The great co-governance swindle

The tribal takeover of local government

In modern New Zealand, a quiet revolution is underway. It’s not fought with placards or parliamentary votes, but in boardrooms and council chambers, behind closed doors, away from the people who actually pay the bills. This is the era of co-governance - a creeping transfer of power from elected officials to unelected tribal elites, rubber-stamped by faceless bureaucrats and backed by the silence of a spineless media. If you think this is some wild conspiracy, look no further than the growing list of councils now inking secret agreements with iwi groups without public consultation or oversight.

What’s unfolding in Taupō and Waikato is nothing short of a democratic betrayal. Under the guise of Treaty partnership and environmental stewardship, iwi are being granted permanent, lucrative control over water, land access, and key decision-making in local communities. Most New Zealanders have no clue it’s even happening.

Let’s take the Waikato River. You probably didn’t know that Auckland ratepayers will fork out $40 million over 20 years just for the right to draw a tiny fraction of water from a river that ultimately flows out to sea. Forty million dollars. Why? Because a so-called “co-governance” body, half made up of unelected iwi representatives, gets to charge the public to use water they don’t own. If “nobody owns the water,” why are we paying a toll?

The same story is playing out elsewhere. In Taupō, commercial operators on the lake must now pay annual taxes to local iwi for simply existing. Some pay up to $30,000 a year to fish or launch a boat. Events like triathlons are now subject to a cultural levy. This is rent-seeking dressed up as restitution, and it’s being normalised as the new cost of doing business in New Zealand.

It gets worse. In the South Island, Meridian Energy paid $104 million to a local iwi to avoid opposition to its long-term hydroelectric plans. Over one hundred million dollars, handed over not for land, not for resources, not even for services rendered, but simply so a project could proceed without tribal interference. And who pays for that? You do. It’s baked into your power bill, your rates, your cost of living.

This is state-sanctioned extortion, enabled by a bloated, unaccountable Treaty industry that was supposed to be “full and final” decades ago. Instead, it's a limitless pipeline of payouts, top-ups and veto power, expanding into every level of governance, especially local government where officials are far easier to pressure or manipulate.

This is not about righting past wrongs. This is not about cultural preservation or healing. This is about power, money, and a growing class of tribal aristocracy that has found a golden goose in the Treaty grievance machine. What began as a redress process has mutated into a permanent bureaucracy that siphons off public money, stifles development, and rewrites the rulebook without public consent.

Worse still, it's all happening under a cloak of secrecy. Councils refuse to release documents. Meetings are held with public exclusion. Elected councillors are sidelined by unelected staff who interpret their mandate liberally and execute tribal agreements without public input. If this isn’t the textbook definition of corruption, what is?

Where is the media? Nowhere to be seen. Petrified of being called racist, our media class looks the other way, too busy chasing clickbait or writing about transexual kids. What passes for journalism now is little more than curated silence, an accessory to the erosion of our democracy.

Even long-time Treaty supporters are sounding the alarm. Duncan Garner, a seasoned political journalist, has exposed the extent of these deals on his podcast. He describes a system where iwi sit at every table, levy charges on every project, and are empowered to veto or delay developments unless paid off. Most of this is based on ambiguous Treaty “principles” never voted on, never legislated, and now used to justify permanent race-based governance.

This is apartheid by bureaucracy.

If you’re a ratepayer, landowner, business operator or just someone trying to get ahead in this country, you’re being locked out. Shoved to the back of the line. Told to shut up, pay up, and be grateful.

So where is the outrage? When local water ski clubs are kicked out of their facilities to make room for iwi-backed waka ama groups, when $100 million is transferred overnight into tribal bank accounts, when Aucklanders are paying millions to use water that’s supposedly “owned by no one,” why isn’t this national news?

The truth is, Kiwis are waking up, but slowly. We are seeing councils acting more like subsidiaries of tribal authorities than representatives of the public. We are watching economic opportunities disappear under layers of cultural red tape. And we are getting tired of being told that questioning any of it is somehow racist.

It’s not racist to demand transparency. It’s not racist to expect democratic accountability. It’s certainly not racist to ask why unelected iwi boards are given more say over your community than the people who actually live in it.

What’s racist is creating a system where one group has more rights, more influence, and more access to resources simply because of their bloodline. That’s not equality. That’s not progress. That’s the death of democracy, slow, silent, and strangled by good intentions gone mad.

This is the fight of our generation. If we don’t stand up now, don’t be surprised when your grandkids inherit a country they no longer recognise.