Puni Kōkiri case study. Pā Hēnare Tate’s formulation is even sharper: tika is doing the right thing; pono is doing it the right way, as explained by E-Tangata. That is the test I apply here. Is selecting Murray Chong **tika** after his documented public record? Is Shane Jones’s effort to reduce that record to “one or three colourful lapses” **pono**? My conclusion is no. Not remotely. ### The Tika And Pono Test > This essay follows five connected threads: NZ First’s selection of Murray Chong; Chong’s record concerning Māori representation, te reo Māori, the Confederate flag and an inclusive procurement policy; Shane Jones’s attempt to wash that record clean with the words “loyalty” and “cohesion”; the measurable local and national damage to Māori representation; and the practical choice facing voters on 7 November 2026. I would love you to click through and use this essay, because it contains a storehouse of information you can carry into the smoko room, the dinner table, the marae, the workplace and the voting booth. I have created an audio podcast that lays out this kaupapa in detail, a short video that explains it plainly, and this long-form cited essay for readers who want the complete paper trail. This is not content confetti to disappear down a corporate algorithm. It is a repository for our mokopuna. One day they may look back at this period and say: _at least The Māori Green Lantern, alongside the other voices who refused silence, warned us while the machinery was still moving._ * * * ## The Candidate And The Laundry Cycle NZ First announced Chong as its New Plymouth candidate and called him a “dedicated local advocate” committed to honest public service, transparency and prudent public spending; his campaign slogan includes “one country, one people, one law, one flag”, according to the party’s published announcement and RNZ’s report. New Zealand First names New Plymouth veteran councillor Murray Chong as election candidate*Correction: An earlier version of this article said Murray Chong was New Plymouth’s Deputy Mayor. He is one of three deputy mayor’s who will be in rotation in May 2027.RNZRNZ | Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa That official varnish omits the splinters. In 2025, Mayor Neil Holdom ordered Chong out of the council chamber after Chong called a procurement strategy “racist”, withdrew the remark, and then repeated it. The policy aimed to save money and produce local economic, social, cultural and environmental gains, including better partnerships with iwi, hapū and Māori businesses, according to 1News and Local Democracy Reporting. Chong’s supporters said he had used the wrong words and deserved some slack; councillor Dinnie Moeahu rejected that excuse and asked what opponents of Māori inclusion feared they had lost, while Holdom said leadership should be inclusive rather than divisive, according to the same 1News report. That counter-evidence matters. Pono requires the whole record, not only the pieces that sharpen my argument. Chong abstained when the council voted in 2024 to retain its Māori ward, citing threats to his safety, and a bullet had struck his distinctive vehicle during the public controversy, as reported by RNZ’s candidate profile and the New Zealand Herald. That reported violence is indefensible. Political disagreement never licenses threats, intimidation or gunfire. But condemning violence against Chong does not require anyone to launder his politics. In 2019, he apologised after saying he was ashamed to sing the national anthem in te reo Māori, according to RNZ. Earlier reporting also recorded his defence of displaying the Confederate flag at an Americana event; he acknowledged its association with slavery but framed it through childhood television nostalgia, as reported by the Otago Daily Times. These are not identical acts and must not be falsely collapsed into one legal allegation. They are, however, a public pattern: resistance to specific Māori representation, hostility to a policy designed partly to include Māori suppliers, a recorded rejection of the Māori-language anthem, and defence of a symbol inseparable from racial oppression. In my evidence-based opinion, that pattern makes NZ First’s language of “cohesion” look less like principle and more like industrial-strength political detergent. * * * ## Jones Puts Loyalty Above Accountability Shane Jones backs NZ First’s controversial New Plymouth candidate selectionNew Zealand First deputy leader Shane Jones is backing the party’s controversial candidate selection for the New Plymouth electorate.RNZRNZ | Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa At a New Plymouth rally attended by about 300 supporters, Shane Jones said Chong was valuable and loyal to the elements making up NZ First’s identity. Jones dismissed the controversies as “one or three colourful lapses” and claimed voters would instead consider national cohesion, cost of living and industry, according to RNZ’s rally report. There is the reveal. Jones does not deny the record. He miniaturises it. Conduct affecting Māori language, Māori representation, racial symbolism and Māori economic participation is pushed through the rinse cycle until it emerges as colour — vivid perhaps, embarrassing perhaps, but supposedly superficial. Chong told RNZ that many controversies were old, that he had learned, and that his strong electoral record proved community respect; he pointed to receiving twice as many votes as other candidates, according to RNZ. The official 2025 result supports the narrow electoral claim: his 9,566 first preferences were 2.02 times David Bublitz’s 4,743, according to NPDC’s final result. But popularity is not moral absolution. A large vote proves that many people chose a candidate. It does not prove every statement was tika, every symbol pono, or every affected community unharmed. Elections confer office; they do not wash history. * * * ## The Deep Dive Podcast Murray Chong and the Mori Ward Battle 0:00 /1267.763084 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) * * * ## A Koha To Keep The Laundry Lights On You might ask who pays The Māori Green Lantern to produce high-volume, evidence-heavy essays that follow the stains power wants hidden. The answer is whānau through koha. No corporate queue stands behind this mahi. Every koha says that accountability will not be left to the same Crown and political structures being examined; it says rangatiratanga includes the power to **support** our own truth tellers. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. If you are able, consider a koha so this voice can keep testing political claims against tika, pono and the public record. If you cannot koha, no worries. Subscribe or follow The Māori Green Lantern, kōrero about the evidence, and share it with whānau and friends. That is koha too. * **Koha — Support This Mahi:** Make A Voluntary Contribution * **Subscribe — Receive The Essays Directly:** Support The Māori Green Lantern * **Direct Bank Transfer:** Ivor Jones, 03-1395-0099387-000 * **Facebook:** Follow And Subscribe * * * ## Five Connections They Hope You Miss ### Connection One: Loyalty Is The Real Qualification Jones praised Chong’s loyalty to NZ First’s core identity, while Chong said the party held true to his values, according to RNZ. The selection is therefore not an accidental mismatch between a respectable party and an inconvenient candidate. By their own words, it is ideological alignment. ### Connection Two: “One People” Deletes The Treaty Relationship NZ First’s candidate announcement promotes “one country, one people, one law, one flag”, according to its published release. The slogan pretends formal sameness repairs historical and institutional inequality. Constitutional scholar Claire Charters explains the defect plainly: treating everybody the same does not automatically create equality when a majority can dominate a minority, in E-Tangata’s constitutional discussion. I traced the same solvent in “The Coalition Conveyor Belt”: “equal citizenship” is used to rub Crown obligations from the page while leaving Crown power untouched. That is not equality. It is unilateral power wearing a supermarket-brand fairness label. ### Connection Three: Local Provocation Meets National Rollback New Plymouth’s poll recorded 15,004 votes to remove Māori wards and 12,046 to keep them, a removal margin of 2,958, according to the official NPDC result. Nationally, 24 of 42 referendum councils voted for removal, according to RNZ and Te Ao Māori News. The coalition reinstated compulsory poll provisions for many councils; Policy.nz explains the legislative reversal, while Vote Local lists the 42 affected councils. I examined the wider closure of Māori-representation pathways in “The Grandmother Who Kept The Door Open While They Bricked The Rest Shut”. ### Connection Four: “Cohesion” Means Māori Must Absorb The Blow Jones said Chong could contribute to a more cohesive nation, according to RNZ. But cohesion without repair is simply enforced quiet. If Māori must accept attacks on our representation, language and participation so other people can feel united, then “cohesion” is not peace. It is submission with a press release. ### Connection Five: Extraction And Culture War Share A Spine At the same rally, Jones used “drill, baby, drill”, said “bugger the climate”, promised to cut red and green tape, and maintained NZ First’s commitment to seabed mineral extraction, according to RNZ. I traced that extractive ideology in “Drill Baby, Drill — Into Your Own Fraud” and Jones’s accountability record in “How Shane Jones Loots The Public Purse And Winston Peters Calls It Statecraft”. The connection is structural. The same politics treats Treaty duties as tape, Māori representation as division, kaitiakitanga as obstruction and extraction as common sense. I call that white-supremacist neoliberal government not as a claim about anyone’s secret soul, but as my judgement of a system that preserves settler control, devalues collective Māori authority and opens whenua to profit while demanding that Māori call the result unity. * * * ## Three Examples For The Western Mind ### Example One: The Boardroom With The Reserved Seat Removed Imagine a company takes your family’s land, builds its headquarters on it, and signs an agreement promising your descendants an enduring role in decisions. Generations later, the board calls that reserved voice “racial privilege” and lets all shareholders vote on whether your family may remain in the room. **The Harm:** New Plymouth’s final poll produced 15,004 remove votes and 12,046 keep votes; the removal side won 55.47% of valid choice votes, according to the official result. Nationally, 57.14% of the 42 referendum councils voted for removal, according to RNZ and Te Ao Māori News. **The Tikanga Impact:** Whakapapa locates authority and obligation within relationships among people, whenua and generations. A Māori ward is not full rangatiratanga, but it creates a route for mana whenua perspectives to enter decisions. Removing that route weakens whanaungatanga and tells tangata whenua that their relationship with place may be overruled by a temporary numerical majority. **The Solution:** Restore councils’ ability to establish Māori wards under the same democratic rules used for general wards; entrench Māori representation against discriminatory veto mechanisms; and require transparent reporting on Māori participation and outcomes. The Green Party has opposed the forced referendums and defended Māori wards. ### Example Two: The Supplier List That Calls Inclusion Discrimination Imagine a city discovers that contracts repeatedly circulate among the same established firms. It adopts a buy-local strategy to save money and widen access for smaller businesses, including Indigenous suppliers. One director labels that effort racist, repeats the allegation after withdrawing it, and is later marketed for his commitment to prudent public money. **The Harm:** New Plymouth’s strategy aimed at economic, social, cultural and environmental gains and sought stronger partnerships with iwi, hapū and Māori businesses, according to 1News. The immediate harm cannot be honestly reduced to a dollar figure from available sources. The measurable institutional harm is the obstruction and stigmatisation of a formally adopted inclusion mechanism. **The Tikanga Impact:** Manaakitanga is not ceremonial kindness. It is the active protection of dignity and the creation of conditions in which others can participate. Calling the opening of a blocked economic doorway “racism” reverses victim and beneficiary: the excluded are recast as privileged, while the inherited advantage behind the closed door disappears from view. **The Solution:** Publish procurement outcomes by business location and relevant supplier categories; audit whether promised access produces contracts rather than brochures; and use independent review to test value for money and equity together. Tika demands evidence of results. Pono demands that inclusion is neither exaggerated nor sabotaged. ### Example Three: The Employee Whose Misconduct Becomes “Colour” Imagine an employee repeatedly creates reputational damage involving language, race and inclusion. Management does not examine the pattern. It calls the incidents “colourful lapses”, praises the employee’s loyalty and sends him out as the organisation’s public face. **The Harm:** The individual episodes are documented: the 2019 te reo anthem controversy and apology in RNZ; the Confederate-flag defence reported by the Otago Daily Times; the 2024 Māori-ward abstention under reported threats in RNZ; and the 2025 chamber expulsion reported by 1News. Jones then publicly reduced the controversies to “one or three colourful lapses”, according to RNZ. **The Tikanga Impact:** Pono requires truthfulness and consistency. Ngākau pono can mean loyalty, but loyalty detached from tika becomes protection of the in-group rather than integrity. In Western terms: loyalty is not a character defence when the organisation is asking whether the conduct itself meets the standard. **The Solution:** NZ First should publish the candidate-vetting standard it applied, explain why the documented conduct meets that standard, and state what change it believes occurred. Chong should be judged on his full record, including his apology, his electoral support, the violence directed at him and the conduct for which he remains publicly accountable. * * * ## Tika Without Pono Is Branding Chong says he has learned. That deserves a fair test, not automatic disbelief. But learning is shown through changed conduct, acknowledgement of harm and repair — not merely the passage of time or the size of a vote tally. Jones offers none of that architecture. He offers loyalty. He offers industry. He offers the political equivalent of throwing a sheet over the stain and accusing anyone who notices the smell of opposing cohesion. This is where my judgement becomes scathing because the evidence has earned it. NZ First is not cleaning a record. It is laundering a political asset. Chong supplies the grievance vocabulary; Jones supplies the industrial spin cycle; Peters supplies the brand; and Māori are expected to drink the grey water and call it national unity. * * * ## The Electoral Verdict The general election is on **Saturday 7 November 2026** , according to the Electoral Commission, Parliament and the Prime Minister’s announcement. > I do not recommend returning this National–ACT–NZ First coalition to power. That is my political opinion, based on the documented pattern in this essay: compulsory Māori-ward referendums, rhetoric that treats Māori inclusion as division, candidate loyalty elevated over accountability, hostility to environmental safeguards and an extractive programme sold as common sense. > I recommend a Green Party vote. The Greens have publicly opposed attacks on Māori wards and called for equitable Māori representation, according to their local-government statements. > They have proposed entrenching Māori seats, allowing greater Māori electoral-roll choice and strengthening Māori representation, according to their Māori seats announcement. > Their 2026 programme includes 13 Māori candidates, nine in the top 20, and an additional $200 million commitment for te reo Māori, according to Green Party election material and RNZ. A recommendation is not worship. The Greens must still be measured against tika and pono after election day. But on the evidence available now, they offer a clearer route toward Te Tiriti, climate responsibility, Māori representation and public accountability than a coalition whose deputy leader calls this record “colourful” and whose candidate slogan attempts to compress two peoples and a Treaty relationship into “one”. The ballot is not the whole taiaha. It is one grip on the shaft. Use it. Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right * * * ## Legal Disclaimer This essay is public-interest political commentary concerning candidates, elected representatives, government policy and democratic accountability. Factual claims are linked to the sources relied upon; interpretations and political judgements are identified as opinion and grounded in the disclosed record. Named people are discussed only in their public capacities. No malice is intended. No allegation of criminal wrongdoing is made unless expressly attributed to a verified source, and none is made against Chong or Jones here. Corrections will be made promptly where credible evidence establishes an error. A retraction or response request may be submitted through The Māori Green Lantern.

Kia ora whānau. I am Ivor Jones. Some of you know me as The Māori Green Lantern, tohunga mau rākau wairua, kaitiaki standing guard against the misinformation and disinformation pouring out of the far right and the neoliberal machine propping it up. I do not do this for a wage. I do it because somebody has to write down what is actually happening while it is still happening, so our mokopuna do not have to dig through the ashes to find the truth later. I would love for you to click into this essay properly, because it is not a headline — it is a repository. There is a podcast where I walk through this kaupapa in full detail, kanohi ki te kanohi, voice to ear. There is a short video that breaks down the core argument in a few minutes for whānau who need it fast. And for those of you who want the whole taiaha swing — the sourced, cited, 3000-word version — that is what you are reading now. This is not content. This is a record. When our mokopuna ask one day who was paying attention while the country was being sold out from under them, I want this essay sitting there in the archive saying: The Māori Green Lantern was watching. He wrote it down. He named names. * * * ## What This Essay Covers ‘NZers do not care about this topic’ - PM on new Nicky Hager bookThe prime minister and deputy prime minister are dismissing claims in a new book that argues the Taxpayers’ Union used anti-Māori racism as a political tool - especially during its Stop Three Waters campaign.RNZRNZ | Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa This essay builds directly on the RNZ reporting of Nicky Hager's new book _Dirty Work: The Taxpayers' Union and New Zealand's Hard Right_ , and asks the harder question Christopher Luxon refused to answer: > what, precisely, connects the National Party to the Taxpayers' Union (TU), and what does that connection cost Māori. I am going to: * lay out the documented whakapapa between National and the TU — the people, the polling, the money, the personnel * apply a Tika and Pono framework to test whether this relationship is honest and right, or whether it is mauri-depleting deceit dressed up as independence * give you three concrete, quantified examples for the Western analytical mind, each with a tikanga explanation of the harm and a proposed solution * audit every number I use, with the sourced formula behind it * tell you plainly why this coalition government should not get a second term on 7 November 2026, and why I believe the Green Party deserves your party vote instead * * * ## Tika And Pono: The Frame I'm Using Tika means what is correct, right, just — not just legally right, but right in relation to people and to mauri. Pono means truth, integrity, being genuine in what you say and do. Together they are the test I apply to every institution I write about: is this thing honest about what it is, and is what it is doing right by the people it affects? The Taxpayers' Union fails both tests. It was founded in 2013 declaring itself "a politically independent grassroots campaign" — Newsroom's investigation records that founding claim word for word. That is the pono failure right there, stated in their own mouths, on day one. **Because "independent" is not what the record shows.** * * * ## The Whakapapa, Named Here is the network, and I am naming every name because Tika demands it and because two or more verified sources back every link. **David Farrar** co-founded the Taxpayers' Union and sat on its board until he retired in 2023. He also runs Curia Market Research, which produces both the Taxpayers' Union-Curia political poll and the National Party's own internal polling — RNZ confirms this dual role directly. One man, one firm, polling for the "independent" lobby group and for the party it claims no allegiance to. That is not independence. That is the same hand on two levers. **John Bishop** , father of National MP Chris Bishop, was the TU's founding chairman — documented by Newsroom. Family whakapapa runs directly from the TU's founding chair to a sitting National Cabinet minister. **Jordan Williams** , the TU's executive director, has an ACT and National-adjacent history stretching back to internships with ACT's Don Brash and work on Stephen Franks' 2008 campaign — Newsroom's reporting traces this. On election night 2023, Williams and Farrar were both at the National Party's own event, not watching from a distance as neutral commentators, but inside the room. **Casey Costello** , a former TU board chair, resigned that role to stand for New Zealand First and entered Parliament on the party's list — Newsroom names this transition directly. **Christopher Luxon** himself is on record, as reported by RNZ, thanking the TU and its members "for all the work you do," adding "I really enjoy what you guys do." When asked afterward whether he stood by that praise given Hager's allegations, Luxon's answer was not a defence and not a denial — it was a shrug: > "I do not care and New Zealanders do not care about this topic," RNZ reported. That is five documented, named connections — personnel, family, polling infrastructure, physical presence at party events, and a Prime Minister's own praise — sitting on top of the Hager trilogy's decade-long paper trail from _The Hollow Men_ through _Dirty Politics_ to _Dirty Work_. * * * ## The Deep Dive Podcast The Taxpayers Union dark money machine 0:00 /1264.44263 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) * * * ## Koha Consideration You might ask who pays The Māori Green Lantern to trace a documented network like this one — the pollster running two campaigns at once, the money that grew 7.89 times, the family whakapapa sitting in Cabinet. The honest answer is: you do, or nobody does. There is no corporate board behind this essay. No TU-style donor caucus, no anonymous 17.4 percent slice funding my mahi. If you found value in this piece — in the sourced numbers, the named connections, the tikanga frame applied to a system built to hide its own whakapapa — please consider supporting this work directly. Every koha tells the Crown and the corporates that whānau will fund our own truth-tellers when they will not. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues. If you cannot koha, no worries — subscribing, following, or simply sharing this essay with your whānau is koha in itself. * **Koha (one-off support):** Koha platform * **Subscribe:** themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz support portal * **Direct bank transfer:** Ivor Jones, 03-1395-0099387-000 * **Facebook:** The Māori Green Lantern * * * ## Three Examples For The Western Mind You want it quantified, sourced, and structured. Here it is. ## Example One: The Polling Machine **Core claim.** The same firm that runs National's internal polling also runs the public poll the media reports as neutral opinion — Curia, owned and operated by TU co-founder David Farrar. **Quantified harm.** The TU-Curia poll shapes public "social reality" — the exact phrase used by University of Auckland law professor Timothy Kuhner in Newsroom's reporting to describe how conditioned power constructs issues in a way favourable to the funder's interests, without the public ever seeing the wiring behind the curtain. During the 2023 campaign alone, the TU issued almost 100 press releases in three months, seven debates, and four policy reports — a documented publicity operation, not a passive research shop, per Newsroom. **Solution.** Political polling firms with a formal, paid relationship to a registered political party should be required by the Electoral Commission to disclose that relationship on every published poll result, alongside the funding source. Media outlets should refuse to publish TU-Curia polling without that disclosure printed in the same breath as the numbers. **Tikanga impact, explained for the Western reader.** In te ao Māori, transparency of relationship — knowing exactly who someone whakapapas to before you trust their word — is foundational to pono. A poll that hides its whakapapa to the party it measures is not neutral information; it is a taniwha wearing a friendly face. It corrodes the public's ability to make an informed, tika decision at the ballot box, because the information itself has been quietly captured. I covered this same corrosion of public trust in my earlier essay on the Government's health cuts, "The Vitamin Sermon: How A White Supremacist Neoliberal Government Built The Cliff, Then Sold You The View," available on the homepage — the pattern of manufactured "common sense" dressed up as neutral fact runs right through this Government's messaging machine. ## Example Two: The Money Trail **Core claim.** The Taxpayers' Union presents itself as a grassroots, small-donor movement, but its own disclosed figures tell a different story. **Quantified harm.** In the financial year reported by Newsroom in October 2023, the TU's income was $2.8 million, of which $2.6 million came from donations — I calculated that as 92.9 percent of total income (2.6 ÷ 2.8 × 100). Of that $2.8 million, $487,000 — 17.4 percent, matching Newsroom's own figure exactly when I checked it (487,000 ÷ 2,800,000 × 100 = 17.39 percent) — came from a closed group called the "Taxpayers' Caucus," whose members are not publicly named. Compare that to the TU's income of just $355,000 in 2017. That is growth of 7.89 times — a 688.7 percent increase (calculated as (2,800,000 − 355,000) ÷ 355,000 × 100) — in the years spanning the Three Waters and co-governance campaigns, per Newsroom's reporting. The organisation also separately disclosed that 2.1 percent of its annual income comes from the nicotine, alcohol, sugar and construction industries, quoted directly from its own press release by Newsroom. **Solution.** Any third-party promoter earning more than a defined threshold — say $250,000 — from a closed donor tier should be legally required to disclose the identity of every donor above $10,000 to the Electoral Commission, not just the amount raised in aggregate. **Tikanga impact, explained for the Western reader.** Whakapapa requires you to know where something comes from before you can judge its mauri. Money with a hidden source is money whose mauri cannot be assessed. A 688.7 percent income surge riding on the back of anti-Māori campaigning, funded by an anonymous caucus, is not a grassroots movement finding its voice. It is capital finding a weapon and paying to keep its fingerprints off the handle. ## Example Three: The Personnel Pipeline **Core claim.** Staff, board members and founders move directly between the TU, ACT, New Zealand First and National — a revolving door, not four separate, unconnected organisations. **Quantified harm.** Newsroom documented, in Williams' own words, that former TU staff worked "in and around" the NZ First, ACT and National campaigns, that a former TU board chair (Costello) went directly into NZ First's list, and that TU co-founder Farrar sat as National's own pollster while simultaneously on the TU board until 2023 — a minimum of five named individuals crossing the same institutional boundary, confirmed by Newsroom and RNZ. **Solution.** A statutory stand-down period — I would argue two full electoral cycles — should apply before anyone moving from a registered third-party promoter into a paid party role, or vice versa, can do so without public disclosure of the transition and its financial terms. **Tikanga impact, explained for the Western reader.** In tikanga, who you have stood beside — your whanaungatanga — shapes what you are. A person cannot claim to be unconnected to an organisation whose staff, board and campaign machinery they have shared for a decade. Pretending otherwise is not a technicality. It is a breach of pono, dressed in a suit, standing at a podium telling you it "is no fan of the National Party." I traced this same pattern of "independent" fronts protecting a shared hard-right agenda in "They Stole Whareroa With A Compulsory Order. Now They Want To Sell It With A Spreadsheet," also on the homepage — different asset, same architecture of plausible deniability. * * * ## Implications: The Cost Is Not Abstract This is not a polling curiosity. RNZ's reporting places the anti-Māori rhetoric generated through this network — the Stop Three Waters campaign, which RNZ confirms began in 2021 — directly alongside Christopher Luxon's and David Seymour's own documented shift toward "iwi related policies" being scrapped. Hager's claim, as reported by RNZ, is that both leaders "knew what they were doing" because "there was power and there were votes there." Luxon has not denied saying the words attributed to him. He has simply declined to engage. That refusal to engage is itself the harm. A Prime Minister who will not account for a donor-funded, personnel-linked pressure network that helped weaponise anti-Māori sentiment for electoral gain is not a neutral figure standing above the fray. He is the beneficiary declining cross-examination. * * * ## Why This Government Should Not Get A Second Term New Zealanders vote on Saturday 7 November 2026, with advance voting opening 26 October 2026 — confirmed by Vote NZ and Elections NZ. I am telling you plainly, as an opinion grounded in everything documented above: **do not give this coalition another three years.** This is a government whose leader dismissed a documented, sourced allegation about a donor network's role in anti-Māori campaigning with "I do not care," as RNZ reported him saying. This is a government whose Finance Minister has, according to the Green Party's own public statements, delivered three consecutive budgets that Green Māori and Pasifika caucus co-leader Marama Davidson has called a turning-back of "Te Tiriti progress," stated directly on the Green Party's own site. Whatever your view of that framing, it is the Government's own record — three budgets, one direction — that Māori advocates are responding to. I recommend you give your party vote to the Green Party. Not out of blind loyalty, but because their published 2026 policy platform commits to Tiriti-based freshwater governance under their "Drink Swim Fish" programme, and to affirming "Te Tiriti, and the role of tangata whenua as shared decision-makers and kaitiaki" in resource management law, as stated directly on greens.org.nz. Their Te Tiriti policy, Te Waonui a Tāne, explicitly commits to resourcing marae as community infrastructure, per the Green Party's own policy announcement. That is a written, public platform you can hold them to — not a shrug at a press conference. * * * ## He Kupu Whakamutunga — Closing Word Rangatiratanga means our people get to hold their own truth, tell their own story, and vote with open eyes instead of manufactured ones. I have shown you the network. I have shown you the money — 92.9 percent donor-funded, growing 7.89 times since 2017. I have shown you the personnel crossing every fence that was supposed to separate "independent" from "party." I have named the people: Farrar, Williams, Bishop, Costello, Luxon. That is Tika. That is Pono. What you do with it on 7 November is up to you — but you cannot say nobody warned you. * * * ## Disclaimer _This essay reflects my analysis as Ivor Jones, The Māori Green Lantern, current as at 24 September 2026. Facts are sourced and cited as set out above; political conclusions and voting recommendations are clearly my own opinion. If any named individual or organisation disputes a specific factual claim herein, I will review and correct on receipt of verified information, consistent with my standing retraction protocol._

Ko Ivor Jones tēnei, ko Te Māori Green Lantern — tohunga mau rākau wairua, kaitiaki against the misinformation, the white supremacy, and the neoliberalism this coalition government dresses up as "sound economic management" while your whānau count coins at the checkout. I want you to click on this essay. Not for my ego. For your mokopuna. Because this is a repository — one more entry in an archive I am building so that in twenty years, our grandchildren can look back and say: at least the Māori Green Lantern, and a handful of others, tried to warn us while it was still happening. > I have put this kaupapa into three forms, because I know grief and rage don't always arrive at 3,000-word essay length. > There is a **podcast** that walks through this entire investigation for your drive to work. > There is a **short video** that explains the kaupapa in a few minutes, for when you only have time to share one thing with your cousin. > And for those who want every figure, every date, every dollar traced — the **full cited essay** is right here, right now. Use whichever fits your life. Just use one. * * * ## What This Essay Covers Here is the roadmap, laid out honestly before I take you into it. Business leaders call for end to plans to break-up grocery, energy sectorsNew Zealand Initiative says intervention threats by politicians may deter investment.The New Zealand HeraldTom Raynel I am going to show you that 51 of this country's wealthiest business leaders just published a letter admitting, in writing, that "property rights" means their property, not yours. I am going to show you the court case, the dollar figure, and the market-share statistic proving the market they're defending was already condemned by the country's own competition regulator. I am going to trace this straight back to the National–ACT–New Zealand First coalition currently in government — a government that campaigned on breaking up the very duopoly this letter defends, and is now watching its own donor class tell it to stand down. I am going to give you three examples built for the sceptic in your family who thinks "property rights" is a neutral, harmless phrase — each with the harm quantified, a solution named, and the tikanga cost explained in plain terms. And I am going to tell you, without softening a single word, why this coalition government does not deserve your vote in November — and why the Green Party does. No false balance. No polite hedging. Evidence is the taiaha, and I am swinging it with both hands. * * * ## Tika And Pono: The Two Words This Letter Violates In te ao Māori, **tika** means what is correct, what is right, what is justified by evidence and process. **Pono** means truth, integrity, being genuine — not performing sincerity while hiding intent. **The New Zealand Initiative's letter fails both tests simultaneously.** **It is not tika because it demands political parties abandon evidence-based reform before that evidence has even been tested — the Commerce Commission's own 2022 market study already found competition "not working well for consumers" in groceries, and by 2026 the dominant groups still held more than 80% of that market.** **That is** the Commerce Commission's own 2022 finding**, confirmed current by** its 2026 update**. Demanding parties withdraw reform before the process runs is not principle. It is pre-emptive obstruction dressed as prudence.** **It is not pono because the letter claims to defend a neutral, universal right — while in practice defending a specific set of already-dominant companies from the one thing that could threaten their dominance: democratic accountability.** **A truthful letter would say plainly: "We are the incumbents, and we do not want to compete harder." Instead it borrows constitutional language built to protect ordinary people from arbitrary state seizure,** and repurposes it to protect corporate market power from an election. That substitution — borrowing the language of the vulnerable to armour the powerful — is the oldest trick in the neoliberal playbook, and this coalition government has run it for three straight years. * * * ## The Deep Dive Podcast The Battle Over New Zealand s Supermarket Duopoly 0:00 /1297.298866 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) * * * ## Koha Consideration You might ask who is paying me to trace a letter from 51 of this country's wealthiest people back to the coalition government's own donor register. The answer is you do. The Māori Green Lantern is supported through koha, and that is it — no corporate is underwriting this investigation into the grocery duopoly, and no political party is quietly covering the bill for the receipts I've just laid in front of you. There are no corporates supporting this mahi. Every koha you give signals that whānau are ready to support the accountability that neither the Crown nor the corporate signatories of this letter will ever provide voluntarily. It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to support our own truth tellers. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues. If you are unable to koha, no worries! Subscribe or follow the Māori Green Lantern at themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, kōrero and share with your whānau and friends — that is koha in itself. **Four pathways exist:** > For those who wish to support this mahi directly with a koha (voluntary contribution), please visit the Koha platform. > For those who wish to receive essays directly and support through subscription: Subscribe to the Māori Green Lantern. > For those who prefer direct bank transfer, account details are: Ivor Jones, account number 03-1395-0099387-000. > For those on Facebook: Follow and subscribe here. * * * ## Three Examples For The Western Mind — Receipts, Not Rhetoric ### Example One: The Covenant That Proves They Already Broke The Rules They're Now Defending **The core claim.** Foodstuffs North Island — one of the very corporate interests this letter's signatories are shielding — lodged land covenants running up to **99 years** specifically to block rival supermarkets from opening near its own stores in Newtown, Petone and Tamatea. **Quantify the harm.** The Wellington High Court fined Foodstuffs North Island **$3.25 million** in August 2024. The presiding judge called the conduct "deliberate" and "serious" — Commerce Commission's own penalty statement confirms both figures directly. In fairness, because pono demands it: the Commission also notes Foodstuffs North Island had already stopped the conduct, removed the clauses voluntarily, admitted the issue early, and did not intend to breach the law. I include that because accuracy sharpens the taiaha — it does not blunt it. **The solution.** Parliament already fixed this specific mechanism: since April 2023, such covenants are prohibited and unenforceable by law. That is proof the state can and must regulate property when property becomes a weapon against competition. Extend that same principle to the wider structural reform this letter is trying to strangle in its crib. **Tikanga impact, explained plainly.** A covenant against a rival store is a covenant against a whānau's freedom to choose where to buy kai. It shrinks manaakitanga down to whatever the dominant firm permits nearby. This is not an abstract legal technicality — it is a company using property law to narrow the mana motuhake of every household within its shadow. _I have traced this exact corporate pattern of using legal instruments to entrench dominance before — read the full receipts on the supermarket duopoly's excess profits in_ "The Wolf Wears Two Coats And I Am Done Pretending Otherwise" _— where I show the $430 million a year in excess profit both major parties knew about and refused to touch._ ### Example Two: The Regulator Already Said The Market Was Broken — The Letter Just Wants You To Forget That **The core claim.** This isn't a healthy market being threatened by reckless politicians. The Commerce Commission's own 2022 final study found muted rivalry between Foodstuffs and Woolworths, high barriers to entry, high grocery prices by international comparison, and high apparent profitability. Four years later, in 2026, the dominant groups still held **more than 80%** of the national retail grocery market, while retail prices kept climbing — confirmed directly by the Commission. **Quantify the harm.** More than 80% market share means at least $80 of every $100 New Zealanders spend on groceries flows to two corporate groups. That is not my estimate — it is the direct, unadjusted meaning of the Commission's own reported figure. **The solution.** Structural reform — the exact category of policy this letter demands parties withdraw — is the only remedy the Commission's own evidence supports. Four years of "wait and see" already failed. The letter asks for more waiting. **Tikanga impact, explained plainly.** When two companies control the price of kai for an entire nation, mana motuhake over the household budget disappears. Whānau are not exercising free choice at the checkout. They are captives inside a duopoly the government's own regulator condemned in writing — and this letter wants that condemnation ignored for the sake of "investor confidence." _I quantified exactly what that captivity has cost whānau in dollar terms, day by day, under Labour's watch, in_ "The Wolf Wears Two Coats"_. This letter is the sequel — the same duopoly, now recruiting 50 friends to help it dodge the reckoning a second time._ ### Example Three: The Coalition's Own Donor Class Is Now Telling It To Stand Down **The core claim.** National campaigned in 2026 on "pursuing" the structural separation of Foodstuffs. New Zealand First campaigned on buying BNZ. Both are coalition parties currently in government. And now, 51 business leaders — including figures connected to Foodstuffs, Infratil, Sanford, Forsyth Barr, Harcourts, Vector, Downer and Colliers — have published a coordinated letter asking every party, including the government's own coalition partners, to withdraw exactly those policies. **Quantify the harm.** This is not one interest group lobbying quietly through a select-committee submission. This is 51 chief executives, chairs and directors, spanning eleven separate sectors, intervening publicly two months before an election to pressure a sitting government away from its own stated platform. That scale of coordinated corporate pressure — compared to the near-total absence of any equivalent organised whānau lobby with matching funding, legal capacity and media access — is the imbalance itself. **The solution.** Full public disclosure of every meeting between these 51 signatories or their organisations and any coalition minister since the letter's publication. If the coalition abandons its own Foodstuffs policy in the weeks following this letter, that timeline itself becomes the evidence of who this government actually answers to. **Tikanga impact, explained plainly.** Rangatiratanga means the right of a people to govern their own affairs, including their economy, through their own democratic process — not through a letter timed to arrive before the votes are counted. A government that folds its own election promise the moment 51 wealthy signatories object has confessed, in that single act, whose rangatiratanga it actually recognises. _I have already documented, in_ "National/Labour — Two Faces, One Fist"_, that Zuru's Nicholas Mowbray — a signatory to this very letter — already spread $450,000 across National and ACT in this election cycle. This is not a new relationship declaring itself. This is an existing donor relationship simply putting its demands in writing where the public can finally see them._ * * * ## Name The Crime. Name Who Pays. This coalition government did not stumble into serving capital by accident. It built its entire economic architecture — restored landlord interest deductibility, a $1.67 billion-a-year business tax subsidy, slashed Māori-specific funding, an austerity "traffic light" system punishing the unemployed it created — on the premise that concentrated wealth deserves protection and ordinary whānau deserve discipline. This letter simply confirms the arrangement in writing. The government that promised to break up a grocery duopoly is now being told, by name, by the very companies and allies that fund its coalition partners' campaigns, to back off. And I would bet the koha in my bank account that it will. That is not democracy responding to evidence. That is capital calling in a debt. * * * ## Why You Cannot Vote This Coalition Back In I will not soften this, and I will not manufacture balance where none exists. This National–ACT–New Zealand First coalition has spent three years proving that when capital speaks, government listens, and when whānau speak, government calls it "fiscal responsibility" to ignore them. It restored landlord tax breaks worth billions while gutting Māori-specific funding by over $1 billion. It built a punishment machine for the unemployed while presiding over a duopoly the regulator itself condemned as broken. And now, the moment its own election promise to break up that duopoly meets resistance from 51 wealthy signatories, the smart money says it folds — because that is exactly the pattern this government has run since 2023. A government that treats a corporate letter as more binding than its own manifesto has already told you who it works for. It is not you. * * * ## Why The Green Party The Green Party's KiwiMart proposal — requiring Woolworths and Foodstuffs to divest at least 120 stores and distribution capacity into public ownership — is the only major-party policy that does not depend on the goodwill of the companies it targets, and does not require permission from their shareholders to proceed. The Greens' own published policy states this plainly: structural change, publicly owned, not contingent on a review the incumbents help design. It is not beyond scrutiny — no policy should be. Its costs, governance, and implementation deserve the same rigorous, evidence-based testing I have applied to every claim in this essay. But it is the only proposal on the table that treats the grocery duopoly as a structural problem requiring structural ownership change, rather than a market to be gently nudged by a government that folds the moment its donors object. If tika and pono mean anything — if correctness and integrity matter more than comfort — then the choice this November is between a coalition that has already shown you it answers to 51 signatures on a letter, and a party whose policy does not ask those 51 signatories for permission first. Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right Mauria ora. Ka mau te wehi. * * * ## Disclaimer This essay is opinion and public-interest analysis grounded in verified public reporting and regulatory findings, published under The Māori Green Lantern's editorial framework. Every numerical claim is sourced and audited above; figures carried forward from prior essays are flagged as corroborated rather than independently re-verified today. This essay alleges no criminal conduct by any individual signatory beyond conduct already established by a court, and describes named public figures and companies only in their public professional or political capacity. The recommendation to vote against the current coalition and toward the Green Party reflects the author's assessed opinion on public policy grounds, offered in the public interest of democratic transparency ahead of the November 2026 election, and is protected fair comment under the New Zealand Defamation Act 1992 and the public-interest tests in _Lange v Atkinson_ and _Durie v Gardiner_. Right of reply is open to the New Zealand Initiative, its signatories, and any named party or official.

A Ferry Nobody Built. A Health Authority They Murdered In Eleven Days. Fifty-Three Thousand Sanctioned Whānau. This Is Not Bad Luck — It Is A Business Model, And You Are The Stock Being Stripped.

Kia ora koutou, I'm Ivor Jones. You know me as The Māori Green Lantern — tohunga mau rākau wairua, kaitiaki, and the whānau member who will not let a council press release do your thinking for you. I've spent today tracing exactly what Tauranga City Council is doing to Tauranga Airport, and whose whenua sits underneath it. I'm furious, and by the end of this essay, you will be too — for the right reasons, with the receipts to back it up. Tauranga eyes options to sell stake in airportTauranga City Council will consider its first steps towards potentially selling off shares in Tauranga Airport this week.RNZRNZ | Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa **What this essay covers:** who Ngāi Tukairangi are and what was taken from them in 1934; why the council now deciding the airport's future once had no elected members at all; why the city's only elected Māori seat is facing a public vote on whether it should exist; why the law protecting you from all of this asks almost nothing of council; three plain examples any Pākehā reader can hold in their hand to understand exactly what tikanga demands here; and why, come November, this coalition government does not deserve your vote again. I'd love for you to click through and sit with this properly. I've built a **podcast episode** that walks through this kaupapa in full kōrero, a **short video** that breaks the whole thing down in five minutes for whānau who need it fast, and — for those of you who read deep — this **3,000-word cited essay** right here, built line by line from council documents, court records, and the Crown's own settlement deeds. This is a repository. Long after this vote is forgotten by everyone who profited from it, our mokopuna will be able to look back and say: at least The Māori Green Lantern — amongst a few — was warning us. * * * ## Ngāi Tukairangi Fought The Crown To The Privy Council — And This Council Still Won't Say Their Name In 1934, the Crown walked onto Whareroa land and ripped it from Ngāi Tukairangi under compulsory acquisition to build Tauranga Airport. This hapū did not roll over. They fought that taking all the way to the Privy Council and lost, because that is what "the rule of law" meant when Māori were the ones asking for justice — confirmed in the Environment Court's own record. Ninety-two years on, on Tuesday 22 September 2026, this same council will vote — not on selling the airport outright, they insist, just on whether to spend months designing a commercial structure that could eventually let them sell part of it, as council's own notice confirms. The advisory body they've built for this has two elected councillors and one seat — one — for mana whenua. **Ninety-two years of history compressed into a fractional chair at a table council still controls entirely.** Ngāi Tukairangi's own trust records that their original 1997 statement to the Waitangi Tribunal was about exactly this: "the alienation of land in the Whareroa Block for Tauranga Airport" under the Public Works Act 1928, lodged by Mahaki Ellis. The Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngā Pōtiki Deed of Settlement confirms more than 4,100 acres of Ngāi Te Rangi land taken for public works district-wide, of which 294 acres went specifically to "Airport and Port Development," set out in the Crown's own settlement deed. That historical legal claim was settled in 2013. I want to be scrupulously honest with you here — the legal account is closed, **not** the moral one. It sits inside the wider 1865 Tauranga Moana confiscation of 290,000 acres, a taking the Waitangi Tribunal itself branded "a grave injustice," where even the Tribunal's own dissenting member urged "generous redress," as the Tribunal's report records. And here is the detail that should make every Tauranga ratepayer sit up: council's own twenty-year airport masterplan does not mention Ngāi Tukairangi by name once in its ownership or governance sections, confirmed by direct reading of the plan. A hapū whose whenua built the runway is invisible in the document planning that runway's next two decades. That's not an accident in a sixty-page infrastructure plan. That is a decision about whose history is worth remembering when money is on the table. * * * ## A Council That Had No Elected Members For Three And A Half Years Is Now Lecturing You About "Governance" Here's who's actually deciding this. From February 2021 to July 2024 — over three years — Tauranga City Council had **no elected representatives at all**. The Minister of Local Government replaced the entire council with four unelected commissioners after finding the elected council's dysfunction serious enough to warrant total removal, confirmed on Beehive.govt.nz. **It was that unelected Commission — chaired by Anne Tolley, nobody's vote, nobody's mandate — that struck the Marine Precinct wharves deal: sold for $13.987 million with $9.5 million in vendor finance via a direct, non-competitive sale, its promised revenue-share agreement never delivered, $10.1 million still owed at 30 June 2026, and the whole mess now sitting in the Environment Court,** laid out in full by Scoop**.** **The elected council that finally took office in 2024 inherited this train wreck, had their own mayor publicly call it "a sh*t deal" — and chose to keep running it rather than cancel it when they had the legal chance to do so.** This is the council you're being asked to trust with a hapū's whenua. * * * ## The Deep Dive Podcast The fight for Tauranga Airport land 0:00 /536.938231 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) * * * ## Koha Consideration You might ask who's paying The Māori Green Lantern to trace council minutes, court records, and Crown settlement deeds until 4am. The answer is you do — or nobody does. There are no corporates behind this mahi, no council retainer, no party funding — just koha, and whānau who believe Ngāi Tukairangi's story and Tauranga's ratepayers deserve a receipt-backed account of what's being done with their whenua and their rates. Every koha signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to support our own truth tellers, not just endure the ones the Crown and corporates pay for. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you're able, consider a koha to keep this mahi going. If you're unable to koha, no worries — subscribe, follow, kōrero and share this with your whānau. That's koha in itself. * **Koha — Support directly:** app.koha.kiwi * **Subscribe for essays:** themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz * **Direct bank transfer:** Ivor Jones, 03-1395-0099387-000 * **Facebook:** facebook.com/Themaorigreenlantern * * * ## Council Had A Pathway To Return Māori Land — And Let It Rot While A Developer Got A Deal Read this and tell me it isn't rage-inducing. Council's own 2022 Tangata Whenua Committee agenda recorded, in black and white: "Return Pitau and Hinau properties to Māori owners… TCC has not received any proposals… TCC now has a conditional offer from Sanderson Group," documented in an open letter citing the council agenda directly. Council held the return-to-Māori door open on paper, blamed the silence on a lack of "proposals," and let a private retirement developer walk through instead. The Sanderson sale price was never disclosed — unlike the $17.2 million plus $32.4 million redevelopment package published for the seven villages sold to Kāinga Ora. **Within a year, that site's capital value jumped by more than $7 million, and the buyer secured fast-track consent — under legislation built for pandemic economic recovery, not routine property speculation — to build towers nearly double to more than double the previously permitted height. Apartments there start at $1.65 million.** That is not housing policy. That is asset-stripping with a resource-consent stamp on it. * * * ## While Offering One Hapū Seat, This Council Is Trying To Vote Out Your Only Elected Māori Voice Sit with this timing. In June 2026, councillors voted 8–1–1 to retain the Te Awanui Māori ward — but that decision triggers a **binding public referendum** on whether it should survive at all, confirmed by Te Ao Māori News. So at the exact moment council offers a single advisory seat on a commercial airport working group, it is also letting the city vote on whether Māori keep the one seat they actually elect. This is not coincidence — it is the national pattern. Twenty-six councils have already scrapped Māori wards, a 57.1 percent removal rate against referendum councils, exactly as I documented in The Māori Green Lantern's own earlier essay on this coalition's assault on Māori local democracy. **Every one of these referenda exists because this National-ACT-NZ First coalition forced them into law, reversing what took Māori communities decades to build.** * * * ## The Law They're Hiding Behind Asks Almost Nothing Of Them Here's the part that should make you furious at the statute book itself. Section 81 of the Local Government Act 2002 requires councils only to "establish and maintain processes" and "consider ways" to include Māori — there is **no legal duty to consult**. The High Court confirmed this directly in _Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whātua v Kaipara District Council_ 2024 NZHC 3889, following the Court of Appeal's earlier ruling in _Wellington City Council v Minotaur Custodians Ltd_ 2017 NZCA 302, as set out by Brookfields Lawyers' case analysis. **One fractional seat clears that legal bar with room to spare. It does not clear a moral one. Legal and tika are not the same word, and a council treating the statutory floor as its moral ceiling — on whenua taken from a hapū that fought to the Privy Council — is choosing the minimum on purpose.** * * * ## Three Examples For The Western Mind ### **Example One — The Airport** Core claim: council is designing a commercial ownership structure for whenua taken by force from Ngāi Tukairangi, with that hapū given one seat on a two-councillor advisory body. Quantified harm: a 100 percent council-owned, self-funding, ratepayer-subsidy-free asset is being examined for partial sale to private capital that returns roughly 9 percent on assets versus 6.4 percent under full public ownership — a 2.6 percentage point, or 40.6 percent relative, gain that would flow partly to shareholders who were never party to the 1934 taking, per TDB Advisory's own comparative data. Solution: no CCTO or capital-raising recommendation should proceed without direct, resourced Ngāi Tukairangi representation — not one seat, genuine partnership — and independent tikanga advice chosen jointly with the hapū. Tikanga impact for the Western mind: imagine your family's confiscated farm being turned into a listed company by the people who took it, and being offered one seat on the board that decides how — that is the precise structural insult here, translated into the language of shareholder capital. ### Example Two — The Wharves Core claim: unelected commissioners sold public wharves off-market for $13.987 million, with $9.5 million in vendor finance never fully repaid and $29.2 million in ratepayer money committed to rebuild them, as Scoop's investigation confirms. Quantified harm: $10.1 million still owed at 30 June 2026, plus ongoing Environment Court legal costs, all funded from the same rates base used to justify further sell-offs "for efficiency." Solution: any future asset disposal negotiated by unelected commissioners should require automatic re-ratification — with a public vote of confidence — once elected representatives return to office, rather than simply being inherited and continued. Tikanga impact for the Western mind: this is the equivalent of a court-appointed receiver selling your family's assets while you were legally incapacitated, and then your own lawyer, once reinstated, refusing to challenge the sale — a stewardship failure compounding a legal one, and one I've traced at national scale in my earlier essay on the coalition's privatisation pipeline. ### Example Three — The Ballot Box Core claim: this coalition government legislated binding referenda that let general electorates vote on whether Māori wards survive, a mechanism no other ward type in New Zealand faces. Quantified harm: 24 of 42 referendum councils have already voted Māori wards out nationally — a 57.1 percent removal rate — with Tauranga's own Te Awanui ward now facing exactly that vote. Solution: repeal the binding-referendum requirement and restore councils' own authority to establish Māori wards without a popular veto unavailable to any general ward. Tikanga impact for the Western mind: picture your parliamentary electorate being put to a vote of a different electorate entirely, on whether your seat should keep existing — that is the precise mechanism being used against Māori representation in this country, right now, in your own city. * * * ## Why This Coalition Government Does Not Deserve Your Vote In November I will not pretend to be neutral about this, whānau, because neutrality in the face of documented harm is its own kind of lie. This National-ACT-NZ First coalition entered office with agreements committing to force binding Māori ward referendums, to advance the Treaty Principles Bill, and — after Parliament voted that bill down 112 to 11 in the face of 42,000 submissions and the largest protest march in a generation — to achieve the same outcome by stealth, stripping Te Tiriti references from up to 23 pieces of legislation without a single day of select committee hearing on those specific changes, exactly as I documented when it happened. The Green Party's own co-leader Marama Davidson called this "the Stealth Treaty Principles Bill" and said plainly that "New Zealanders didn't want the Treaty Principles Bill, and they sure don't want it by stealth," as reported directly on the Green Party's own site. That is opinion from a named political leader, offered with the factual basis stated in the same sentence — and it is an opinion I share. The Green Party's Te Tiriti policy affirms tino rangatiratanga as constitutionally foundational, commits to fully resourcing the Waitangi Tribunal with binding decision-making authority, and explicitly opposes the removal of Māori wards as "a racist step backwards for Māori representation" that "disregards Te Tiriti o Waitangi," set out in the party's own policy platform and reiterated by their Māori Development spokesperson Hūhana Lyndon. That is a specific, checkable policy contrast, not a vibe. A coalition that legislates the mechanisms stripping Māori representation, against a party that has spent this term opposing exactly those mechanisms in Parliament and on the record **— that is the choice in front of you this November, and I am telling you plainly which side of that ledger belongs to whānau, and which side belongs to whoever gets to buy a piece of Tauranga Airport once the paperwork is done.** * * * ## One Seat Is Not Rangatiratanga Nobody is claiming council needs Ngāi Tukairangi's sign-off to hold a meeting. What I am claiming — with the taking on a Privy Council record, the hapū named in their own trust's history, the masterplan that erases them, three and a half years of unelected rule still shaping today's deals, a referendum threatening the one Māori seat this city actually elects, and a statute that asks for almost nothing — is that a fractional advisory seat is not partnership. It is permission-seeking theatre wearing a Treaty costume, built on a legal floor deliberately mistaken for a moral ceiling. Ngāi Tukairangi fought this taking to the highest court the Crown could offer them in 1934, and lost. Ninety-two years later, they deserve more than a third of a voice on a working group that doesn't even hold the pen — and every Māori voter in this country deserves a government that doesn't legislate their representation into a popularity contest. * * * **Disclaimer:** This essay is opinion and analysis grounded in verified, cited public-record sources, published in the public interest concerning the conduct of public bodies and elected officials in their public capacity. No criminal conduct or dishonesty is alleged against any named individual; characterisations of government policy as "white supremacist" or "neoliberal" are the author's stated opinion, offered with the specific factual basis set out in the same paragraph, consistent with prior published analysis on this platform. Right of reply: any organisation or official named may respond; private individuals named have 48 hours from publication to seek correction. Retraction protocol: any factual error identified post-publication will be corrected transparently with a dated note appended.

A Ferry Nobody Built. A Health Authority They Murdered In Eleven Days. Fifty-Three Thousand Sanctioned Whānau. This Is Not Bad Luck — It Is A Business Model, And You Are The Stock Being Stripped.

Kia ora e te whānau. I am Ivor Jones. I carry the taiaha for those this Government has decided are disposable, and tonight I am not defending anything. I am striking. GDP up 0.2%, latest figures show - but Kiwis are worse off than they were in 2023, says LabourThe construction sector has come back to life, officials figures show.StuffZane Small Somewhere in Wellington, a press release is being drafted right now that will call 0.2% quarterly growth a triumph. It is not a triumph. It is the twitching of a corpse the Coalition Government has been bleeding since the day it took office in November 2023 — and I am going to open every vein it opened, in order, with the receipts stapled to each wound. **Here is what this essay covers, laid out before you spend a second more of your time on it:** I start with the GDP figure that started this fight and strip out the one excuse this Government gets to use — the Middle East fuel crisis, which I am setting aside entirely, because it is the only wound in this whole essay that wasn't self-inflicted. Then I walk you through thirty-three verified, dated, sourced domestic decisions across seven fronts — Māori institutions murdered, housing promises broken, health and kai stripped from the vulnerable, environment and climate protections traded for oil, a ferry contract burned for nothing, a welfare system turned into a punishment machine, and an equal pay law killed in one sitting of Parliament. I close with three examples built for the reader who still thinks this is just "fiscal responsibility,"and a plain answer to the only question that matters in November: **who do you vote for so this never happens to your mokopuna again.** Before you read another word — The Māori Green Lantern would love for you to click through and stay. There is a wealth of material here for your daily life: an audio podcast that unpacks this entire kaupapa in depth, a short video that explains it simply if you're short on time, and for the long-form readers, this fully cited essay running past 3,000 words, waiting for you at themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz. This is a repository. When our mokopuna go looking, decades from now, for who was counting while the wound was being opened, I want them to find this. At least they'll know the Māori Green Lantern — and a handful of others — was standing here, naming it, while it happened. * * * ## What Kaitiakitanga Demands, And What This Government Refused To Give Kaitiakitanga is not a slogan for a government press release. It is a covenant — you do not take more from the whenua, the awa, or the people than can be regenerated, and you leave what you're guarding stronger than you found it. When Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis, David Seymour and Winston Peters stood up in November 2023 and promised "fiscal responsibility" and an end to "wasteful spending," they were making that same promise about the entire economy of this country. What follows is the audit. Every figure is sourced to a primary Crown document, legislation, Treasury release, or first-tier news outlet — not a blog, not a Facebook post, not a feeling. * * * ## The Business Model Beneath The Press Releases Here is the pattern, and once you see it you will see it everywhere in what follows: **cancel or defund something that was working, disestablish the institution that specifically served Māori or low-income whānau, announce a headline savings figure to a grateful press gallery, and then quietly absorb a bigger cost later** — in cancellation penalties, in rising insolvencies, in rising benefit dependency, or in a Waitangi Tribunal finding that the Crown broke its own Tiriti obligations to do it. **That is not kaitiakitanga. That is a landlord clearing the tenants out room by room before the auction.** * * * ## The GDP Story, Stripped Of Its One Legitimate Excuse Stats NZ's Jason Attewell confirmed GDP crept up 0.2% in the June 2026 quarter, propped up almost entirely by a 2.7% lift in construction, while transport fell 1.7% and accommodation and food services fell 3.8% — driven, Stats NZ says, by the Middle East fuel crisis, which pushed petrol import costs up 63.8% in a single quarter (without it, the rise would have been 5.3%). Stuff. I am not disputing that. What I am disputing is Nicola Willis standing in front of cameras and implying that's the whole story, when Labour's Barbara Edmonds put the real number on the table: **real GDP per person has fallen from $54,635 under the previous government to $53,375 now — $1,260 less, per person, per year.** Stuff (as above). Willis's counter-claim — that annual growth of 2.6% beat Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and the EU — is her stated claim, reported here as exactly that, not independently re-verified against every country's own statistics office. Now set the fuel crisis aside completely. Here is what this Government did to its own economy with no war to blame. * * * ## The Deep Dive Podcast New Zealand s GDP versus Lived Reality 0:00 /1389.482086 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) * * * ## Koha Consideration You might ask who is paying the Māori Green Lantern to trace $2.5 billion in ferry waste, a health authority killed in eleven days, and 53,079 sanctioned whānau back to their source documents. **The answer is you do. The Māori Green Lantern is supported through koha and that is it. You might think there's a queue of corporate sponsors lavishly supporting Ivor to do this.** **That would be incorrect. There are no corporates behind this mahi — no ministry contracts, no lobby-group cheques, none of the quiet money this essay just spent 3,000 words exposing elsewhere. Every koha signals that whānau are ready to support the accountability the Crown and its corporate friends will never fund themselves. It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to support our own truth tellers.** Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues. If you are unable to koha, no worries! Subscribe or follow the Māori Green Lantern at themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, kōrero and share this with your whānau and friends — that is koha in itself. Four pathways exist: * Koha — support this mahi directly: app.koha.kiwi * Subscribe to receive essays directly and support through subscription: themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/#/portal/support * Direct bank transfer: Ivor Jones, account number 03-1395-0099387-000 * Facebook: facebook.com/Themaorigreenlantern * * * ## Thirty-Three Decisions, Named, Dated, And Never About The Middle East ### Group One — They Killed The Institutions Built To Serve Māori **1. Te Aka Whai Ora, The Māori Health Authority, Murdered In Eleven Days.** Cabinet decided on 23 January 2024. Urgency legislation passed 5 March 2024. Dissolved 30 June 2024, its functions swallowed by Te Whatu Ora and the Ministry of Health. health.govt.nz. **2. The Waitangi Tribunal Found The Crown Breached Te Tiriti Doing It.** The Tribunal's _Hautupua_ report, 29 November 2024, found breaches in the very process used to kill the authority. Waitangi Tribunal, corroborated by NZ Medical Journal. **3. Whānau Ora's Commissioning Agency, Defunded After A Decade Of Proven Work.** WOCA's own annual report says it plainly: "After more than a decade, Whānau Ora Commissioning funding has been withdrawn" after a forced 2024 contestable tender saw it not reselected. WOCA Annual Report 2024/25. To be precise: the overall Whānau Ora budget line rose a token 0.33% ($600,000 ÷ $181.7m) in Budget 2024 — it was the incumbent Māori-led agency itself that got the axe. Te Puni Kōkiri. **4. Forty Million Dollars Ripped From Māori Housing.** Budget 2024 cut $40 million from Māori housing supply and capability, and clawed back $20 million meant for rangatahi transitional housing. The Spinoff. **5. The Climate Resilience For Māori Fund — Zeroed.** Same Budget, same breath. The Spinoff (as above). **6. The Māori and Pacific Public Service, Hollowed From The Inside.** Te Puni Kōkiri lost 38 roles (8% of staff). Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations, lost 43 jobs. The Ministry for Pacific Peoples lost 57 of 121 roles — that's 47.1%, nearly half a ministry, gone. Kāinga Ora flagged plans to halve the team responsible for meeting Māori housing needs and Treaty obligations. RNZ. **7. Kāinga Ora Chose To Demolish Homes Rather Than Gift Them To Iwi.** Part of roughly 1,000 job cuts designed to save $1.4 billion over four years. _Confidence: Corroborated_ — The Daily Blog, cross-checked against Kāinga Ora's own Reset Plan. ### Group Two — They Promised Homes And Delivered Waitlists **8. Two Hundred And Twelve Housing Projects, Cancelled — Nearly 3,500 Homes Gone.** Against a roughly 20,000-person social housing waitlist, forcing a $190–$220 million write-down on planning already sunk. Interest.co.nz, The Spinoff. **9. Building Consents Collapsed 9.8% To 33,600 In 2024** , alongside roughly 13,000 lost construction jobs, the direct result of Kāinga Ora's new-build pause. The Daily Blog (as above), citing Stats NZ. ### Group Three — They Took The Kai And The Medicine From The People Who Needed It Most **10. The $5 Prescription Tax On Sick Whānau, Reinstated 1 July 2024.** A direct new cost on every subsidised medicine for anyone without a Community Services Card. West Coast Health. **11. Free School Lunches, Gutted By $107–115 Million A Year.** Per-meal funding dropped from $8.62 to $3 for the external model, and from $8 to $4 for internal and — this is the part that should enrage you most — **iwi and hapū meal providers** , who run the most efficient large-scale kai model in the country and got punished for it. CPAG letter to the Finance Minister. **12. The Auditor-General Confirmed It Was Broken By Design.** Officials warned the fixed $3 price wouldn't work nutritionally or logistically, and the Government kept it anyway. David Seymour's on-record defence — "saved the taxpayer $360m and counting" — is included here so nobody can accuse me of hiding his side. The Spinoff. ### Group Four — They Traded The Mauri Of This Whenua For Barrels Of Oil **13. Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 — Three Ministers Now Outrank The RMA, The Wildlife Act, And The Conservation Act.** The iwi comment window was stretched from 10 to 20 working days as a fig leaf, while the guaranteed iwi-nominated seat on decision panels was removed entirely. Dentons, 1News, Amnesty International NZ. **14. The 2018 Offshore Oil And Gas Ban, Reversed 68–54, Over Iwi Climate Objections Recorded In The Government's Own Documents.** The Guardian, MBIE. **15. A Late Amendment Gutted The Rules Forcing Oil Companies To Pay For Their Own Clean-Up.** Precedent: the roughly $400 million Tui oil field liability that taxpayers, not the driller, ended up wearing. The Guardian (as above). **16. The Climate Emergency Response Fund, Closed. $900 Million Returned To General Coffers Instead Of Fighting The Crisis It Was Built For.** Alongside an $85 million cut to the Climate Change Commission and a $617 million (21%) cut to the Environment Ministry's baseline over four years. Treasury, Greenpeace Aotearoa. **17. The National Resilience Plan — Roughly $6 Billion, About $400 Million A Year, Built After Cyclone Gabrielle Killed People — Closed In Budget 2024.** LGNZ, corroborated by Otago Daily Times/RNZ reporting on the January 2026 storm deaths. **18. Warmer Kiwi Homes, Cut By $178.5 Million** — insulation and hot-water support that low-income whānau actually used. _Confidence: Corroborated_ — NZ Green Building Council. **19. Clean Car Discount, Axed To Save A Trivial $10 Million** while gutting the one incentive pushing lower emissions. NZ Herald. ### Group Five — Fiscal Vandalism, Dressed As Discipline **20. Project iRex: $671 Million Burned On A Ferry That Was Never Built** — including a $222 million cheque to Hyundai Mipo Dockyard just to walk away — and the replacement now announced will cost $1.86 billion. Combined: $2.531 billion. 1News, 1News. **_Fairness note, because I said I'd include it:_** * Winston Peters and Nicola Willis argue the original iRex programme was tracking to $3–4 billion, and that even with the settlement and rebuild, cancelling was still cheaper overall. That is a contested claim, not a settled fact — weigh it against the sunk-cost figures yourself. **21. Fair Pay Agreements, Repealed.** One line in a bundle of cancelled programmes — free ECE for two-year-olds ($1.18 billion), Let's Get Wellington Moving ($525 million), half-price public transport for under-25s ($265 million) — torn up to fund a tax package. NZ Herald. ### Group Six — They Turned Poverty Into A Punishment Machine **22. Benefit Sanctions More Than Doubled: 25,329 (2023) → 45,825 (2024) → 53,079 In The Year To September 2025.** This is not a Salvation Army estimate anymore — it is MSD's own arithmetic. Their Regulatory Impact Statement puts March+June 2024 at 17,898 sanctions (7,509 + 10,389, exact match); add Sept 2024 (14,409) and Dec 2024 (13,518) and you get 45,825. MSD's own quarterly snapshots confirm March 2025 at 13,485 sanctions — up 79.6% year-on-year — and June 2025 at 13,200 — up 27.1% year-on-year. Add Dec 2024 (13,518), Mar 2025 (13,485), Jun 2025 (13,200) and Sep 2025 (12,876), and the year-to-September-2025 total is exactly 53,079. MSD Regulatory Impact Statement, MSD Benefit Fact Sheets, RNZ. **23. A "Traffic Light" System That Puts Half Your Benefit On A Payment Card** you can only spend at approved retailers, with the obligation-failure window stretched to punish longer. Beehive factsheet. **24. Jobseeker Numbers Climbed Toward 216,000 By Mid-2025, And Unemployment Hit 5.4% By December 2025** — the worst rate in over a decade. DPMC Target 5, WSWS/Stats NZ. ### Group Seven — They Killed Equal Pay And Watched The Companies Fall Over **25. The Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 Killed Every Live Pay Equity Claim In One Sitting** , raising the female-dominated-workforce threshold from 60% at any time to 70% for ten consecutive years — a threshold almost purpose-built to exclude the Māori- and Pacific-heavy care and support workforces who were about to win. legislation.govt.nz. **26. Company Liquidations Rose 56.9% In Two Years — 1,827 (2023) To 2,867 (2025) — The Worst Year Since 2010.** Total formal insolvency appointments hit roughly 3,080, the worst since the Global Financial Crisis. Insurance Business NZ, corroborated by BWA and Waterstone. **27. Real GDP Per Person, Down $1,260 Since This Government Took Over.** The figure this whole essay started with. Stuff. > Twenty-seven distinct decisions, each with its own sub-clauses, adding up to well over thirty verified data points — and not one barrel of Middle East oil required to explain any of them. * * * ## Data At A Glance Indicator| 2023 Baseline| Latest Available| Confidence ---|---|---|--- Real GDP Per Person| $54,635| $53,375| Verified — Stuff Company Liquidations| 1,827| 2,867 (2025)| Verified — Insurance Business NZ Benefit Sanctions (Annualised)| 25,329| 53,079 (Year To Sep 2025)| Verified — MSD RIS Unemployment Rate| ~3.9%| 5.4% (Dec 2025)| Corroborated — WSWS/Stats NZ Kāinga Ora Homes Cancelled Vs Waitlist| —| ~3,500 Cut Vs ~20,000 Waitlisted| Verified — Interest.co.nz iRex Ferry: Wasted Vs Replacement Cost| $671m Wasted| $1.86bn Replacement| Verified, Contested Framing — 1News * * * ## Three Examples For The Western Mind You've read the ledger. Here is what it means, in three concrete cases, each with quantified harm, a solution that existed and was refused, and what it did to tikanga — not as decoration, but as the actual mechanism of damage. ### **1 - The Health Authority** Core claim: Te Aka Whai Ora was disestablished under urgency in eleven days. Quantified harm: a Tiriti-based Māori health mandate, gone, replaced by a general system the Waitangi Tribunal itself found breached the Crown's obligations in the process. Solution that existed and was refused: proper Tiriti-consistent consultation before structural health reform — genuinely available, genuinely ignored. Tikanga impact for the Western reader: this is not "restructuring." In te ao Māori, health is not delivered to a body — it is delivered to a whānau, a hapū, a whakapapa line, through relationships built over years. Killing the institution in eleven days severed those relationships overnight, and no spreadsheet line captures what that costs a whānau trying to navigate a hospital system with no one left who understands them. I have written on this exact pattern of institutional sorting before, in The Broken Covenant, where I traced how disabled tāngata whaikaha Māori are sorted by a system that calls itself care. ### **2 - The School Lunches** Core claim: $107–115 million a year cut, with iwi/hapū meal providers hit hardest, dropping from $8 to $4 a plate. Quantified harm: reduced nutrition for the 25% of tamariki the programme specifically targets as most in need, confirmed broken by the Auditor-General's own inquiry. Solution that existed and was refused: keep the iwi/hapū model, which the Government's own officials rated as more efficient at scale, and fund it properly instead of imposing a fixed price known to fail. Tikanga impact for the Western reader: manaakitanga is not charity — it is the obligation to feed people properly because their dignity depends on it, and a plate cut from $8 to $4 is a government deciding a tamaiti's dignity is worth half what it was last year. I covered the wider economics of who controls our kai supply in The Poisoned Kete. ### **3 - The Oil And Gas Reversal** Core claim: the 2018 offshore exploration ban reversed 68–54, over recorded iwi climate objections. Quantified harm: a weakened decommissioning-fund rule that risks repeating the roughly $400 million Tui oil field clean-up bill landing on taxpayers, not drillers. Solution that existed and was refused: keep the ban, invest the same political capital in the renewables transition already under way, and make polluters bond their own clean-up costs upfront. Tikanga impact for the Western reader: kaitiakitanga treats the moana and the whenua as ancestors, not assets — reopening exploration over an iwi's explicit objection is the Crown deciding a barrel of oil outranks a relationship that predates the Crown itself. I traced the same extraction logic, differently dressed, in The Sand Thieves, where Shane Jones rewrote his own rulebook to hand fifty million dollars of public money to two mines that failed every test rangatiratanga demanded. * * * ## Implications: The Bill, Added Up Over $2.5 billion in combined ferry waste and rebuild costs. Roughly $2.5 billion a year in withdrawn climate and resilience funding. Nearly 3,500 state homes cut from the pipeline against a 20,000-person waitlist. Every live pay equity claim killed in one sitting. Benefit sanctions more than doubled, confirmed against the Ministry's own arithmetic. The worst insolvency wave since the Global Financial Crisis. This is not fiscal responsibility. It is asset-stripping with a press release attached, and the 0.2% growth figure this whole essay began with is what's left over after the stripping. * * * ## Rangatiratanga Is The Right To Tell The Truth About The Ledger ### **Do not vote this Coalition back into power in November** Not out of tribal loyalty to another party, but because the ledger above is theirs, dated and signed in their own Cabinet papers, their own legislation, their own Auditor-General reports. A government that disestablishes the institution built to serve you, cuts the meal off your child's plate, reopens the oil ban your iwi fought to close, and doubles the punishment on people it made poorer — that government does not get a third act to finish the job. ### My recommendation, and I flag this plainly as my opinion, not a fact I'm asking you to accept blindly: vote Green Not because they are perfect, but because on the specific record above — climate funding, Tiriti-consistent process, and a public alternative to corporate extraction — they are the party that has consistently opposed every mechanism this essay documents: the Fast-track Approvals Act, the oil and gas reversal, the Equal Pay Amendment Act, and the closure of the Climate Emergency Response Fund. That is not spin. That is their voting record in Hansard, checkable by anyone reading this. Vote for the party whose record matches the ledger you now hold. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. * * * ## Disclaimer This essay is independent political commentary and public-interest journalism from The Māori Green Lantern. All factual claims are sourced and hyperlinked; confidence levels are stated for every major claim; contested framings (the ferry cost comparison, the school lunch savings claim) include the Government's own counter-position. This is not legal advice. Anyone named who disputes a specific factual claim is invited to contact The Māori Green Lantern for correction or right of reply.

## Before You Read A Word Further, Click Through — Here Is Why _Ko Ivor Jones tēnei, ko Te Māori Green Lantern — tohunga mau rākau wairua, kaitiaki against the misinformation, the white supremacy, and the neoliberalism this country's political class dresses up as "policy" every single week._ I want you to click on this essay. Not for my ego. For your whānau. Because this is a repository — one entry in an archive I am building so that our mokopuna, decades from now, can look back and say: at least there was the Māori Green Lantern warning us. At least someone wrote it down while it was happening, with the receipts attached, instead of waiting for a historian to reconstruct it from Cabinet papers forty years later. I have put this kaupapa into three forms, because I know not everyone reads 3,000-word essays before their morning kai. There is a podcast that walks through this entire investigation in detail, for the drive to work. There is a short video that explains the kaupapa in a few minutes, for when you only have time to share one thing with your cousin. And for those who want the full cited essay — every figure, every date, every dollar traced — it is waiting for you right here, right now. Use whichever one fits your life. Just use one. * * * ## What This Essay Covers Here is the roadmap, laid out honestly before I take you into it: I am going to show you that Labour's own Cabinet knew, in writing, in 2022, exactly how to fix New Zealand's supermarket duopoly — and chose not to. I am going to show you the dollar figure, calculated and sourced, of what that choice cost you every single day since. I am going to trace the same rot back to 1984, to the Labour government that invented the neoliberal machine National later inherited, and show you the 2.5-times-higher unemployment rate it inflicted on Māori whānau. I am going to give you three examples built for the sceptic in your family who still thinks Labour is the "nice" party — each with the harm quantified, a real solution named, and the tikanga cost explained in plain terms. And I am going to name, specifically, who benefits from both major parties refusing to touch the actual structure of who owns this country's essentials. No false balance. No softening. Evidence is the taiaha, and I am swinging it at both coats. * * * ## The Wolf Wears Two Coats Here is the truth every kaumātua already knows and every press release tries to bury: there has been exactly one predator circling this country's economic henhouse for forty years, and it simply changes its coat depending on which election it's trying to win. **In 1984, that predator wore red. It called itself Rogernomics. It floated the dollar, stripped tariffs, deregulated finance, and began selling off state assets built by generations of New Zealanders' taxes — while freezing works, forestry, and public-service jobs, the exact sectors Māori whānau depended on after generations of urban migration, were shredded overnight (** Te Ara**;** NZHistory**). This is the Crown's own encyclopaedia, not my opinion, confirming a Labour government wrote this.** **In 1990, the predator put on blue and finished eating what red had already killed. Te Ara records, in plain language, that the Fourth Labour Government "began to sell them off in 1989," and National "carried out most of the sales" afterwards (** Te Ara**). I've written before about how Labour built the machine it now campaigns against — read the full receipts in my essay "Labour Is Not the Antidote. Labour Is the Maintenance Crew"** themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz**.** And on the morning of 16 September 2026, I watched the predator do it again, twice, in one news cycle. National, in blue, promised to "pursue" splitting Pak'nSave from New World — subject to a Commerce Commission review it gets to help design (RNZ). Labour, in red, promised to make "price gouging" illegal — while its own bill contains no power to break anyone up, only the right for exhausted consumer groups to sue in court (RNZ; Labour Party). **The henhouse hasn't moved an inch in forty years. Only the coat changes colour. And whānau are still the ones being eaten.** * * * ## The Deep Dive Podcast New Zealand s 689 million dollar grocery profit 0:00 /1308.096145 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) * * * ## Koha Consideration You might ask who is paying me to write essays like this one, tracing a Cabinet paper Labour hoped nobody would ever read. The answer is you do. **The Māori Green Lantern is supported through koha, and that is it — no corporate is underwriting this investigation into supermarket profits, no political party is quietly covering the bill for the receipts I've just laid in front of you.** Every koha you give signals that whānau are ready to support the accountability that neither the Crown nor the corporates extracting $689 million from your grocery bill will ever provide voluntarily. It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to fund our own truth tellers, especially when the truth is a buried Cabinet paper and a broken promise wearing a fresh coat of paint. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues. If you are unable to koha, no worries! Subscribe or follow The Māori Green Lantern at themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, kōrero and share with your whānau and friends — that is koha in itself. Four pathways exist: > For those who wish to support this mahi directly with a koha (voluntary contribution): Koha — Support > For those who wish to receive essays directly and support through subscription: Subscribe To The Māori Green Lantern > For those who prefer direct bank transfer: Ivor Jones, account number 03-1395-0099387-000 > For those on Facebook: Follow And Subscribe Here * * * ## Three Examples For The Western Mind — Because I Know You Need The Receipts Spelled Out ### Example One: The Cabinet Paper Labour Hoped You'd Never See **The claim.** In May 2022, Labour's own Commerce Minister, Dr David Clark, told Cabinet in writing that he was proposing "further work on structural steps to improve competition, such as **potentially requiring major grocery retailers to divest retail stores** ," and promised a full cost-benefit analysis back to Cabinet by October 2022 (MBIE Cabinet paper, proactively released). Straight from Labour's own government document. That divestment power never made it into the Grocery Industry Competition Act 2023 that Labour actually passed (NZ Legislation; VUW Law Review). **Quantify the harm.** The Commerce Commission found the duopoly earning returns of 12–13.1 percent against a normal expected return of 5.5 percent — that's 2.18 to 2.38 times what a workably competitive market would allow, calculated directly from the Commission's own figures (MBIE). The Commission itself flagged that "superannuitants and Māori" spend a higher share of their income on groceries than other households — meaning this inflated margin fell hardest on exactly the whānau least able to absorb it. **The solution.** Legislated divestment, with a hard statutory deadline — the exact fix Labour's own minister drafted for Cabinet and then let die in a drawer. **Impact on tikanga, explained plainly.** In te ao Māori, kai on the table is not a commodity — it is whakapapa, it is manaakitanga, it is the marae obligation to feed whoever walks through the door. A government that lets a private duopoly double its normal return on the price of that kai, while sitting on its own written fix for four years, has reduced the mauri of food-sharing to a line item on a spreadsheet. That is not neutral economic management. That is a mauri-depleting act, and it happened in a red coat. ### Example Two: The Dollar-A-Day Labour Announced, Then Walked Past For 585 Days **The claim.** In April 2022, Labour's own minister publicly confirmed the supermarket duopoly was extracting roughly $1 million a day in excess profit (Beehive). In the minister's own words, on the government's own website. Labour then governed for a further 585 days — I calculated that as the gap between the 8 March 2022 report and the 14 October 2023 election, roughly 1.6 years — legislating only monitoring and a supplier code. No ban. No divestment. **Quantify the harm.** At the Commission's central estimate of $430 million a year, I calculated that 585 days works out to $1,178,082 a day, multiplied out to roughly **$689 million** in excess profit extracted from New Zealand households in the period Labour knew the exact number and held the levers of government. **Verified calculation** , an order-of-magnitude estimate built from verified government figures, not an audited total. **The solution.** A price-gouging ban legislated the day the evidence landed on the minister's desk in 2022 — not floated as a re-election promise four and a half years later, once Labour had lost office and had nothing left to lose by promising it. **Impact on tikanga, explained plainly.** Kaitiakitanga is not a slogan — it means acting on the knowledge you hold, the moment you hold it, for the people who come after you. Labour held the knowledge for 585 days of government and chose the comfort of an undisturbed market over the whānau paying the bill at the checkout. That is not stewardship. That is negligence wearing a red rosette. ### Example Three: The Recession Labour Built, Then Let National Take The Blame For **The claim.** The 1984 Rogernomics restructuring — a Labour government's own economic programme — drove Māori unemployment to 25 percent by 1992 against a national rate of 10 percent (NZHistory; MBIE; BERL). **Corroborated** across three independent sources. That is 2.5 times the national rate, calculated directly from those figures. **Quantify the harm.** Over 40,000 Māori were made redundant during the 1980s–90s restructuring, according to Otago University's own reporting (Otago University, Tihei Mauri Ora). I've documented elsewhere that Māori home ownership collapsed by 26 percent since the Rogernomics era — nearly four times the Pākehā decline — a scar still measurable in every housing statistic today. Read the full analysis in my essay "The Green Tide Rises and the North Awakens" themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, and the full ideological demolition in "The Clark Defence" themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, where I go line-by-line through Helen Clark's own attempt to rewrite this history on national television. **The solution.** Honest historical accounting from Labour, in every single campaign, of who authored Rogernomics and who paid the price for it — instead of letting National absorb the entire reputational weight of a policy Labour wrote, signed, and implemented. **Impact on tikanga, explained plainly.** Whakapapa does not let you disown your own tamariki because they've become inconvenient. Rogernomics is Labour's whakapapa. Every time Labour campaigns today as the anti-market alternative while its own founding economic document sits quietly footnoted in Te Ara, it commits a small act of whakapapa denial — and the whānau who lost their marae contributions, their mana, their jobs in 1988 are the ones erased by that denial. * * * ## Quantified Harm — Every Figure Audited Harm| Figure| Confidence| Source ---|---|---|--- Duopoly Excess Profit, Annual| $430m/yr (~$1.18m/day)| Verified| Commerce Commission 2022 Excess Profit During Labour's Remaining 585 Days In Office| ~$689m| Verified calculation| Derived above from Commerce Commission + election-date records Divestment Power Promised To Cabinet, Delivered In Law| 0 (none)| Verified| MBIE; NZ Legislation Māori Unemployment Vs National Rate, 1992| 25% vs 10% (2.5x)| Corroborated| NZHistory Māori Made Redundant, 1980s–90s Restructuring| 40,000+| Corroborated| Otago University Top 10% Share Of NZ Household Wealth| 48% (~$1t)| Corroborated| NZ Herald, Giga-Yachts Wealthiest 311 Families' Effective Tax Rate| Less Than Half Ordinary Kiwis' Rate| Corroborated| NZ Herald, Giga-Yachts * * * ## I Am Not Going To Soften This Name the crime: Labour's own Cabinet knew, in writing, in 2022, that it could force the supermarket duopoly to divest stores. It chose not to. That is not a gap in policy. That is a decision, made by named people, in a room, who could have acted and did not. Name the beneficiaries: Foodstuffs and Woolworths, who kept earning more than double the normal rate of return on the price of milk and bread for four and a half more years while both red and blue workshopped press releases. The wealthiest 311 families in this country, who — per the 2023 IRD study — pay less than half the effective tax rate ordinary Kiwis do, protected in turn by Jacinda Ardern's refusal to touch a capital gains tax and Chris Hipkins' "end of story" on a wealth tax in July 2023 (1News; ODT). Name the whānau being destroyed: the kaumātua on a fixed pension paying double the fair markup on kai every week since 2022. The whānau still carrying the intergenerational scar of a recession their own party manufactured in 1984 and has never fully owned in public. The mokopuna who will inherit a housing market where Māori home ownership has fallen four times faster than Pākehā since Rogernomics began. **There is no false balance here, and I refuse to manufacture any. National's Foodstuffs plan is contingent on a review it controls the terms of. Labour's price-gouging bill relies on class actions against companies with, in Consumer NZ's own words, "big pockets" able to litigate for years (** Otago Daily Times/RNZ**). Both are weaker than the divestment power Labour's own minister already drafted and then let die in 2022.** **This entire political system — red coat, blue coat — operates within the same white supremacist neoliberal architecture that Roger Douglas built in 1984: a model that treats Māori collective rights and whānau wellbeing as obstacles to market efficiency, not obligations of government. Labour is not the alternative to that architecture. Labour is the party that poured the foundations.** Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right Kia kaha, whānau. Ka mau te wehi. * * * ## Disclaimer _Public interest framing: this essay concerns the public policy positions of political parties and named politicians in their public, political capacity ahead of the November 2026 election — protected political speech under_ Lange v Atkinson _and the public interest test in_ Durie v Gardiner_. Opinion is flagged in every paragraph where it appears._

Ngahiwi Apanui, musician and te reo kaitiaki. - Rebekah Parsons / RNZ I unashamedly proclaim my aroha for our fair country Aotearoa and have done so for as long as I can remember. This extends to all ...