 If Reality Check Radio enriches your day in life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and the dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. We've had Don Brash on the crunch before. Back then we talked about the boring topic of GST. This week though we're going to talk about the Treaty of Waitangi and the so-called principles of the Treaty and the debate that David Seymour is trying to have about defining what those principles actually are. He joins me now. Good afternoon and welcome to the first crunch show of the year and welcome back to the show Don Brash. Thank you. Good talk you. So we saw on Tuesday the usual charade and protest and carry on from Maori about Waitangi Day and a huge amount of misinformation being promulgated about what David Seymour and Axe policy is to cement or at least put into some legislation what the principles supposedly are of the Treaty. What are your thoughts on that Don? Well I think he's got something which is well worth while pursuing. I mean what he's really saying is that there's a lot of confusion about the Treaty meant in the minds of some people at least and this invention of principles of the Treaty which goes back to about 1975 when the Act was passed at that time and has been embellished on and on over the years since that time to the point where there are some people who already believe that Maori and New Zealanders can form some kind of separate state within a state. I mean it is almost as ridiculous as that. People contend that Maori chiefs did not see its sovereignty. There was no intention that they be subject to British rule and therefore they should not be subject to the rule of the New Zealand Parliament now. And as I say that is patently absurd and most Maori of course don't believe that for a moment. When you say Maori and New Zealanders made the trouble yesterday of course a great many Maori and New Zealanders don't wear the bar of what those guys are saying and there's evidence by the fact that three of the leading lights from Parliament there of course were David Seymour, Winston Peters and Shane Jones all of whom are only Maori but are Ngapui. So it's not true that all Maori think that way fortunately. No, that's right but this Treaty principles idea which you said came into being when the Waitangi Tribunal was formed. Let's just go over this with the listeners because there are no principles in the Treaty. There's three articles of the Treaty which are fairly clear in what they say both in English and in Maori. And there are no principles and it's a legal construct that activist judges have been extending via the Waitangi Tribunal and subsequent court cases in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court without anybody actually consulting us as to what these principles are. Yeah. And David Seymour is not wanting to change the Treaty. This is the lie that is being put out by Te Party Maori, numerous other politicians from the left are saying that David Seymour is trying to rewrite the Treaty. He's not trying to rewrite the Treaty is he? He's trying to establish what these principles are so that we can move forward without this moving feast. Well, that's absolutely right. As you say the Treaty itself is extremely simple and it's been embellished again and again over the years to the point where it's come to mean something doesn't mean at all. And David Rudy is saying let's go back to what the Treaty actually said and clarify what it means for New Zealand right now. And I'm absolutely with him on that. I think there needs to be that. And I'm hoping that the Prime Minister will not suggest he's going to oppose that beyond the Select Committee. He said he will get David Seymour's bill, go to the Select Committee for discussion and debate. He's not committed to supporting it beyond that, but I'm hoping that he will find there's a huge amount of public support for that bill and that he will eventually support it. Yeah, there's a lot of weasel words from Christopher Lux and around us. I mean, he keeps saying, oh, we're not going to support this bill past the first reading. And you have to sort of scratch your head. And if you know a little bit about parliamentary process, you're under why we're actually going through this charade if National has no intention of supporting it afterwards. But I think it's important that we actually have this discussion. And that's the problem that I have with the various rowdies that are trying to shut down this debate is they don't want to have a discussion about this. They want to promulgate and extend the fiction that Maori never ceded sovereignty. Yet article one of the treaty actually cedes sovereignty, which allows Maori to become British subjects. And you can't become a British subject if you haven't ceded sovereignty, can you? That's right. That's the first article. But the preamble to the treaty also talks about ceding sovereignty to the Queen. So I mean, I think even if they had, by chance, not ceded sovereignty at that point, the chiefs who met 20 years later at Kohimura Mara clearly were talking about the Queen as their head of state, if you like. So that they were under no illusion at all that they had ceded sovereignty. And because in the decades since, most Maori leaders have been quite explicit about having ceded sovereignty. The most notable, I guess, of that, of those was Seraparana Nata. He was quite unambiguous that the Maori chiefs had ceded sovereignty at that point. And of course, if they hadn't, they'd make a nonsense of the last 180-something years. They've been employed by the state, they've paid taxes to the state, they've received benefits from the state as ordinary New Zealanders. Well, of course, prior to the Kohimura Marama Conference, for want of a better term, is the 1852 Constitution Act as well, where we all became New Zealand citizens in a democracy. That's right. So so it's a nonsense to, you know, for Hone Harawira and Rauri Waititi and Debbie Packer to suggest that sovereignty was never ceded. You can say it all you like, but it doesn't make it true now, as it didn't make it true back then. That's right. Exactly true. I get sickened every Waitangi day by this carry on. And I have to blame most of the media for this, because it's like that eging it on, promulgating these lies that David Seymour was seeking to rewrite the treaty and reporting it in such a way that it looks like everybody who was at Waitangi was against the government. That's not the case from reports that I've had from on the grounded Waitangi, that there was actually a great amount of spirit of goodwill. It was only a small percentage of the people who were at Waitangi that tried to over talk David Seymour and Winston Peters and Casey Costello in the most rude and effrontery manner. But the media pushed these people to the front of everything and reported as if everyone was like that. Yeah, they certainly give a quite distorted impression which we both deeply resent. I mean, it's a major source of difficulty for New Zealand, I think, because the media have created the impression that Maori, which means in their terminology, the vast majority of Maori are opposed to what David Seymour's Bill proposes to do. And I suspect that's not true at all. There's also a disconnect, too, in the media when they say, oh, there's a thousand people that went to Turangawaewae at the behest of the Maori king. We'll get to the talk about the Maori king a little bit later. But they said a thousand people there. And this is a statement of force that we should all listen to as New Zealanders. But I think they're up briefly. I think they said 10,000 people were there. Well, OK, even 10,000. And they say that. But of course, 10,000 people rocked up to Parliament and camped on the forecourt there. And of course, these were riffraff, scumbags, you know, people trying to protest and we should be ignoring them and make them go away. So on one hand, they listen to the groups of people that they agree with and deride and demonize the groups that they don't like. Yeah, that's not the role of the media, in my view. The moral of the media is to report what happens. And of course, the irony is this media we talk about is mainly state-owned. I mean, in television, New Zealand and radio New Zealand, RNZ, both paid by the taxpayers, be funded by the taxpayers. And it is they which are serious offenders in this area. Well, it's not just them. I mean, the others might be private companies like NZME, the Herald, you know, which includes the Herald and News Talks, the media works, all of these mainstream media companies availed themselves of multi millions of dollars from the Public Interest Journalism Fund. And that required them to to agree with the government of the day's contention that the treaty was a partnership and Maori were equal partners with the Crown and they never ceded sovereignty as part of that. And they also had to adhere to the unwritten amorphous principles of the treaty as part of their requirements for reporting and getting funding from that. Yeah, that's right. And to cap that off, every single one of those mainstream companies is also in receipt of probably hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising from government departments, organisations like the police, New Zealand Defence Force, Ministry of Health, etc. Yeah, that's right. To be argued that the state actually controls the media in New Zealand through its advertising budgets. Certainly has an influence on it. No question about that. Mm. What about the split that appears in academia? The media always run off to Margaret Mutu for comment. Elizabeth Rata has a completely different take on everything. In fact, she recently gave an interview here with Rodney Hyde. She outlines that the treaty was completely superseded by the 1852 Constitution Act in Article One of the Treaty. The Maori chief ceded sovereignty 100 percent. And as you said in the preamble, it says that too. And she notes that the principles do not go back to the 1840 Treaty, that they're an invention from the 1980s. So we've got a five year difference there, 75 to 80s. That's probably about right. And to party, Maori is now talking about having a separate Maori parliament. Yeah, the nuts, absolutely nuts. Presumably, we'll be funding that too. Well, I mean, that's the question, how are they going to fund this? I mean, if they have a separate Maori parliament and a separate Maori government structure, then presumably they organize the funding of that themselves. At what point did someone classify as Maori and at what point are they not? I have a friend who has one Maori great, great, great grandfather and 31 great, great, great grandparents who were not Maori. He's technically entitled to call himself Maori and go on the Maori role. But I mean, it's a complete nonsense. He's 31, 32 of the 32nd Maori. The rest of his ancestry is European. Is he Maori or is he not Maori? I mean, it's a complete nonsense. Is he a New Zealander? Well, that's the thing, isn't it? We're all New Zealanders. I mean, Fiji went through this sort of debate after the Baini Marama coup, where he said that everybody who was born in Fiji is a Fijian. That's right. We're not going to have a separation of Itaukai and Kaivalangi, which means foreigners. If you're born in Fiji, you're a Kaiviti. That actually is a definition that applies to me. I was born in Fiji. I'm a Kaiviti. Sadly, though, with the Rambooga government, it looks like they're going back to the separatist idea where Itaukai have more rights than everybody else. Yeah. Fiji is a sad case. As you say, Baini Marama seemed to have breaking away from that kind of nonsense. And I didn't know that Fiji was drifting back towards the racially based citizenship. But it's tragedy if it's happening. No, that's the thing. It is happening because the one of the assistant directors of public prosecution, who was actually prosecuting Baini Marama and Aiz Aikulm, has been dismissed by the acting director of public prosecutions for the high crime of being white. And there's a massive court case in Fiji at the moment that's about to get underway about that particular employment issue where the acting director of public prosecution, who arguably is in the position illegally because that position is appointed by the president and accordance with the Constitution. And that never happened. So you've got this nonsense that's happening. But everywhere in the world where we had this had separatism, this idea you can have separate this and separate that. I mean, we all protested against apartheid, yet we have Maori here, some Maori here seeming to be desperately wanting to have apartheid as long as it's in their favor. Yeah, no, it's an irony, a tragic irony. We're keen to go backwards in New Zealand. I just want to touch on the Kingitanga movement. I find it hugely ironic that the media and Tainui themselves pushing this idea that there is a Maori king and the history of the Kingitanga movement, of course, is very interesting. It never existed before the treaty. It came into being after the treaty. It never was a Maori king. We had a tribal society where they're all at each other's throats, which is one of the main reasons why all the chiefs signed the treaties. They wanted some law and order in New Zealand to stop the the raiding and the marauding and everything else that was going on. And Tainui decided to form the Kingitanga movement because they thought if it's OK for the British to have a king or a queen at that time, then they should too. And so we've got this anti-colonialist attitude coming out of the Raudies in Mauritum and also an anti-colonialist attitude coming from the truck driver from Huntley, who is called by the media, the Maori king, when in actual fact they've got their own colonial construct to echo what was happening in Great Britain at the time. It's certainly ironic, isn't it? Absolutely. One of the interesting things that I did in my past career when I was governor of the Reserve Bank was choose people to be on banknotes. We had all the banknotes had the Queen on and we decided to put New Zealanders on and we had five banknotes. The Queen is on one of them and New Zealanders on the other four. And I thought there should be one male Pakeha, one female Pakeha, one Maori of either gender and one sportsperson. And everyone had to be dead. I won't go into the exception we made for Hillary. But I thought that choosing a Maori to go on the banknote would be enormously difficult. King movement, anti-king movement, different tribal groups, et cetera. But in fact, there was no pushback at all when we decided to put Aparanaata on the 50th banknote. There was no projection of any kind that at least none that have reached me. There may have been some people feeling grumpy, but none express that grumpiness to me. And that was one of the one of the challenges. Do you choose a king movement, Maori to go on the note or non-king movement, Maori to go on the note? And we chose, of course, Aparanaata is from Ngati Porou. And not part of the Kingitanga movement. That's correct. And either Anapui or Ngai Tahu or many other Iwi around the country aren't part of the Kingitanga movement. Well, that's right. But I think there's a push now to try and have this united Maori voice. And I'm not sure that's working. Certainly, Shane Jones said as much when he declined to go to Turangawaewae. He I think he stated that he's not my king. I'm from Naapui. Yeah, yeah. And of course, there was that enormous stash between Ngati Whātua and Tainui in Auckland, not so long ago. I can't recall what that was. Was something to do with it? It was out by the airport, wasn't it? Wasn't it to do with Ishmātau? I can't quite recall, but there was certainly quite a tension there at that point, not so long ago. I was also laughing a little bit to myself at the Hikoi that launched from Cape Reanga and arrived at the Treaty Grounds. And they had the Herald actually says the Hikoi in defence of Te Tiriti o Waitangi has arrived at its final stop in the Waitangi Treaty Grounds to its own chant of two, four, six, eight. This government is out the gate. And I kind of laughed because it reminded me of a of an old British pop song that sort of went two, four, six, eight like that. And then I'm sitting there thinking, well, why the hell didn't they, you know, make it a Maori chant? Why didn't they make it like something like Tahirua, Toruwha? This government is off the par. I mean, it's not hard to do, is it? Yeah, that's right. But we've got this, you know, this I always liken it to the union movement. You've got these stock standard chants that they like to use. And in many of the people that were in are organising these marches and that are all from the union movement or all that side of politics. But, you know, it's again, the Herald is misreporting. They're saying in defence of the treaty, there's there's no party in this parliament or indeed any parliament who's ever said, we're going to change the treaty. And yet the media reports that that's what David Seymour and the act party want to do. And, of course, as we both agree, what he's trying to do is interpret what the treaty means today. And I think that's an eminently sensible thing to do. I hope that thing does go to referendum and that if it does, it's overwhelmingly passed. If, per chance, the National Party does kill the referendum, which obviously is a possibility at this stage, I think there's a very strong prospect of a citizen's initiated referendum. Now, of course, that's not ideal, because those are not binding on the country. But they would certainly indicate very strongly where most people in New Zealand are. Public opinion polls suggest already that the great majority of New Zealanders want the referendum and and support the principles that they would summarizing what the treaty means. In terms of the political play that's out there, I'm sitting here thinking David Seymour and Winston Peters and Shane Jones are rather cunning. And Christopher Luxon seems to be a little dull in the political ramifications of his stance. If he appears and continues to appear to be prevaricating or sitting on the fence, then the Act Party and New Zealand First are going to profit from that in ways that Christopher Luxon won't like and possibly will undermine his leadership. Is that your view as well? I'm not sure. I mean, I suspect at the moment, he's he's playing a fairly shrewd game. He's saying we'll support this to the select committee, but not committed to going beyond that. And that leaves him the option of supporting it if public opinion is clearly in favor of it, as I suspect will be the case. So he's left his options open, but you're right, that to the extent that he leaves doubt about whether he might support it, it does play to the advantage of both Act and New Zealand First, particularly Act, because New Zealand First is a bit ambivalent on the on the referendum. They're quite unambiguous about what kind of country we want instead of equal equal citizenship and removing references to the principle of the treaty, etc., from the legislation. But for some reason, I don't fully understand they haven't come out strong in favor of the referendum itself. I think it's because Christopher Luxon before the election was very closely advised by Chris Bishop and by Nicola Willis, who are both wetter than an otters pocket when it comes to these sorts of things. And I think Christopher Luxon is as wet as an otters pocket as well on these issues. But again, it's kind of cunning on Christopher Luxon's point of view, because if he raises his head and says anything, then the media, the baying hounds in the media and the various racist parties that are out there pushing this separatist agenda will just call them a racist. It's very hard to call Winston Peters, David Seymour, Shane Jones, Casey Costello, racists when they're all Maori. Yeah, that's right. And of course, as you all know, seven of the 20 cabinet ministers are Maori. I think there's been any cabinet. The highest level, highest level of Maori representation in cabinet ever. I think that's right. That's right. Higher even than the Labour Party, who say that they're the party for Maori, just by losing nearly all the seats at the last election. But again, you've got claims that winning all the Maori seats gives the Maori Party a mandate for all of Maridom. And that's not the case, though, is it? I mean, a very small percentage voted in favour of to party Maori. I think it was just a shade over three, but certainly half of what New Zealand First got. And I was laughing like hell when another academic came out and said that neither the ACT Party nor the New Zealand First Party have a mandate to make these changes, but was singing the praises of to party Maori, which had a much lesser percentage of the vote. Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, not all Maori are on the Maori roll. It's a smaller number than the actual number of Maori in New Zealand. I think only about half Maori are on the Maori roll for memory. It's around about 50 percent. Yeah, so the to party Maori is representing a around 50 percent of Maori, theoretically. But even then, the percentages are small. Yeah, that's right. But it's not the same Maori party or to party Maori anymore, is it? I mean, when Peter Sharples was there in Tarianaturi, I had enormous respect for the Maori party, as it was called then, had enormous respect for the minor of both, and particularly Tarianaturi, because she, on principle, left the Labour Party and did the honourable thing and forced a by-election. Yeah. And one. Yeah. There's not many politicians who do that where they leave a party and then force a by-election and then win. The only other person I can think of that successfully done that was Winston Peters. That's great. But by chance, I called on Tarianaturi in her home on Friday because, like you, I have a high regard for her. Back in 05, you recall, she and Peter Sharples both talked about a coalition government with national. I was leader and it was quite clear that it preferred national to be in government than Labour. Actually, I discovered that the National Party candidate in that electorate around Maoriduri, Maori electorate, I mean, is Tarianaturi's niece. Right. Yeah. So she's a person of real principle, in my view. Don't always agree with her, of course, but she's got a real integrity. Well, that's the benefits of living in a democracy, isn't it? That we can have differences of opinion, that we can discuss things even though we might not agree. And that's, again, the fault of the media, I see. You know, they've demonised you as being a racist, organising this, you know, they smear Hobson's Pledge, refused to actually engage with you in most of the media and demonise you and the organisation, even when it was headed up by Casey Costello, who is a Maori. Yeah, they did. They still continue to do that to this day. And they're pushing their own agenda. And I'm not sure that New Zealanders are buying it. I mean, it's almost like the media, the Labour Party, to Party Maori and the Green Party have forgot we had an election in October last year and that they lost. They did and lost big time. Well, it was a huge sea change. But it's like there's a rearguard action being fought. And you've got simpering weaklings like John Campbell, who is basically a propagandist, but he's the chief correspondent for TVNZ. I mean, I think that's actually an outrageous situation, which the government really shouldn't tolerate. I mean, he's promoting a vigorously anti-government agenda. And you think the taxpayer media should at least be neutral and he doesn't even pretend to be neutral. Well, there's no pretense at all, is there? He is outright hostile to the democratically elected government of New Zealand and has the arrogance to suggest that Kiwis were stupid and got it wrong. Yeah, that's right. Indeed, it is a polling case, actually. I mean, it should be it should. Well, he should be gone by lunchtime. I mean, it's hilarious, because I mean, I used to say this in the dark days of the Ardennes regime when people were saying, if we don't get rid of it now, we'll never get rid of it. And I always used to say, well, in New Zealand, we have things called elections and we invariably get rid of rat-bag politicians. We got rid of Muldoon and he was clearly almost a dictator towards the end, but we had an election and that was the end of him. We got rid of Helen Clark the same way. We got rid of Jim Boulder and Jenny Shipley the same way through elections. Yeah, when governments take diabolical liberties with our country, we toss them out of power. Yeah, and yet we've got, you know, I mean, I used to shudder at people on the center right that would say that, you know, Ardennes is not my prime minister, you know, or that she was selected. And it's a it's a construct that's, well, frankly, bullshit. Yeah, we might like the government. We can campaign against the government. That's all fine. But to deny that they're our prime minister or or they've been selected, not elected is just its silliness. And it's the same level of silliness that we're seeing in this debate around the treaty where things simply aren't true, but are being taken as being true. And again, I blame the media because they're pushing this agenda as well that David Seymour is going to change the treaty. He has no intention of changing the treaty. Yeah, that's right. You mentioned the fact that we have a democracy and that we can change government. I've never forgotten in 2002 when I was a candidate for the National Party, but not at that point in parliament. I was a list MP because I was asked to join the National Party very close to the election, in fact, and I'd been governor of the Reserve Bank. And I recall vividly going to a black tie dinner in Napier on the night before the election in 2002. And the host of the dinner asked the local vicar to give thanks for the food we were about to to eat. And he got up and he gave thanks to the food and the drink. And so let's give thanks for the fact that in 24 hours time, we will have elected a new parliament and nobody will have been shot. Nobody been to death and the army will be in its barracks. Is it one of we're one of a tiny number of countries where we can say that with absolute confidence? And we can still say that with confidence. I mean, Hickins may have detested the outcome of the election, but there was no suggestion you could out the army. Well, it would be laughable if he did. Well, that's right. There's more citizens with firearms than there are the military. In fact, in fact, members of my antique arms club, if we bounded together, we'd probably have four more firearms and firepower than the New Zealand Army. That's the sad, the sad state that our military has become. Yeah. And it's actually good in that respect and that you can't get a dictator ish politician wanting to use the army because New Zealand is simply too big and the army is too small. Yeah. You know, Fiji is a different matter. I mean, you basically just surround Suva and it's all over. Yeah. You know, and you can do that with a couple of battalions, less than that even. But, you know, we haven't even got a full battalion that can be mustered of infantry in the New Zealand Army. Right. It's it's it's been debased, sadly, by multiple governments over decades, have run it down here. They've got some new toys here and there, but successive governments have not valued the necessity of a reasonably sized military, you know, and the world considers two percent of GDP to be spent on GDP as a bare minimum. Well, we're well under that and have been for decades. Yeah. So, yeah, in that respect, that means they can't really be a coup. There aren't even enough police to be able to do that. If the citizens under the lockdowns had decided that they were going to completely ignore it, there's nothing the police nor the army would have been able to do about it. Yeah, true. So what do we have to do as a nation moving forward, Don? I'm of the mind that we should have the debate. We should always have the debate. You think we're going to be allowed to have the debate? Well, I think we will have the debate, whether we're allowed to quote or not allowed to. People want the debate. It's interesting, the amount of support which Hobson's Pledge has got over the last year or so. It's increased very substantially. And that's not because we've had any funds from offshore. We haven't had a dime from offshore. People want change from the sort of our doing regime and they want this current government to fix the issue, which is why I think that Seymour has got a very good prospect of getting his referendum one way or the other. Well, a midterm referendum would be a very good bellwether of the support of the government, wouldn't it? Certainly would. That's probably why Labour to party marrying the Greens are opposing it. Yeah, I'm not sure whether Seymour is actually proposing a midterm referendum or a referendum at the next election. I'm not quite sure where he is on that point. Well, as far as him, I'd be pushing a midterm referendum. Yeah, OK, keeps it keeps the debate alive. And it sets it up for the following year to have to, you know, go into the election saying we'll put all of that at risk if you vote us out. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you've actually got a stake in the ground, the referendum result that shows, you know, 60 percent or 65 percent, something like that might even be higher supporting a bill to define what the treaty principles are so that the courts can no longer just make them up as they go along. Yeah, that's a huge stake in the ground that you can have going into the following election after that referendum saying these guys want to overturn that. These guys want to make that go away. You need to vote for us. And I'm pretty sure that New Zealand First will get on board that. Eventually, it makes sense. I mean, they I know I can see what their political agenda is for the next three years. And that's, you know, walloping these Rowdy Maori walloping banks, walloping fuel companies and supermarkets. That's profit all day long for New Zealand First. And it's it's where it's their wheelhouse. Act can do what they're doing and grow their support. And National is going to be squeezed between the two by the looks of it. Yeah, I'm not sure. National's been around a long time and they came back from the dead in 05, for example, and it came back from the dead in 2023. I mean, they got very bad results in 02 and 2020, but nevertheless recovered. The Labor does that, too. They had a very bad result when under David Cunliffe and then came back in that. That's right. So I think I think the two major parties are deeply entrenched in New Zealand Society somehow. Yeah, it's sad, really, even though you used to be a leader of the National Party. Yes, it is indeed. But I've always analysed the National Party as the party of the status quo. They're not great change agents. The slight exception would be that the first term of the Bolger years where they passed the Employment Contracts Act and they did a couple of other significant things, particularly around the requirement for governments to report their financial position, even though every government since then has taken diabolical liberties with that law, but they generally not change agents. They like to manage the status quo and the party operates the same way where straight after an election, if National's won, they don't want to change anybody on the board because they just won an election. The year after that, it's the kind of midterm ones and then they'll usually come up with an excuse to not to make any changes there. And then they roll into a election year and the party says, Oh, no, we don't want to make any changes to the board. It would seem to bad signal to the electorate. And so they end up with board members who have been there 15, 20, 25 years and not refreshing and not changing. Yeah, in one sense, I'm less concerned about about the board of the National Party. I'm more concerned about the fact that too often the National becomes government that doesn't change the things that need to be changed. And I think the best example of that was was all right. I mean, National won big in all eight and the things that they promised to change and change in a major way basically stayed on. Well, I mean, that's a good point, exactly, because John Key campaigned in the 2008 election on the basis that working for families was communism by stealth. He even said that in the parliament. Is right. Yet very early on in his first term, he didn't do what he promised to do and get rid of working for families. In fact, he extended working for families and made it more communism. But it wasn't by stealth anymore. It was right there in front of us. And it was a campaign of eight on getting rid of Murray electorates. Yeah. And that didn't happen either. Big does no longer talk about. Well, speaking of that, it's hilariously funny because the the never Winston crowd inside the National Party always hold up the fact that Winston Peters wanted to get rid of the Maori electorates. And they say he's never done it. Another broken promise. They never look at their own party and John Key's broken promise to get rid of the Maori electorates as well. Yeah. But I can remember having a discussion about those Maori electorates over several years with MPs. One of one was Tony Ryle, of course, no longer an MP now. And he said to me when I suggested we get rid of the Maori electorates, so good God, no, we can't do that. And I said, why is that Tony? He says, well, I'd lose my electorate. I said, oh, OK, so self interest. And he goes, oh, it's not like that. Can I say, yeah, Tony, it is. Right. The principle is that we're all the same in New Zealand. We're instead of having these these separate Maori electorates, which basically give have gifted labor for many, many decades. You know, a four or five or six seat lead over the National Party. And but no one in national, in particular, Tony Ryle and the MP for Rotorua at the time were implacably opposed to getting rid of the Maori seats because it would seriously affect their chances of re-election. Deep depressing. Funny enough, the first person that I heard leader of the National Party promise to get rid of Maori electorates was Bill English. Bill English promised when he was leader way back in 2003, I heard him make the promise at the Lower North Island Regional Conference, the National Party. The next national government will get rid of Maori electorates. I made the same promise in 2005, but because I didn't become Prime Minister, I couldn't do it. Didn't form a government. And John Key made the promise in 2008 and did form a government, but didn't do it either. With Bill English as his deputy. That's right. Exactly. And never did it. And here we are today now with more Maori seats and the way back then. The irony is a couple of years back when Simon Bridges was leader of the National Party, we've got the leader and deputy leader of National, the deputy leader of Labour, the leader and deputy leader of New Zealand First, the co-leader of the Greens and the leader of the ACT Party were all Maori. And the only one who got into parliament with a Maori electorate was the deputy leader of Labour, let me tell you. All the rest we've got in there either in general electorates as Simon Bridges, for example, did in Te Ara, where I am, or on the list. Speaking of Kelvin Davis, what did you what did you make of his statement that there was that there were Pakiha spiders? Oh, I mean, the speakable statement, the speakable statement. I mean, if you see cockroaches, you know, what would have been the the outcry? But there was no outcry at all. And the media reported this widely. We didn't hear anything from the Human Rights Commissioner. I mean, it's appalling racism. Human Rights Commission has become a total nonsense. They put out a document just the other day or a few weeks ago. Anyway, I can't pronounce the Maori name for it, and which was which was very, very shoddy piece of work which Paul Moon has absolutely demolished. Yeah, not good. Well, Paul Hunt's going to be gone. He should be gone now by now, I think. Not sure when his term extends, but he was told very quickly, your term is not going to be renewed, pal. See you later. Well, I'd go along with David Seymour's view, I think, is that we should scrap the commission completely has become a hotbed of left nonsense. Well, that's the problem with all of these organisations, isn't it? They start off with fine intentions, and then the system infested with woke Newspeak and and right think starts working away and empire building. And all of a sudden you've got this massive problem in 10 years, 20 years time. Yeah. Well, I don't know if we've solved any problems here, Don, but we've certainly brought them to the fore. I'm with you. I think that we should have the debate. I think it should be a robust debate and it should be conducted not just in the parliament, but using the parliamentary processes with select committee submissions, etc. I think there should also be almost a travelling road show about what is the intentions of this bill. And I think that the government needs to sidestep the mainstream media and start speaking directly to people using social media in order to get the message out there that it's not what is being claimed. And we need to define these things because activist judges are defining these things on the fly and they keep on expanding and expanding and expanding what those principles mean. Yeah, completely agree with you. Well, thank you for coming on the show as the first show of the year. And we look forward to talking to you again throughout the year. Very good. Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Don. Thank you. Don Brash is such a gentleman. He always speaks highly of others. I agree with Don about the need for a proper debate on the treaty principles and we should all encourage this debate. Tell me your thoughts on what Don Brash had to say by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Thank you for tuning in to RCR, Reality Check Radio. If you like what you're listening to or dislike what you're listening to, either way, we want to hear from you. Get in touch with us now. You can text us with your message to 2057. That's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio. We would love to hear from you, so connect with us today.