Luxon's Twelve Acts Of Constitutional Contempt

Chris Luxon - CEO of New Zealand

Constitutional vandalism doesn't always announce itself as such. It does not arrive in the form of rockets or tanks, nor does it require the suspension of Parliament or the arrest of judges.

It arrives, instead, dressed in the language of democratic mandate, of delivering on election promises, of parliamentary sovereignty, and it is precisely this variety of vandalism that the Luxon-led coalition government has been practising, with increasing boldness and decreasing embarrassment, since it took office in late 2023.

New Zealand does not yet possess a written, entrenched constitution of the kind that makes such conduct immediately and visibly illegal.

What it does possess, and what the current government has shown a systematic willingness to erode, is a body of constitutional convention that is, if anything, more fragile precisely because it depends upon the good faith of those in power to uphold it. That good faith has been conspicuously absent since the coalition of chaos took power.

The pattern, once you observe it, is impossible to miss. A court or tribunal hands down a ruling that inconveniences the government’s misguided ideological programme. The government’s response isn’t to appeal, isn’t to seek further clarification, isn’t to adjust its policy settings in light of the law. The response is to legislate the inconvenience away.

Consider the disestablishment of Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority, by Health Minister Shane Reti in February 2024. The Waitangi Tribunal had scheduled an urgent hearing into the proposed closure.

The government’s response was to introduce the Pae Ora (Disestablishment of Māori Health Authority) Amendment Bill on 27 February 2024, two days before the hearing was due to begin, and pass it under urgency within days.

When the Tribunal eventually restored its jurisdiction and conducted its inquiry, it found the Crown had breached multiple Treaty principles. 

Reti and the government responded with silence, offering not a word of substantive engagement, no acknowledgement of wrongdoing, no corrective action, only the quiet arrogance of a government that has decided the findings of independent constitutional bodies are an inconvenience to be absorbed, not an obligation to be met.

 

On 29 November 2024, Te Ao Māori News reported:

Coalition’s scrapping of Māori Health Authority breaches Treaty - Waitangi Tribunal

The Waitangi Tribunal says the government’s quick disestablishment of Te Aka Whai Ora (Māori Health Authority) breached Treaty of Waitangi principles.

The tribunal today released the first part of its report on the disestablishment.

It found that the move breached Treaty principles, including tino rangatiratanga, good government, partnership (including the duties of consultation, and acting reasonably and in good faith), active protection and redress.

 

The conduct surrounding the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act also deserves particular scrutiny, because it involves not one court interaction but two. When the Waitangi Tribunal summoned Children’s Minister Karen Chhour to give evidence about the proposed repeal, Crown lawyers went to the High Court to block the summons and won. The matter was appealed.

On 13 May 2024, the Court of Appeal unanimously overturned the High Court’s ruling, confirming that the Tribunal had the clear legal authority to summons a sitting minister. The following day, the very next day, Chhour introduced the repeal bill to Parliament, ending the Tribunal’s jurisdiction entirely.

That isn’t parliamentary sovereignty. That is using Parliament as a shield against judicial accountability. The Tribunal had already found the repeal breached the Treaty’s guarantee of Māori self-determination. The bill passed into law on 3 April 2025 regardless. 

On 13 May 2024, RNZ reported: 

 

Court of Appeal overturns decision that blocked Children's Minister from Waitangi Tribunal summons

The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for Children's Minister Karen Chhour.

The court released its decision on Monday.

At the same time, a bill proposing the repeal of section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament, meaning the Tribunal no longer has jurisdiction over the case.

In its ruling, the court acknowledged the importance of the Waitangi Tribunal's role in inquiry into legislation that is inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and that the minister had relevant evidence to give to the Tribunal.

It disagreed with the High Court's ruling that the principle of comity, or legal reciprocity, applied to the Tribunal.

 

Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith provides perhaps the most candid admission of what this government has been doing. When the coalition introduced legislation to override a 2023 Court of Appeal decision that had lowered the test for Māori customary marine title, and then pressed ahead with even harsher restrictions after winning in the Supreme Court, Goldsmith himself acknowledged: “It’s not a desirable situation, obviously we thought long and hard about this, it’s very unusual for the government to overturn court decisions in this way.”

Goldsmith was right that it is unusual. But unfortunately the unusual aspect did not give him or the Government pause for thought.

The Marine and Coastal Area amendment is especially egregious because the government actually won its Supreme Court appeal in December 2024. Any principled administration would have accepted that outcome as a vindication of its position and governed accordingly. Instead, Goldsmith declared the win insufficient and pressed ahead with legislation that goes further than even the court’s revised test, applying retrospectively to July 2024 and voiding customary marine title orders that had already been lawfully granted.

Communities that had spent decades navigating the courts to have their rights recognised were told, in effect, that those rights were cancelled by executive fiat.

On 11 August 2025, The Spinoff reported:

 

Why the government is changing the Marine and Coastal Area Act

In 2023, the Court of Appeal was asked to interpret the test for the recognition of customary marine title. The terms “exclusive occupation”, “in accordance with tikanga” and “without substantial interruption”, for example, all needed to be interpreted by the Court to make it clear exactly what they meant in practice. What if, for example, two iwi had control of an area according to their tikanga, which allowed each of those iwi to access that area, but excluded all others? Would that count as exclusive occupation under the law?

The Court of Appeal decision in 2023 clarified the relevant tests, but the government disagreed with the result. Normally when that occurs, the losing side can appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. That’s what happened in this case, but rather than wait for the Supreme Court’s decision, in 2024 the government introduced the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. The bill was specifically designed to overrule the Court of Appeal decision. 

Chris Bishop and Todd McClay have similarly deployed the legislative sledgehammer against the judiciary in the freshwater sphere. When the High Court ruled in March 2024 that a Canterbury irrigation company could not obtain a discharge consent because it would cause ongoing significant adverse effects on aquatic life, a ruling that faithfully applied section 107 of the Resource Management Act as it had existed, unamended, since 1991, the government’s response was to amend section 107 through the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Act, passed in October 2024.

The entire point of the amendment was to make lawful what the High Court had found unlawful, an unconstitutional overreach usually only found in authoritarian dictatorships.

Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee performed the same manoeuvre in the criminal sphere, reinstating the three-strikes sentencing regime that the Supreme Court had found produced outcomes in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act’s prohibition on disproportionately severe punishment.

What each of these instances shares is a structural contempt for the separation of powers. The executive and legislative branches of government aren’t constitutionally entitled to be insulated from judicial scrutiny of their conduct. Courts and the Waitangi Tribunal exist precisely to hold the Crown to account where its actions exceed lawful bounds or breach Treaty obligations.

When a government responds to adverse findings not by modifying its conduct but by changing the law to permit the conduct that courts have found impermissible, it isn’t exercising democratic authority. It is converting Parliament into an instrument for laundering executive lawlessness.

Social Development Minister Louise Upston pursued the same logic when, following a High Court ruling that the Ministry of Social Development had been acting unlawfully in clawing back supplementary assistance payments from ACC recipients, the government simply amended the Social Security Act to retrospectively authorise the very conduct the court had struck down. The injured and the disabled, people who had won a ruling protecting them from an unlawful government practice, found that their victory had been voided before they could act on it.

 

On 17 February 2026, RNZ reported:

Incoming law change so MSD can claw back welfare payments off ACC clients

The government has introduced legislation so the welfare system can legally claw back payments when someone has been backpaid for an ACC claim.

Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston moved a motion of urgency to introduce the Social Security (Accident Compensation and Calculation of Weekly Income) Amendment Bill shortly after 7.30pm.

It comes after a significant High Court ruling against the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) on the recovery of welfare payments late last year.

The ruling said MSD couldn't require people to pay back supplementary assistance they'd received (like accommodation supplements and winter energy payments) once they had been paid back-dated compensation from Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).

 

One could perhaps extend some limited tolerance to a government that occasionally, under genuine duress and with transparent acknowledgement of the constitutional tension involved, found it necessary to override a court finding of narrow legal scope. New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements do permit Parliament to legislate in ways that courts cannot override.

But this government has not been doing this reluctantly, narrowly, or transparently. It has been doing it reflexively, broadly, and without any genuine grappling with the rule-of-law implications or the implications to other established legislation. It has treated the courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, and the Bill of Rights Act as obstacles to be circumnavigated rather than as structural elements of the constitutional order it is supposed to uphold.

The cumulative record is damning. Over the course of little more than two years, the Luxon coalition has timed legislation to kill tribunal hearings mid-inquiry; introduced bills the day after losing in court; overridden the first-ever judicial enforcement of three decades of freshwater protection law; retroactively voided customary rights that had been lawfully recognised; reinstated a sentencing regime found to breach fundamental human rights guarantees; and legislated away a High Court ruling protecting sick and injured New Zealanders from unlawful government debt recovery.

Christopher Luxon has said very little about any of this. He isn’t required to say much when the ministers responsible, Reti, Chhour, Goldsmith, McKee, Bishop, McClay, Upston, are each individually insulated by the pretence that they are merely implementing coalition commitments.
But the pattern of conduct belongs to the government as a whole, and the Prime Minister bears responsibility for the constitutional culture he has allowed, and actively encouraged, to take hold.

A government that treats the courts as an inconvenience to be legislated around isn’t a government committed to the rule of law. It is a government that has decided its electoral programme outranks the legal and constitutional framework within which all New Zealand governments are supposed to operate. 

Those decisions, made quietly and without fanfare, across a dozen separate legislative acts, deserves to be named for what they are: a sustained and deliberate assault on the constitutional conventions that protect every New Zealander from the unchecked exercise of executive power.

The courts can be overridden. Tribunals can be sidelined. Bills of Rights can be disregarded. What cannot so easily be recovered, once lost, is the principle that no government in New Zealand is above the law, including, and especially, this one.

# Date	What was overridden	Minister responsible	How
1 Feb–Mar 2024	Waitangi Tribunal hearing (Māori Health Authority)	Shane Reti	Rushed legislation through Parliament before the Tribunal could issue its report.
2 May 2024	Court of Appeal ruling (Tribunal can summons Ministers)	Karen Chhour	Introduced s7AA repeal bill the next day, directly mooting the Court of Appeal ruling.
3 May 2024	Waitangi Tribunal Treaty breach finding (s7AA)	Karen Chhour	Introduced the bill the same day as the ruling and passed it into law in April 2025.
4 May–Jul 2024	Waitangi Tribunal Treaty breach finding (Māori Wards)	Simeon Brown	Passed the legislation regardless of the Tribunal’s Treaty breach finding.
5 Jul–Dec 2024	Court of Appeal 2023 & Supreme Court win (MACA)	Paul Goldsmith	Advanced legislation that exceeded both court rulings and applied it retrospectively.
6 Oct 2024	High Court (RMA s107 freshwater pollution)	Penny Simmonds	Reversed the first-ever s107 enforcement action through new legislation.
7 Oct 2024	Environment Court rulings (RMA s70 farm runoff)	Penny Simmonds	Amended s70 to permit farm discharges into already degraded waterways.
8 Dec 2024	Supreme Court (three strikes = Bill of Rights breach)	Nicole McKee	Reinstated three strikes law with only minor modifications despite the ruling.
9 May 2025	Waitangi Tribunal (Regulatory Standards Bill)	David Seymour	Introduced bill days after Tribunal report despite urgent Māori consultation call; enacted November 2025.
10 2025–2026	Supreme Court (PSGE subject to Māori Land Court)	Tama Potaka	Proposed bill allowing post-settlement entities to opt out of Māori Land Court oversight.
11 Feb 2026	High Court (MSD can't claw back ACC supplementary payments)	Louise Upston	Legislated to allow clawback of ACC payments exactly as ruled unlawful by the High Court.
12 Feb 2026	Supreme Court (Uber drivers are employees)	Brooke van Velden	Added a gateway test to the Employment Relations Act to prospectively block employee challenges.

David Seymour Wanted Civil War in New Zealand

David Seymour has built a career on stirring up resentments, but his latest antics are a step too far. The Mata Reports documentary, aired earlier this month, lays bare Seymour’s calculated brand of divisive politics, exposing a man who seems to relish the chaos his policies could unleash. Worse, it shows he’s fully aware that his divisive policies, particularly in regards to the Treaty Principles Bill, could push New Zealand toward civil war. Despite this, Seymour barrels forward anyway with his anti-Maori legislation. This isn’t just reckless; it’s a betrayal of the unity NZ was founded on that politicians should be promoting.

Seymour’s campaign against co-governance, a lightning rod in the 2023 election, was less about principle and more about political point-scoring. Mata’s investigation, through the eyes of a former ACT insider, reveals Seymour’s deep ties to the libertarian Atlas Network, a global outfit with a track record of sowing discord under the guise of “freedom.”

His Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to erase Māori partnership rights from legal frameworks, wasn’t just a policy, it was a racist dog whistle, designed to inflame tensions and rally an anti-Māori voter base. Former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley warned in 2023 that this bill was “inviting civil war,” a sentiment ignored by current National MP Chris Luxon, but echoed in Mihingarangi Forbes' chilling footage where Seymour appears to shrug off the prospect of violent unrest and his previous statements acknowledging that he wanted the Treaty Principles Bill to cause a civil war.


In November 2024, RNZ reported:

 

Treaty Principles Bill 'inviting civil war', Jenny Shipley says

Dame Jenny said past attempts to codify Treaty principles in law had failed.

"While there have been principles leaked into individual statutes, we have never attempted to - in a formal sense - put principles in or over top of the Treaty as a collective. And I caution New Zealand - the minute you put the Treaty into a political framework in its totality, you are inviting civil war.

"I would fight against it. Māori have every reason to fight against it.

"This is a relationship we committed to where we would try and find a way to govern forward. We would respect each other's land and interests rights, and we would try and be citizens together - and actually, we are making outstanding progress, and this sort of malicious,politically motivated, fundraising-motivated attempt to politicise the Treaty in a new way should raise people's voices, because it is not in New Zealand's immediate interest.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Seymour cloaks his agenda in calls for “equality,” preaching that all New Zealanders deserve the same rights. Yet, his actions, like scrapping the Māori Health Authority or joking about bombing the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, target marginalised communities with surgical precision.

Mata shows him lying on camera, dodging accountability when confronted with evidence of his inflammatory rhetoric. His dismissal of Canada’s residential school genocide as overblown further exposes a callous disregard for historical trauma, aligning him with Atlas Network’s playbook.

Here's a Canadian-accented David Seymour arguing against funding public transport on behalf of Atlas Network partner & climate change denialists, Frontier Centre for Public Policy. https://t.co/w7pzpwkzeD pic.twitter.com/o0bNDbVbO9

— Nick (@StrayDogNZ) February 26, 2024

This isn’t new for Seymour. Back in January 2023, his campaign launch was an excercise in negative campaigning, using Māori and beneficiaries as political punching bags. Some journalists called it “disruption and division,” and they weren’t wrong. Seymour denied he was race-baiting, but his rhetoric, painting co-governance as undemocratic, deepened mistrust.

The Mata documentary pulls no punches, exposing a “culture of fear” within ACT and allegations of sexism and whistleblower suppression. Seymour’s authoritarian streak, masked by his libertarian posturing, is a warning sign. He knows his policies could fracture New Zealand, potentially to the point of violence, yet he persists, gambling with our social fabric for his political gain. This isn’t leadership; it’s political opportunism that could destroy our country.

New Zealand deserves better. We need leaders who bridge divides, not widen them. Seymour’s gamble with civil unrest isn’t just a policy misstep, it’s an unacceptable moral failure. Voters should reject his divisive playbook and demand policies that unite us, not ones that risks tearing us apart.

The Coalition of Chaos: Democracy Be Damned

The New Zealand coalition government, a Frankenstein’s monster of National, ACT, and NZ First, has once again shown its utter contempt for our democracy. This time it's the Ministry for Regulation, who didn’t even bother to read thousands of submissions on the Regulatory Standards Bill, a piece of legislation so insidious it’s been dubbed a “backdoor rewrite” of New Zealand’s founding document. This follows hot on the heels of the coalition of chaos’ dismissal of overwhelming public opposition to ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill. It’s a pattern of arrogance so profound that it's eroding the very foundations of our democratic process.

Let’s start with the Regulatory Standards Bill. Newsroom reports that of the 23,000 submissions received, a staggering number were left unread by the Ministry, with ACT’s David Seymour shrugging off the 99.67% opposition as “off-topic.” This isn’t just negligence; it’s a deliberate middle finger to the voting public. These submissions weren’t spam...they were the voices of everyday New Zealanders, including 114 submissions from iwi/hapū, raising serious concerns about the bill’s failure to uphold Te Tiriti obligations.

The Waitangi Tribunal called for an immediate halt, citing breaches of Treaty principles, but Seymour dismissed them as a “parallel government.” This is the same playbook used with the Treaty Principles Bill, where the Justice Select Committee admitted 97% of submissions opposed it, yet the coalition plowed ahead, reopening submissions to dilute the backlash after their undemocratic tactics were revealed. It’s a cynical ploy to wear down dissent while pretending to listen.


Today, Newsroom reported:

Thousands of Regulatory Standards Bill submissions not read by ministry

David Seymour said ‘there just weren’t that many’ worthwhile ideas in the 23,000 submissions on his proposed legislation

The majority of the 22,821 submissions on last year's consultation on a potential Regulatory Standards Bill weren't even read by the Ministry for Regulation before proposals on next steps were taken to Cabinet.

The article by Marc Daalder is not accessible to the general public, raising the question: Are our mainstream media outlets truly committed to informing voters about the government’s undemocratic decision-making?

Unfortunately this type of fascist move isn’t an isolated incident either...it’s a feature of this coalition’s arrogant and out of touch governance. Take the Pay Equity Amendment Bill, rammed through under urgency in a mere 48 hours with no select committee, no public submissions, and no consultation with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Thirty-three claims affecting thousands of workers were scrapped overnight, disproportionately harming low-paid women. The secrecy and speed reek of a government terrified of scrutiny, and the Prime Minister’s accusations of “scaremongering” only underline their disdain for accountability.

Then there’s the Fast-track legislation, a love letter to extractive industries that sidelines environmental protections and public input. Māori rights group Toitū te Tiriti warned that the Regulatory Standards Bill could wipe Treaty clauses from law, yet the coalition presses on, undeterred by 18,000 signatures and a huge hīkoi protesting similar anti-Treaty moves. Even coalition partner Winston Peters, sensing the weight of public opinion, has raised concerns. But don’t hold your breath for National to rein in ACT’s neoliberal over-reach. They are waiting to see if they can undermine our democracy and get away with it.

This coalition of chaos treats public opinion like an inconvenience. They cherry-pick submissions, bypass due process, and govern by ambush, all while cloaking their insidious actions in a veil of culture wars and dishonest rhetoric about “transparency” and “economic efficiency.” Seymour’s claim that the Regulatory Standards Bill will “cut red tape” is a thinly veiled excuse to entrench ACT’s ideology at the expense of Māori rights and public input.

New Zealand deserves better than a government that listens only to its own echo chamber. It’s time to call this what it is: a betrayal of democracy. We must continue to resist, organise, and demand accountability before this coalition of chaos dismantles everything we hold dear.

Bob Jones - old racist prick!

So the guy who advocated for public burning and beheading feels offended because someone called him a racist!

Perhaps Bob Jones hasn't heard of the very old saying; Live by the sword, die by the sword?

I mean for someone who often writes opinionated nonsense about Maori; this is a ridiculous case to take and a complete waste of court time.


Yesterday, 1 News reported:

Debate about what constitutes racism as Sir Bob Jones defamation case continues 

Debate about what constitutes racism has been at the centre of day three of Sir Bob Jones’ defamation case in the Hight Court in Wellington. 

Sir Bob, one of the country’s richest people, is suing filmmaker Renae Maihi for defamation, accusing her of calling him a racist, the author of hate speech and saying he was unfit to hold a knighthood. 

Ms Maihi started an online petition in 2018 calling for Sir Bob to be stripped of his knighthood after he wrote a controversial National Business Review column. 

In it, he called for Waitangi Day to be replaced with ‘Māori Gratitude Day’, arguing that without British immigration Māori would not be alive today. The property tycoon said the column was harmless joking and the start of a satirical series about gratitude days.

I’m not sure why 1 News cut Jones’ racist rant short. Here’s a small excerpt of his prejudicial drivel that was published by the National Business Review:

I have in mind a public holiday where Maoris bring us breakfast in bed or weed our gardens, wash & polish our cars & so on, out of gratitude for existing. And if any Maori tries arguing that if he/she didn't have a slight infection of Irish blood or whatever, they might be better for it, the answer is no sunshine."

So just to clarify, Bob Jones wants a return to slavery. It pains me to have to point this out but what Jones is saying isn’t satire. In reality his offensive idea is an attack on indigenous people from all around the world. Only a truly intolerant fool would promote a return to the bad old days of slavery and only an equally racist editor would put such decrepit ideas to print.

But now that someone has called Jones out on his racism, he doesn’t like free speech?

Clearly Renae Maihi was just saying and acting on what everybody else was thinking. Jones is a racist and racists simply shouldn’t be knighted in the first place. If by some idiocy, like the size of their bank accounts, they are knighted and continue to promote bigoted ideas, they should lose their award without any further ceremony.

That’s why at time of writing nearly 90,000 people have signed the Revoke racist "Sir" Bob Jones of his Knighthood petition. Over a thousand people have donated more than $40,000 to help Maihi’s considerable court costs as well.

One thing that racists often do is disregard indigenous people’s rights, culture and identity. Jones does this all the time and should therefore be considered a racist. If he’s not mocking Maori for their circumstances or appearance, he’s belittling Maori culture in some of the most widely read syndications in New Zealand.

Jones knows that the controversy he creates by claiming things like Maori are blackmailing the Crown with the Treaty of Waitangi, which is in fact a signed contract, ensures his articles attain significant readership. He also knows that having his divisive views appear as relevant commentary emboldens other racists.

Acrimonious old fools like Jones shouldn’t be promoted as being relevant. Their hatred simply shouldn't be published in the first place. If they are then it's the publics right to treat them with the contempt they deserve. But until such divisiveness ends New Zealand cannot hope to create a more inclusive and equal society.