Dr Brian McDonnell, a senior lecturer in film studies at Massey, a former New Zealand Mastermind and two-time international Krypton Factor champion.

Treaty exaltation has gone too far

The two groups that met at Waitangi in 1840 no longer are separate. After 172 years of change, intermarriage, admixtures, merging, and the continual addition of new elements, there are no longer in New Zealand's population two clear partners to the Treaty.

There are hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who blend a Maori ethnicity with something different: European, Asian, Pasifika. Ms Turia is one of them, as am I. When there is intermarriage, it is a bridge between ethnic groups, not a process in which one identity is sucked and absorbed into the other until it disappears.

People of goodwill are at the very least bemused by this continuing chain of events.

Even sympathetic, liberal and moderate people are getting fed up and do not want this to indefinitely be the tenor of New Zealand life.

We are at a risky time in our nationhood. We are like a boat being rowed by people looking fixedly towards the past. We need someone looking ahead to steer us where we need to go, not on to the rocks. The complex modern world demands ongoing and fluid cultural adaptability. Maori culture, like any other, has to adapt and develop rather than look backward to a romanticised past. It can be argued that the cry to "honour the Treaty" has become inadequate for the real task of improving Maori standards of living......

Read the full blog - click > HERE

Why other Kiwis must stop fawning to the shrill cries of Maori

“We must have one standard of citizenship for all and the over-arching identity in the progressive New Zealand state must be unified citizenship, not class divisions based on 1840 groupings.

“If a Maori and Pakeha marry and have children, why call the children Maori and not Pakeha?” he asks.

“I can whakapapa back to my Tuhoe forebears and am proud of that, but a huge part of my make-up is Irish, those first 'sufferers' of British colonising zeal.

“Children of mixed parentage should not increase the census count of one ethnicity at the expense of the others.

“I experience consternation when academic speakers at conferences parade their iwi affiliations but are mute on the subject of their European ancestry.

“Just because a Waldorf salad calls itself an apple doesn’t mean it actually is an apple!”.....

Full blog - click > HERE