"The Coalition’s Great Coastal Raupatu" - 10 October 2025
How Atlas Network Puppets Are Stealing Our Coastline While New Zealanders Sleep
Kia ora whakapapa, whānau, and all who care about justice in Aotearoa.
The Coalition Government is not just changing a law - they are orchestrating the biggest theft of Māori rights since the original colonial land grabs. This is not about legal technicalities or balancing interests. This is about Paul Goldsmith telling seafood industry bosses he wants to slash Māori coastal rights from 100 percent of applications down to just 5 percent, while international right-wing networks pour money into New Zealand think tanks to manufacture consent for this raupatu.[1][2][3][4]
The Foreshore and Seabed Controversy: A Timeline of Legislative Changes and Māori Resistance (2004-2025)
Let me put this simply for every New Zealander: Your government is handing 10 million hectares of our coastline to foreign corporations and their local lackeys while telling you it’s about “balance”. This is the same coastline that feeds our communities, supports our economy, and holds the spiritual essence of tangata whenua. And they are doing it because far-right American billionaires through the Atlas Network have trained their local operatives to wage culture war against Māori rights.[5][6][4]
The Hidden Colonial Web
The patterns are unmistakable once you see them. The Atlas Network - a US-based right-wing empire spanning 550 think tanks across 100+ countries with $20.2 million USD in annual revenue - has its tentacles deep in New Zealand politics. Jordan Williams, director of the Taxpayers Union, was Atlas-trained in their “Think Tank MBA” program, learning how to weaponize anti-Māori sentiment for corporate interests.[6][4]
The Right-Wing Network Behind the Foreshore and Seabed Amendments: Atlas Network Connections in New Zealand
This is not coincidence. This is coordination. Don Brash’s Hobson’s Pledge - the same Don Brash who ran racist election campaigns - now pushes to return to the 2004 Crown ownership model that sparked the largest Māori protest movement in modern history. Meanwhile, Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs published propaganda claiming New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has “veto powers” - a complete lie designed to undermine Indigenous rights in both countries.[7][8][9]
The Brazen Corporate Meeting
In May 2024, Paul Goldsmith and Shane Jones held a private meeting with seafood industry representatives where Goldsmith promised to reduce customary marine title from affecting 100% of the coastline to just 5%. Later, when caught out, Goldsmith claimed this was just “free-flowing discussion” not based on any analysis.[3][10]
The Scale of Goldsmith’s Raupatu: Reducing Māori Coastal Rights from 100% to 5% of Applications
Think about that for a moment. Your Treaty Negotiations Minister sat down with commercial fishing bosses - not with Māori, not with constitutional experts, not with the public - but with corporate interests who profit from marine extraction. And he promised to gut Māori rights by 95 percent. This is not governance. This is corruption dressed in legal language.[11]
The Waitangi Tribunal found this government guilty of “blind adherence to pre-existing political commitments” while ignoring official advice and failing to consult with Māori. They found the Crown breached the Treaty by consulting with fishing interests while shutting out tangata whenua.[11]
The Constitutional Deception
Here’s what makes this particularly insidious: Even former National Attorney-General Chris Finlayson - the minister who helped write the 2011 law - calls these amendments “foolish” and “extremely harmful” to race relations. Finlayson says these changes do NOT restore Parliament’s original intent but actually undermine it.[12][13]
But Goldsmith and Luxon don’t care about constitutional law or expert advice. They care about their coalition deal with New Zealand First, and about serving the international corporate networks that fund their local attack dogs like the Taxpayers Union and Hobson’s Pledge.[14]
The Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeal decision in December 2024, removing the legal justification for these amendments. But the Coalition pushed ahead anyway, because this was never about law - it was about ideology and corporate capture.[15][16]
The Māori Resistance
When Ngātiwai rangatira Aperahama Edwards was ejected from Parliament’s gallery for calling out this sham, he asked the question that cuts to the heart of colonial arrogance: “Ko wai hoki rātou? Who do they think they are?”[17]
Edwards speaks truth: This is the biggest raupatu that Te Ao Māori have faced. And he’s right to say Ngātiwai will never accept the Crown exercising an authority they do not believe they have.[17]
A New Zealand Parliament session showing a speaker adorned with traditional garland during oral questions, with sign language interpretation inset.
The Ngāpuhi leadership walked out of meetings with Luxon in protest, citing this foreshore and seabed assault among other attacks on Māori. Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris reminded Parliament that his party was formed specifically to fight the original 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act, and now they’re having to fight the same battle again as this government “rips off the band-aid and takes everything with it”.[17][18]
The Christian Nationalist Connection
The deeper truth is that this assault on Māori rights serves a broader Christian nationalist project. Paul Goldsmith has warned that recognizing tikanga Māori in courts could “jeopardise predictability and deter investment” because international investors need “predictable” legal systems.[19]
Translation: Māori spiritual and cultural practices are bad for business because they interfere with resource extraction and corporate profit. This is the same logic that drove the original colonial theft - Indigenous ways of being must be eliminated to make way for capitalist accumulation.[19]
The Atlas Network that trained Jordan Williams also backed Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, supported climate denial campaigns globally, and promotes “anarcho-capitalist” ideologies that fundamentally reject Indigenous sovereignty. Their modus operandi is to “write stultifyingly dull papers, create model legislation, get pet MPs and parties elected, and incessantly insert their messaging into the public consciousness via the media”.[20][21]
The Atlas Network’s global influence and key political issues linked to right-wing think tanks
The Real Timeline of Theft
Look at the dates and you’ll see the conspiracy in plain sight:
Map showing 150 km of New Zealand coastline awarded under the Marine and Coastal Area Act, highlighting iwi/hapū territories and key coastal locations.
A serene New Zealand coastal beach and hills landscape representing areas impacted by foreshore and seabed legal debates.
This timeline reveals a government captured by corporate interests and foreign ideological networks. They made backroom deals before they even took office, consulted with industry lobbyists while excluding tangata whenua, and ignored their own courts when legal justifications evaporated.
What This Means for All New Zealanders
Make no mistake - this is not just an attack on Māori. When governments serve corporate networks over constitutional law, when they ignore expert advice and judicial rulings, when they hold secret meetings with industry while excluding affected communities, they are destroying the foundations of democratic governance.
The customary marine title that’s being gutted cannot be sold and has no effect on public access, fishing, or recreational activities. It simply gives Māori consultation rights over resource consents and mineral extraction. But those consultation rights interfere with corporate extraction profits, so they must be eliminated.[7][19][22]
What will be next? Your right to object to mining in your community? Environmental protections that interfere with corporate profits? Worker rights that reduce corporate flexibility? The Atlas Network playbook is clear: eliminate all barriers to corporate domination, whether they come from Indigenous peoples, environmental law, or democratic participation.
The Ongoing Resistance
As I write this, more than 200 customary marine title applications are making their way through the courts. Under these amendments, all cases decided after July 25, 2024, will need to be reheard under the much stricter test. This will force iwi and hapū to spend millions more in legal costs to defend rights they have already proven in court.[2][15]
But tangata whenua are not backing down. From Aperahama Edwards’ defiant ejection from Parliament to the Ngāpuhi walkouts, from Te Pāti Māori’s fierce opposition to the legal challenges being mounted, Māori are saying clearly: We will not accept this raupatu.
The resistance continues in the courts, in Parliament, in the media, and in communities across the motu. Because this fight is about more than coastal rights - it’s about whether Aotearoa will remain a country that honors Te Tiriti o Waitangi, or become another Atlas Network colony where corporate interests trump Indigenous rights and democratic governance.
Ko wai hoki rātou? Indeed, rangatira. Who do they think they are?
The answer is clear: They are colonial thieves dressed in constitutional clothing, serving foreign corporate masters while pretending to represent New Zealand. And like all thieves, they will be stopped by the collective power of those they seek to rob.
Call to Action
This raupatu must be resisted by all who believe in justice. Contact your MPs, support iwi legal challenges, donate to organizations fighting this theft, and never let them forget that we are watching. Share this analysis widely - the mainstream media won’t tell you about the Atlas Network connections or the corporate capture driving these amendments.
Most importantly, remember that this fight connects to every other struggle for justice in Aotearoa and around the world. When we defend Māori coastal rights, we defend the principle that communities should control their resources, not foreign corporations. When we expose the Atlas Network influence, we protect democratic governance from corporate capture.
The whakatōhea continue to rise, and the fight for our coastline continues.
The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right
Readers who find value in my content and wish to support the cause may consider a donation/koha to: HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000. The MGL understands these tough economic times for whānau, so please only contribute a koha if you have capacity and wish to do so.
Aroha mai, whakatōhea mai rā.
Ivor Jones
Te Arawa/Ngāti Pikiao descendant
The Māori Green Lantern
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