> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # "The Buried Verdict" - 10 September 2026 - URL: https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/the-buried-verdict-10-september-2026/ - Published: 2026-09-10T01:25:15.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-10T01:25:15.000Z - Description: How A White Supremacist Neoliberal Government Sat On Its Own Review For Over A Year Because It Proved Them Wrong - Author: Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Defending_the_Waitangi_Tribunal.png) Ko Ivor Jones tōku ingoa — ko au ko Te Māori Green Lantern. I've spent this year with a taiaha in one hand and a spreadsheet in the other, because this government's crimes don't just live in press releases. They live in Cabinet minutes, Treasury advice, Electoral Commission returns, and — as you're about to see — in a report they've been sitting on for over four hundred days because it told them something they didn't want to hear. Let me tell you what I found. --- ## What RNZ Actually Reported ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_1.png) On 10 September 2026, [RNZ's Giles Dexter](https://www.rnz.co.nz/?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz) reported that the ACT Party wants to wind up the Waitangi Tribunal, arguing its "contemporary inquiries have become increasingly ideological and expansive." Four things came out of that article, and I want you to hold all four in your head before I show you the part it only gestured at. [ACT sets out plan to wind up Waitangi TribunalThe ACT Party wants to wind up the Waitangi Tribunal, saying its contemporary inquiries have become increasingly ideological and expansive.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/icon/favicon-32x32.bc7fe925-92ee666d-76f9-40d5-a564-788bf103070f.png)RNZRNZ | Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/thumbnail/4JKF6VM_Bridge_260804_13_jpg-a98ed433-6075-41e5-af8a-0564cd0dc5f0)](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics%5Felection-2026/1321444/act-sets-out-plan-to-wind-up-waitangi-tribunal?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz) First, ACT is campaigning on four reforms it says will "end the tribunal's contemporary jurisdiction, and move the country on." Second, David Seymour — who has previously called the Tribunal "increasingly activist" — wants every historical claim heard and resolved, capped at the statutory 1 September 2008 filing deadline, after which the Tribunal loses its power to inquire into contemporary government policy, conduct, and decisions altogether, and is wound up once its historical caseload clears. Third, RNZ noted the government has "already launched a major review of the Tribunal's functions, but it is yet to be released publicly" — a review tied to National and NZ First's coalition agreement, promising to "refocus the scope, purpose, and nature" of the Tribunal's inquiries back to their "original intent." Fourth, RNZ quoted Te Wānanga o Raukawa lecturer Carwyn Jones challenging that "original intent" framing, and closed by contrasting ACT's abolition plan with Te Pāti Māori's opposite policy: making Tribunal recommendations legally binding on the Crown. **That's the RNZ article. It's accurate, and it's also the tip of the iceberg. Because that "major review… yet to be released publicly" isn't just delayed paperwork. It's the single most damning piece of evidence in this whole whakapapa, and I'm putting it at the centre of this essay because nobody else is naming it loudly enough.** --- ## The Review They Buried — And Why That's The Real Story ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_2.png) Here is the timeline, and I want you to read it slowly, because timelines are how you catch a government in a lie. **November 2023**: National and NZ First's coalition agreement commits to a review of the Waitangi Tribunal's own jurisdiction — the Independent Technical Advisory Group, or ITAG — with an explicit brief to "refocus" the Tribunal's "scope, purpose, and nature" back to its "original intent." **By the end of August 2025**: the ITAG review reports to ministers, on schedule. **August 2026, a full year later**: the review still hasn't been made public. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka would only say it was "being actively considered." When 1News asked him directly whether the review recommended removing the Tribunal's power to run kaupapa inquiries into contemporary government policy — the exact power ACT now wants gone entirely — Potaka answered: **"Not that I recall. The kaupapa inquiries are already underway and the tribunal are diligently trying to address them."** Read that again. The minister responsible for this file, on the record, says the government's own commissioned review does *not* support stripping the power ACT is campaigning to abolish. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_3.png) Three separate outlets — Newsroom, 1News, and Centrist — independently confirm the same finding through the same minister-level sourcing. A government sat on a report for over 400 days, through an entire election cycle building, because releasing it would hand ammunition to the very institution its coalition partner wants dead. Meanwhile NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones has spent that same year pushing to cut the Tribunal's kaupapa powers *anyway* — calling it "mission creep," saying Tribunal judges lack "competence beyond what the democratic process throws up," and dismissing a claimant group before the Tribunal as a "noisy namu \[sandfly\]" whose grievance didn't deserve a hearing. ***So NZ First is campaigning to strip a power its own government's advisory group says shouldn't be stripped, while sitting on the one document that would prove that publicly. That is not a policy disagreement. That is a government running two campaigns against its own evidence at once — one from ACT to abolish the Tribunal outright, one from NZ First to gut it from the inside — and burying the one report that would have to admit both are wrong.*** Why does the timing matter so much? Because the delay wasn't accidental. Jones and Potaka both told RNZ the coalition prioritised its energy on stripping "gratuitous references to Treaty principles" from other legislation first — the same clause review I come back to below, the one the Tribunal itself later branded *tinihanga*, deception. **The government chose to spend its political capital advancing the policy that removes Treaty obligations from statutes, and left the report that would undercut its own Tribunal-abolition rhetoric sitting in a drawer.** That is a government choosing which of its own findings to act on and which to hide, based on which one helps them win in November — not which one is true. --- ## The Deep Dive Podcast The Campaign to Dismantle the Waitangi Tribunal 0:00 /1280.441179 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. :) --- ## Kia Kaha, Whānau — Here's How This Keeps Getting Written ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_15.png) No tobacco company funds this. No property developer funds this. No political party funds this. There is no corporate cheque behind the Māori Green Lantern — I've just shown you, in detail, exactly what those cheques buy when they do exist, and what governments hide when the evidence doesn't sell. Every koha tells me whānau are ready to support the accountability that a buried review, a tobacco tax favour, and three broken Treaty rulings were never going to produce on their own. It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to support our own truth tellers, on our own terms, instead of waiting for a Crown that sits on its own findings for over a year to hand us the truth voluntarily. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you're able, consider a koha to keep this voice tracing the whakapapa of harm, essay after essay, no matter who it names. If you're not able to koha, that's more than fine — subscribing, following, and sharing this with your whānau and friends is koha in itself. Four pathways exist: - **Koha direct:** [Support the Māori Green Lantern via Koha](https://app.koha.kiwi/events/the-maori-green-lantern-fighting-misinformation-and-disinformation-ivor-jones?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz) - **Subscribe:** [Receive every essay via themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/#/portal/support) - **Direct bank transfer:** HTDM, account number 03-1395-0099387-000 - **Facebook:** [Follow and share](https://www.facebook.com/Themaorigreenlantern/subscribe/) --- ## I Watched Them Lose Three Times And Then Try To Sack The Judge ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_4.png) They call it "reform." I call it what it is: a white supremacist neoliberal government that has lost every single ruling on Te Tiriti it's ever faced, and rather than accept the verdict, it's now campaigning to abolish the court. The Waitangi Tribunal told them the Treaty Principles Bill breached six Treaty principles and was built on a disingenuous historical narrative. They ran it anyway — straight into a wall of 300,000 submissions, 90% of them written in opposition, a 289,000-signature petition, and a hīkoi that brought tens of thousands onto Parliament's lawn. Forty-two of the country's most senior lawyers, all King's Counsel, wrote directly to the Prime Minister and Attorney-General saying the bill "seeks to rewrite the Treaty itself" and should be abandoned before it reached a vote. *The bill died 112 to 11 — only ACT voted for it, and Christopher Luxon couldn't even be bothered to show up.* **Then, while the country was still watching that bill burn, the government ran the same play quietly, statute by statute, so nobody was watching.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_5.png) The Tribunal found that too breached Te Tiriti — five separate principles this time — in a report they named, in their own words, ***Te Tinihanga o ngā Mātāpono*. Tinihanga. Deception.** That's the Crown's own commission of inquiry calling this government liars, in Māori, in an official report. Sworn evidence from Secretary of Justice Andrew Kibblewhite confirmed officials had recommended retaining seventeen Treaty provisions unchanged, amending nine, and repealing only three — and ministers went further anyway, confirming repeals across at least six statutes including the Crown Pastoral Land Act, the Education and Training Act, and the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act. The Tribunal found Cabinet had "prioritised coalition agreement commitments over the need to make informed policy decisions." Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith's response wasn't contrition. It was a shrug: **"We were elected as a Government to make some changes in this area. It's part of the coalition agreement, and that's what we're doing."** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_6.png) He then admitted, on the record, that the legislation won't even pass before the election — because the government's **"primary focus is to win the election first, and then we'll worry about things afterwards."** That's the exact same instinct that buried the ITAG review. Say whatever wins votes. Sit on whatever doesn't. And now, with three Treaty rulings lost, ACT wants to abolish the referee entirely — cap every historical claim at the 2008 deadline, strip the Tribunal's power to look at anything the government does today, and shut it down for good, going further than even its own coalition's buried review recommends. **Seymour calls it "increasingly activist." I call it what any honest person calls a team that keeps losing and decides the fix is to fire the ref.** --- ## Follow The Money — It Leads Straight To A Tobacco Company ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_7.png) In 2024, NZ First's Casey Costello — the Associate Health Minister — cut the excise tax on heated tobacco products by 50%, at a cost Treasury itself put at up to $216 million. Treasury didn't just flag the cost. It named the winner, in writing: **"Philip Morris would be the main beneficiary of the tax cuts."** A Ministry of Health chief epidemiological advisor called the evidence Costello used to justify it "selective, out of date." The Chief Ombudsman later ruled she acted unreasonably and contrary to law when she hid the paper trail from the public, and ordered her to apologise. Māori daily smoking had fallen from 30% in 2019 to 14.7% in 2023/24 — a 51% drop, real progress, tamariki growing up in smokefree homes for the first time in generations. Government's own longer-run data tells the same story from a different starting point: 37.3% in 2011/12 down to 14.8% by 2023/24, a 60% fall. Either way you measure it, we were winning. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_8.png) Then this coalition repealed the smokefree generation law, denicotinisation requirements, and retailer reduction — the same policy package as Costello's tobacco tax gift — and Hāpai Te Hauora reports the decline didn't just stall. It reversed. Māori daily smoking climbed back to 15%, roughly 99,000 adults, and Māori are now 2.89 times more likely to smoke daily than non-Māori. Māori women in the poorest communities are more than six times more likely to smoke than those in the wealthiest. **That's not a statistic. That's tūpuna, mātua, and tamariki losing years off their lives so a tobacco multinational could book a better quarter.** --- ## Who's Paying For The Party That Wants To Kill The Tribunal ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_9.png) ACT declared $4.3 million in donations in 2023, the year the coalition deal was signed, and $1.5 million more in 2024 — $5.7 million total across 98 donors between 2019 and 2024, straight from the Electoral Commission's own disclosure register. The named backers behind that money include toy magnate Nicholas Mowbray, Dame Jenny Gibbs, Murray Chandler, packaging billionaire Graeme Hart — New Zealand's richest man — Trevor Farmer, and Brian Cartmell. Hart's Rank Group gave ACT $200,000 in 2023 and another $50,000 in 2024; Mowbray gave $100,000; tech entrepreneur Rod Drury gave $100,000 — $450,000 from three names alone, on top of a coalition-wide $7.1 million war chest in 2024 that more than doubled the entire opposition's combined $3.3 million. I want to be precise, because precision is the whole point of this mahi: I am not claiming any of these donors personally phoned Seymour and demanded the Tribunal's abolition. No evidence says that. What the evidence says, in black and white, filed with the Electoral Commission because the law requires it, is who bankrolls the political vehicle now campaigning to abolish the one independent body that has ruled against this coalition's Treaty conduct three times running — while sitting on the one review that would say ACT is going further than even its own government's advisors think is justified. --- ## Three Examples For Anyone Who Still Thinks This Is "Just Politics" If you were raised inside a Western legal and political frame, these three examples translate what's happening into terms your worldview already has words for — and then show why those words still fall short of what tikanga actually protects. ### Example One: The Treaty Principles Bill. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_10.png) Core claim: a government tried to unilaterally redefine, by ordinary statute, the terms of a 186-year-old founding agreement between two parties — without the consent of one of those parties. Quantified harm: 300,000 submissions, 90% opposed, ignored anyway; a bill the Tribunal found breached six Treaty principles and distorted the actual text of Te Tiriti. Solution: entrench Te Tiriti's constitutional status so no future government majority can rewrite it by ordinary vote — the direction Te Pāti Māori's proposed Te Tiriti Commission points toward, backed by a $220 million Mātike Mai Fund. For the Western mind: imagine one party to a partnership contract unilaterally rewriting the contract's core clauses, then holding a vote among only their own shareholders to ratify it. You'd call that a breach of fiduciary duty and grounds for a court injunction. **Tikanga calls it a breach of *mana ki te mana* — mana meeting mana as equals — because Te Tiriti was never a piece of legislation to be amended.** It was, and is, a relationship. ### Example Two: The Treaty Clause Review. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_11.png) Core claim: rather than one visible bill, the government stripped Treaty obligations from at least 18 separate statutes through Cabinet decisions most New Zealanders never saw debated. Quantified harm: officials recommended repealing three provisions; ministers repealed or downgraded provisions across six confirmed Acts and counting, a scope the Tribunal found was driven by "coalition agreement commitments" rather than "informed policy decisions." Solution: require independent Tribunal sign-off before any Treaty clause is weakened, closing the loophole that let this happen quietly across 18 Acts instead of loudly in one. For the Western mind: this is a company's board overriding its own risk committee's advice on seventeen separate transactions, then telling shareholders afterward that the losses were **"part of the strategic plan all along."** **Tikanga calls it a breach of *kaitiakitanga* — the guardianship duty the Crown accepted under Te Tiriti — because these clauses exist to protect obligations passed down through generations, not to be traded off against a coalition memo.** ### Example Three: The Tobacco Tax Cut. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_12.png) Core claim: a health minister overrode her own officials' advice to hand a multinational tobacco company a tax break Treasury itself said would chiefly benefit that company. Quantified harm: up to $216 million in forgone revenue, and a reversal of Māori smoking rates from a falling 14.8% back up to 15% — 99,000 people, moving the wrong direction for the first time in over a decade. Solution: reinstate the smokefree generation law, denicotinisation requirements, and retailer reduction immediately, and require independent health-equity sign-off before any tobacco policy change, given Māori bear 2.89 times the smoking burden of non-Māori. For the Western mind: imagine a health regulator approving a drug it knew was harmful because the manufacturer stood to profit, then hiding the internal memo that said so — that's a resignation-triggering scandal in any Western democracy. **Tikanga calls it a breach of *manaakitanga* — the duty of care owed to those coming after us — because smokefree policy was never just public health administration. It was a promise to the mokopuna not yet born that they would inherit clearer lungs than their tūpuna.** --- ## The Cost, Named And Counted ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_14-1.png) - Over 400 days a government review sat unreleased because it contradicted the coalition's own campaign promises. - $216 million in tax revenue diverted toward a company Treasury itself named as the main beneficiary. - 99,000 Māori adults smoking daily again, after a decade of decline. - At least 19 statutes stripped of Treaty protection, with "eight or nine" more in the pipeline, by the Prime Minister's own admission. - $5.7 million in disclosed ACT donations bankrolling the push to abolish the Tribunal that keeps ruling against this coalition. - Zero resignations. Zero apologies that weren't ordered by an Ombudsman. Zero change of course after three separate Tribunal findings of Treaty breach and one buried review. Māuri Ora! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/THE_BURIED_VERDICT_-_Slide_13.png) --- **Public interest statement:** every person and organisation named holds a public role — elected MP, minister, statutory donor under mandatory disclosure law, or corporation named in official government advice. No private individual appears outside their public capacity. **No malice, pattern of harm only:** this essay names a repeated, documented pattern across separate verified incidents, including one formal unlawfulness finding already made by the Chief Ombudsman. Any point where evidence stops short of proving causation is stated as such rather than implied. **Right of reply:** open to David Seymour, Casey Costello, Paul Goldsmith, Christopher Luxon, Shane Jones, Tama Potaka, and all named donors, in their public capacity. **Disclaimer:** prepared for the MGL essay series, current as of 10 September 2026\. Not legal advice. Retraction protocol applies on substantiated complaint.