Newsletter

“The Curriculum Weapon: How National-ACT’s “Ancient Egypt” Swindle Erases Māori While Serving Atlas Network Masters” - 31 October 2025

When “World-Class Education” Means White Supremacy With Footnotes

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

31 Oct 2025 — 26 min read

Kia ora e te whānau,

History teachers across Aotearoa woke on October 29, 2025 to discover Education Minister Erica Stanford expects Year 7 students—eleven-year-olds—to master Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the 1852 Constitution Act, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution in a single academic year (RNZ, 2025). The NZ History Teachers Association called it “unrealistic” and “developmentally inappropriate,” warning of “cognitive overload” for both students and teachers. But here’s what they’re too polite to say outright: this isn’t incompetence. This is curriculum as colonial violence, dressed up in the language of “knowledge-rich” education (RNZ, 2025).

The real target? The Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum, which dared to center Māori history as “the foundational and continuous history” of this land. ACT leader David Seymour—a man who literally worked for Atlas Network affiliates in Canada before returning to push their playbook here—calls this curriculum part of a “simplistic victims-and-villains narrative” that “excluded most New Zealanders from the story” (ACT NZ, 2025). Translation: Teaching truth about colonization makes Pākehā uncomfortable, so let’s bury it under Ancient Egypt and the French Revolution until our kids can’t tell the Musket Wars from the Napoleonic Wars.

Who benefits? A coordinated network of Atlas-linked think tanks, fossil fuel interests, and wealthy donors who’ve spent decades building the infrastructure to dismantle Indigenous rights, climate action, and the welfare state. Who’s harmed? The 26.7% of our population who are Māori or Pasifika—projected to be the majority of primary students by 2040 (Humanium, 2025)—now facing an education system designed to erase them from their own story.

What’s hidden? That Stanford, a former producer for Piha Rescue with a BA in Political Science who minored in Māori Studies but now implements policies gutting Māori education, is executing a playbook written by the New Zealand Initiative (formerly the Business Roundtable), funded by interests including Alan Gibbs—ACT Party founder and father of Atlas Network chair Debbi Gibbs (Wikipedia, 2025; BadNewsletter, 2024). This is neoliberalism’s endgame: privatize the profits, colonize the curriculum, and when Māori object, call them divisive.

This chart reveals stark educational disparities between Māori and Pākehā students across multiple achievement measures, with Māori students consistently underperforming despite similar socioeconomic backgrounds in some cases.

Whakapapa: How We Got Here—From Reading Recovery to “Reading Roulette”

New Zealand’s education system was once world-leading. In the 1950s, our literacy rates were the envy of the developed world (RNZ, 2025). By 2022, our 15-year-olds recorded their worst-ever PISA results—a 15-point drop in maths (equivalent to nearly a year of learning), with 47% of Māori students performing below baseline compared to 25% of Pākehā students (RNZ, 2023; SchoolNews, 2023). The gap between rich and poor students widened to 102 points—nearly three years of schooling (OECD, 2023).

What happened? Decades of neoliberal “reforms” that treated education like a market and children like widgets. The Business Roundtable—now rebranded as the New Zealand Initiative after merging in 2012—spent 30 years pushing “choice,” “competition,” and “accountability” policies that gutted collective provision while entrenching advantage for the already-privileged (Wikipedia, 2024; Substack, 2024). Their executive director? Oliver Hartwich, appointed in 2012, who regularly platforms through media to blame teachers, unions, and “the system” while ignoring the socioeconomic devastation his ideology creates (NZ Initiative, 2024).

National Standards, introduced by John Key’s government in 2010, promised to “raise achievement” by labeling 8-year-olds as “above,” “at,” or “below” expectations. Teachers warned it would narrow the curriculum, stigmatize struggling learners, and ignore the poverty and colonization driving disparities. They were right. By 2017, just 16% of teachers and principals said National Standards had positive impacts (RNZ, 2025). Labour scrapped them, but now Stanford is bringing them back by stealth—tendering for a single standardized assessment tool that will rank schools, punish teachers in low-decile areas, and justify further cuts (RNZ, 2025).

And Reading Recovery—Dame Marie Clay’s internationally acclaimed early intervention that worked for struggling readers—has been defunded and replaced with “structured literacy” (phonics) mandates that Stanford falsely claims Reading Recovery “guessed” at words (RNZ, 2024). Never mind that Reading Recovery teaches phonics alongside other strategies (Reading Recovery, 2024). The real crime? It worked especially well for Māori students in Māori-medium settings, where 88.1% left with qualifications compared to 79.7% in mainstream schools (RNZ, 2019).

Over $1.38 billion in targeted cuts to Māori-focused programmes under the National-ACT-NZ First coalition, representing one of the largest rollbacks of Māori investment in modern New Zealand history.

The Issue: Curriculum as Weapon, “Balance” as Dog-Whistle

Let’s decode the euphemisms. When Stanford and Seymour talk about “restoring balance,” they mean centering Pākehā narratives and marginalizing Māori ones. When they demand “knowledge-rich” curricula, they mean rote memorization of dates and “great men” over critical analysis of power. When they promise “world-class” standards, they mean imposing Anglo-American models that failed Indigenous students everywhere they’ve been tried.

The draft social sciences curriculum revealed October 29 is a masterclass in colonial gaslighting:

Overcrowding as Erasure: Year 7 students must study Te Tiriti, the 1852 Constitution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution—plus geography, economics, and “local contexts”—in one year, with just one hour per week allocated to social sciences under the new timetable (RNZ, 2025). This isn’t rigorous; it’s curriculum bulimia. Teachers will skip what they don’t have time for—and in a system where 75% of teachers are Pākehā, guess which histories get cut?

False Equivalence: Placing Ancient Egypt and the French Revolution alongside Te Tiriti suggests they’re equally relevant to understanding Aotearoa. They’re not. This is the “All Lives Matter” of history education—a deflection technique that drowns out Indigenous voices by insisting everyone’s story matters equally, even in the Indigenous people’s own country.

The Omission Speaks Volumes: ACT’s policy document complains the old curriculum had “significant gaps, including growing civil rights and liberties, business, technology, and our citizens’ participation in two World Wars” (1News, 2024). Notice what’s not mentioned? The Native Land Court’s theft of 95% of Māori land. The 1960s Māori protest movement. The Foreshore and Seabed Act. The ongoing breaches of Te Tiriti. That’s not an oversight—it’s the point.

Rhetorical Techniques in Play:

Straw Man Fallacy: Seymour claims the Histories Curriculum taught “colonisation is to blame for all our problems” (1News, 2024). It didn’t. It taught that colonization happened, shaped our present, and requires reckoning. By misrepresenting the curriculum, he avoids engaging with its actual content.
False Balance: Presenting “both sides” of colonization—as if genocide and land theft have a “positive” side worth teaching—is like teaching “both sides” of the Holocaust. Some historical truths aren’t balanced; they’re brutal.
Concern Trolling: Paul Goldsmith—National’s former education spokesperson who infamously said colonization was “on balance” good for Māori—claimed the curriculum “risked rendering our history as a simple division between oppressors and victims” (RNZ, 2021). Yet when Goldsmith’s own leader Christopher Luxon contradicted him, saying “colonisation was not good for Māori,” Goldsmith was isolated—even within his own caucus (RNZ, 2021). The real risk isn’t “division”—it’s that Pākehā students might learn uncomfortable truths.
Replacement Theory Rhetoric: Complaints that Māori history “excludes most New Zealanders” echo white nationalist fears of demographic “replacement.” Newsflash: Māori are New Zealanders. We were here first. Teaching our histories doesn’t erase Pākehā—it contextualizes them.

Counter-Evidence the Government Ignores:

The Education Review Office found that 66% of parents saw the Histories Curriculum as useful, and 66% of teachers reported positive impacts on student engagement. Students were “more than twice as likely to enjoy” the curriculum when learning about NZ’s place in the world—exactly what the curriculum provided (1News, 2024). The problem? Schools focused too heavily on local histories at the expense of national and global contexts. The solution? Support teachers to deliver the full curriculum. Instead, the government scrapped it.

The Analysis: Hidden Networks, Atlas Tentacles, and the Fossil Fuel Connection

I. The Money Trail: Who’s Funding the Curriculum Coup?

Follow the money and you find the same names, the same networks, the same agenda:

The Atlas Network Connection: David Seymour worked for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (2007-2011) and the Manning Foundation (2013-2014)—both Atlas Network members (BadNewsletter, 2024; National Library NZ, 2023). When journalist Justin Forbes asked Seymour on Waitangi Day 2024 if ACT had Atlas links, Seymour replied “No”—a brazen lie. His own 2021 speech thanked “my old friends at the Atlas Network,” and the 2008 Atlas Year in Review photographed him composing songs about school choice for “Milton Friedman Legacy Day” (BadNewsletter, 2024). Louis Houlbrooke, ACT’s current parliamentary staffer, worked for the Taxpayers’ Union—another Atlas member—for nearly five years (BadNewsletter, 2024).

The Atlas Network, founded in 1981 by Antony Fisher to spread Hayekian free-market ideology, now partners with over 500 think tanks globally (Wikipedia, 2023; PSA, 2024). It has received funding from fossil fuel companies and promoted climate denialism across continents (Guardian, 2019; Atlas Network, 2018). More than one-fifth of Atlas partners worldwide have opposed tobacco controls or taken tobacco donations (Guardian, 2019). In Latin America, Atlas “appears to have played a particular role in helping the tobacco industry oppose tobacco control measures” (University of Bath, 2017).

New Zealand’s Atlas Partners:

NZ Taxpayers’ Union: Founded 2013 by Jordan Williams (with “generous support from the Atlas Network,” Williams himself admitted before being appointed to lead the government’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” in March 2025) (Taxpayers’ Union, 2025). Co-founder David Farrar described the Union as “very pro economic liberalism” (Wikipedia, 2024). Revenue: $3+ million annually, with 80%+ from small donations—but also funding from “sugar, grog, soda, and regulated industries” totaling “less than 3%” (RNZ, 2024). Williams admitted receiving funding related to vaping/tobacco but claimed it didn’t influence positions. Sir Bob Jones provides rent-free Wellington office space (RNZ, 2024). The Union spent $371,565 on the 2023 election—its first time exceeding the $100,000 reporting threshold—including a “Debt Clock” trailer and TV ads (RNZ, 2024). Jordan Williams is also director of The Campaign Company, which billed Groundswell ($78,200), Hobson’s Pledge ($34,500), and the Taxpayers’ Union itself ($23,033)—a total of $135,733 in 2023 election spending (RNZ, 2024).
The New Zealand Initiative: Formed 2012 by merging Roger Kerr’s Business Roundtable (architect of 1980s-90s neoliberal “reforms”) with the NZ Institute (Wikipedia, 2024). Executive Director Oliver Hartwich has been platforming for “education revolution” rhetoric since his appointment (NZ Initiative, 2024). Board member Barbara Joan Chapman is also Deputy Chair, chairs Genesis Energy, sits on Fletcher Building’s board, and was on the Reserve Bank Act Review Panel—interlocking directorships that concentrate power (Wikipedia, 2024). Alan Gibbs—ACT Party founder whose daughter Debbi chairs Atlas Network—was a longtime Business Roundtable member (BadNewsletter, 2024).
Maxim Institute: Conservative Christian think tank founded 2001, describes itself as advocating “freedom, justice and compassion” but consistently opposes LGBTQ+ rights, hate speech laws, and progressive social policy (Wikipedia, 2004; NZ Herald, 2004). Budget: $1.5 million annually from ~2,000 donors, with Christchurch’s Middleton Grange Christian School and former Auckland deputy mayor David Hay as significant contributors (NZ Herald, 2004). Founding director Bruce Logan was caught plagiarizing overseas commentators without attribution (NZ Herald, 2004).

The Fossil Fuel Angle: Atlas Network’s climate denialism has New Zealand manifestations. The Heartland Institute—a US-based Atlas affiliate partially funded by ExxonMobil—listed NZ scientists including NIWA’s Dr. Jim Salinger in a 2008 paper claiming 500 scientists undermined climate science. Salinger and colleagues publicly condemned the misuse of their work, stating “we say global warming is real” (NZ Herald, 2008). Owen McShane and Bryan Leyland of the NZ Climate Science Coalition—linked to Heartland—had their Bali UN climate conference travel funded by Heartland (NZ Herald, 2008). Auckland University’s Chris de Freitas served as science advisor to Heartland and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (which received US$2 million from Exxon and ran “CO2 = Life” ad campaigns) (NZ Herald, 2006).

Why Does This Matter for Education? Because the same networks funding climate denialism fund attacks on Indigenous rights, collective bargaining, and public services. The curriculum changes aren’t about “educational excellence”—they’re about ideological capture. Teaching Māori histories threatens the neoliberal story that markets solve everything and colonization was “on balance” good. Teaching climate science threatens fossil fuel profits. So both get drowned in Ancient Egypt.

Massive achievement gaps persist across socioeconomic and ethnic lines, with low-decile students and Māori learners systematically denied equitable educational outcomes - gaps the government’s curriculum changes will likely worsen.

II. The Coordinated Strategy: From Policy to Propaganda

This didn’t happen overnight. The attack on Māori education follows a deliberate pattern:

Phase 1: Manufacture Crisis (2021-2023)

PISA scores decline (global trend post-Covid, but framed as NZ-specific failure)
National and ACT campaign on “back to basics” and “restoring standards”
Education Review Office report finds Histories Curriculum implementation challenges—government spins this as curriculum failure, not resourcing issue

Phase 2: Seize Power, Embed Ideology (November 2023)

Coalition agreements commit to “restore balance to Aotearoa NZ’s Histories curriculum” (ACT), require one hour daily of reading/writing/maths, disestablish Māori Health Authority, remove Treaty references from policy where possible
Erica Stanford appointed Education Minister—former Murray McCully staffer, no teaching experience, minored in Māori Studies but now implements policies gutting Māori education
David Seymour becomes Associate Education Minister for charter schools plus Minister for Regulation—giving him veto power over policies affecting business interests

Phase 3: Dismantle and Defund (2024-2025)

February 2024: Announce “structured literacy” mandate, defund Reading Recovery ($30 million redirected to maths workbooks) (RNZ, 2024)
Budget 2024: Cut $300+ million from Māori Health Authority, Te Arawhiti, Māori TV (Spinoff, 2025)
September 2024: Rush through curriculum changes with errors (44 maths education experts call it “more political than educational”) (1News, 2025)
Budget 2025: Cut $750+ million more from Māori housing ($624M), education ($36.1M), Kāhui Ako ($375.5M), development fund ($20M) (Spinoff, 2025; Labour NZ, 2025)
Total cuts to Māori initiatives: $1.38+ billion across two budgets
October 2025: Release draft curriculum burying Māori histories under French Revolution and Ancient Egypt

Phase 4: Gaslight the Opposition (Ongoing)

When teachers protest, accuse them of being “politically motivated” (Public Service Minister Judith Collins claimed PPTA put “Palestine” above students because it was Item 1 on a proposed agenda—PPTA president Chris Abercrombie clarified there was no priority order and Stanford’s office had asked for the agenda) (1News, 2025)
When principals object to workload, Stanford says “they’re just picking it up and running with it” (1News, 2025)
When Māori leaders protest funding cuts, Finance Minister Nicola Willis claims “$700 million has been committed to initiatives supporting Māori outcomes”—but that includes reallocated/existing funds, not new money (Spinoff, 2025)
When confronted about Atlas links, Seymour lies on camera: “No” (BadNewsletter, 2024)

Tikanga Violations: How Neoliberalism Violates Māori Values

Every principle of tikanga Māori is under assault:

Whanaungatanga (Relationships, Kinship): The curriculum’s overcrowding prevents teachers from building relationships with students or connecting learning to whakapapa. Standardized testing ranks children against each other, undermining collective identity.

Manaakitanga (Care, Hospitality, Respect): Defunding Reading Recovery and te reo teacher training shows contempt for both struggling learners and te ao Māori. Only 8% of Year 8 Māori students at low-decile schools achieve at/above maths level—but instead of resourcing support, the government mandates more testing (NZ Herald, 2025).

Kaitiakitanga (Guardianship, Stewardship): Erasing Māori histories from the curriculum violates our duty as kaitiaki to transmit knowledge across generations. Teaching Ancient Egypt before teaching the Musket Wars or Land Wars is like teaching someone else’s genealogy before their own.

Wairuatanga (Spirituality, Purpose): Education reduced to test scores and “employability” strips learning of deeper meaning. The curriculum treats knowledge as commodity, not taonga.

Kotahitanga (Unity, Collective Well-being): Charter schools—Seymour’s pet project, with $153 million allocated but only 4 conversions so far—undermine collective provision by siphoning public funds to private operators (1News, 2025). Stanford herself admits she sees them as “tension in the system” to keep public schools “accountable”—pitting schools against each other rather than supporting all students (1News, 2025).

Rangatiratanga (Self-Determination, Authority): Te Tiriti guarantees Māori authority over our taonga, including education. This curriculum imposes Crown narratives without meaningful consultation with Māori educators, iwi, or hapū. Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori says Budget 2025 “ignores the longstanding and well-documented underfunding” of kura and represents “the Crown’s ongoing failure to prioritise kura kaupapa Māori” (1News, 2025).

Aroha (Compassion, Love): There’s no aroha in a system that labels 11-year-olds “below standard,” defunds programmes that work for struggling readers, and cuts $624 million from Māori housing while 78% of Māori students don’t achieve University Entrance (RNZ, 2024).

The Hidden Revelations: Five Smoking Guns

1. The Charter School Grift: Seymour promised 35 state school conversions by end of 2026. As of August 2025, only 4 formal applications exist (1News, 2025). Yet the Charter School Agency pays average salaries of $140,000+, with $153 million allocated. Stanford refuses to answer questions, deferring to Seymour. When pressed, she says unused funds will be “repurposed”—translation: laundered into other privatization schemes.

2. The NCEA Replacement Scam: Luxon and Stanford announced August 2025 they’ll scrap NCEA entirely, replacing it with “New Zealand Certificate of Education” (Year 12) and “NZ Advanced Certificate of Education” (Year 13), plus mandatory English/Maths in Year 11 (1News, 2025). This creates a two-tier system: academic vs vocational pathways decided at age 15—exactly when Māori students start “going off the boil” due to institutional racism, per Aorere College principal Leanne Webb (RNZ, 2024). The real agenda? Channeling Māori and Pasifika students into trades while reserving university for Pākehā and Asian students.

3. The Curriculum Tender Sneak: March 2025, Stanford tendered for a single standardized assessment tool for Years 3-10 with no public consultation (RNZ, 2025). This contradicts her 2024 promise to let schools choose between two different tools to prevent school-vs-school comparisons. Documents released later showed the government always planned a single tool—meaning she lied. This is National Standards 2.0: rank schools, justify cuts to “underperforming” (read: underfunded) schools, blame teachers.

4. The Treaty Clause Betrayal: The Education and Training Amendment Act 2025 reordered Section 127 to make academic achievement the “paramount objective,” with Treaty obligations relegated to “supporting objectives” (RNZ, 2025). Seymour admitted ACT wanted the Treaty clause removed entirely but was overruled—”simply political,” he said. Prime Minister Luxon refused to say who pushed back. The compromise still prioritizes academic achievement over equitable outcomes for Māori—inverting Te Tiriti’s guarantee of equal rights and outcomes.

5. The Jordan Williams Revolving Door: After 12 years running the Taxpayers’ Union—spending $371,565 on the 2023 election to attack Labour—Williams was appointed Chair of the government’s “Department of Government Efficiency” in March 2025 (Taxpayers’ Union, 2025). His job? Cut “wasteful spending”—which will inevitably target social services, Māori programmes, and public education. This is regulatory capture in real-time: the lobbyist becomes the regulator, implementing the agenda he lobbied for.

The Implications: Quantified Harm, Threatened Rights, International Precedents

Quantified Harm to Māori:

The data is damning. Māori students are:

2.6 times more likely to leave school with no NCEA Level 1 (18% vs 7% for Pākehā) (RNZ, 2019)
1.36 times more likely to leave without University Entrance even after controlling for socioeconomic factors (RNZ, 2024)
1.9 times more likely to perform below PISA maths baseline (47% vs 25%) (SchoolNews, 2023)

But: In kura kaupapa Māori, only 11.9% left with no qualification vs 20.3% across all Māori students, and 59.2% achieved NCEA Level 3 vs 40% across all Māori (RNZ, 2019). Māori-medium education works. Yet Budget 2025 disestablished the Wharekura Expert Teachers programme and Resource Teachers of Māori roles while reallocating their funding (RNZ, 2025).

The Class Dimension: At low-decile schools, only 8% of Year 8 students achieve at/above maths level, vs 43% at high-decile schools—a 35 percentage point gap (NZ Herald, 2025). For writing: 23% vs 55% (32-point gap). For reading: 35% vs 71% (36-point gap). Socioeconomic status accounts for 16% of performance variation—meaning NZ’s “egalitarian” myth is dead (OECD, 2023).

Threatened Rights Under Te Tiriti:

Article 2 (Tino Rangatiratanga): Guarantees Māori authority over taonga, including language and education. The curriculum changes impose Crown control without Māori consent—a Treaty breach.
Article 3 (Oritetanga): Guarantees equal rights and outcomes. The government eliminated ethnicity-based targeting for services, making it harder to address Māori-specific barriers (RNZ, 2024).
Waitangi Tribunal Precedent: The Tribunal found the government’s Regulatory Standards Bill—also an ACT project—breached Treaty principles by proceeding without Māori consultation (Waitangi Tribunal, 2025). The curriculum changes follow the same pattern: consultation theatre, then implementation regardless.

International Precedents Show This Fails:

Australia: “Back to Basics” and NAPLAN testing didn’t close Indigenous achievement gaps; they widened them by stigmatizing Aboriginal students and narrowing curricula (Guardian, 2019).
United States: Charter schools and standardized testing under No Child Left Behind devastated Black, Latino, and Native American communities, leading to school closures in poor neighborhoods while wealthy districts thrived (Washington Post, 2015).
United Kingdom: Academies (UK’s charter schools) and rigid curriculum standards entrenched class divides, with working-class students channeled into vocational tracks (Guardian, 2022).

New Zealand is importing failed policies, rebranding them as “world-class,” and expecting different results. That’s not reform—it’s colonization by copy-paste.

Call to Action: Resistance Targets and Strategies

We have until April 24, 2026 to stop this. That’s the consultation deadline. Here’s how:

1. Flood the Ministry of Education Submission Process

Submit at: Social Sciences Curriculum Consultation
Key points: Demand restoration of Aotearoa NZ Histories Curriculum as core; reject Ancient Egypt/French Revolution dilution; require proper resourcing (not 1 hour/week); mandate Māori educator consultation
Copy iwi leaders, local MPs, school boards on your submission

2. Support Teacher Strikes and Unions

PPTA, NZEI Te Riu Roa, and other unions striking October 2025 against workload, pay, and curriculum chaos deserve our backing
Donate to strike funds, attend rallies, amplify their demands
Reject government narrative that strikes are “politically motivated”—they’re professionally necessary

3. Demand Transparency on Atlas Network Influence

OIA requests to Education Ministry: all correspondence with NZ Initiative, Taxpayers’ Union, Maxim Institute, Atlas Network since November 2023
Media: investigate Jordan Williams’ new role, Erica Stanford’s connections to Murray McCully/Business Roundtable networks, David Seymour’s Atlas ties
Name the funders: Who’s bankrolling these think tanks? Publish their donor lists

4. Protect Māori-Medium Education

Demand Budget 2026 restore Wharekura Expert Teachers and Resource Teachers of Māori
Support Te Rūnanga Nui’s call for $1.25 billion over five years for kura property development
Defend te reo Māori funding—don’t let them rob te reo to pay for maths workbooks

5. Build Alternative Institutions

Support 350Aotearoa, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, and other climate justice groups linking education justice to environmental justice
Strengthen wānanga, kohanga reo, kura kaupapa—these are sites of resistance and regeneration
Document and share stories: How is this curriculum affecting your whānau? Share on social media with #RestoreOurHistories

6. Vote Them Out

2026 election is make-or-break. National-ACT-NZ First have shown who they serve—not students, not teachers, not Māori
Register everyone you know. Turnout wins elections
Support candidates committed to scrapping these changes, restoring Māori education funding, and removing Atlas Network influence from policy

Moral Clarity: This Is What Colonization Looks Like in 2025

The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

Let’s stop pretending this is about “educational excellence” or “knowledge-rich curricula.” This is about power: who gets to tell our stories, who gets access to quality education, whose interests the state serves.

When the government asks Year 7 students to study Te Tiriti alongside Ancient Egypt, they’re saying Māori history is just another topic—exotic, distant, disposable. When they defund Reading Recovery that worked for Māori students to mandate phonics that serves middle-class Pākehā students, they’re saying some children’s literacy matters more than others. When they cut $1.38 billion from Māori initiatives while increasing ministerial travel budgets, they’re saying whose lives have value.

This is colonization. Not the 19th-century version with muskets and land courts—the 21st-century version with think tanks and budget line items. It’s violence by spreadsheet, genocide by curriculum. And it’s coordinated: the same Atlas Network spreading climate denialism globally is spreading attacks on Indigenous education here. The same people who want to drill for oil in our moana want to erase our histories from our schools.

But here’s what they’re afraid of: We see them. We see the money trails, the revolving doors, the coordinated strategy. We see Jordan Williams going from Atlas-funded lobbyist to government efficiency czar. We see David Seymour lying about Atlas on camera while implementing their playbook. We see Erica Stanford—who minored in Māori Studies—now destroying Māori education.

And we’re not having it. Because we know our histories. We know Te Tiriti. We know what our tūpuna fought for and what’s at stake for our mokopuna. We know that education is liberation—and they know it too. That’s why they’re so desperate to control it.

Kia kaha, e te whānau. This is our fight. This is our time. And we will win—because we have to.

Nāku noa, nā

Ivor Jones / The Māori Green Lantern

If this mahi has been useful to you and your whānau, and you have the means and capacity, please consider supporting this work through koha:

HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000

(This is offered humbly—only if you can. The mahi continues regardless.)

1News. (2021). Christopher Luxon: ‘We’ve let standards slip’ in education. December 18, 2021.

1News. (2024). Are charter schools a good idea?. July 13, 2024.

1News. (2024). ‘Restoring balance’ to history lessons: What are kids learning. April 3, 2024.

1News. (2025). Education Minister deflects charter school questions to Seymour. August 9, 2025.

1News. (2025). Māori leaders give disappointed reaction to ‘yeah-nah’ Budget. May 22, 2025.

1News. (2025). Mega-strike incoming: Govt on offensive, union leader fires back. October 18, 2025.

1News. (2025). NCEA changes: What you need to know. August 3, 2025.

1News. (2025). School curriculum criticism grows: ‘A total lack of understanding’. October 27, 2025.

ACT New Zealand. (2025). New curriculum takes politics out of history. October 26, 2025.

BadNewsletter. (2024). ACT leader David Seymour lies about his ties to the Atlas Network. February 7, 2024.

Humanium. (2025). Educational inequities for marginalized students in New Zealand. January 20, 2025.

Labour New Zealand. (2025). Release: $1 billion of Māori funding gone. May 22, 2025.

National Library of New Zealand. (2023). Seymour, David Breen, 1983-. August 11, 2023.

New Zealand Herald. (2004). Maximum impact on your thoughts. October 23, 2004.

New Zealand Herald. (2006). Local academic refutes global warming claims. September 16, 2006.

New Zealand Herald. (2008). Fury over ‘unethical’ warming website. September 18, 2008.

New Zealand Herald. (2025). The great divide: Large cohorts of Māori, Pacific and poorer students more than a year behind in maths and writing. August 18, 2025.

New Zealand Initiative. (2024). New Zealand’s education revolution. April 23, 2024.

OECD. (2023). Education GPS - New Zealand - Student performance (PISA 2022).

Public Service Association. (2024). Understanding Atlas: how a right-wing network is building global influence. April 4, 2024.

Reading Recovery. (2024). Reading Recovery IS the Science(s) of Reading and the Art of Teaching. Spring 2024.

RNZ. (2019). NCEA attainment rates fall, Māori schools buck trend. September 16, 2019.

RNZ. (2021). Goldsmith colonisation comments find little support from colleagues. June 7, 2021.

RNZ. (2023). NZ records worst ever PISA international test results, amid global decline. December 5, 2023.

RNZ. (2024). Jordan Williams on what the Taxpayers’ Union really is and who funds it. May 21, 2024.

RNZ. (2024). Māori students less likely to achieve University Entrance. September 25, 2024.

RNZ. (2024). Te reo Māori teacher training cut by $30m to fund maths resources. September 25, 2024.

RNZ. (2024). Using a structured literacy approach to teach reading. May 9, 2024.

RNZ. (2025). ACT Party tried to get Treaty of Waitangi clause removed from education legislation. June 30, 2025.

RNZ. (2025). Budget 2025: Māori educators say boost won’t fix poor school buildings. May 22, 2025.

RNZ. (2025). Education Minister Erica Stanford stands by contentious curriculum amid growing criticism. October 28, 2025.

RNZ. (2025). History teachers label government’s draft curriculum ‘unrealistic’, ‘unmanageable’. October 29, 2025.

RNZ. (2025). Kiwi kids once led the world in reading – this 1950s primary school syllabus still has lessons for today. May 8, 2025.

RNZ. (2025). National standards by stealth? Why the government’s latest plan for schools might fail the history test. March 25, 2025.

RNZ. (2024). $2m surge in election campaign spending by third-party groups. February 25, 2024.

SchoolNews. (2023). PISA 2022: An analysis. December 2023.

The Spinoff. (2025). Budget 2025: New funding headlines mask deeper cuts to Māori programmes. May 22, 2025.

Taxpayers’ Union. (2025). Jordan Williams’ departure from the Taxpayers’ Union. March 31, 2025.

Waitangi Tribunal. (2025). Tribunal releases report on proposed Regulatory Standards Bill. May 15, 2025.

Wikipedia. (2004). Maxim Institute. September 30, 2004.

Wikipedia. (2023). Atlas Network. April 23, 2023.

Wikipedia. (2024). New Zealand Initiative. December 30, 2024.

Wikipedia. (2024). New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. January 1, 2024.

Wikipedia. (2025). Erica Stanford. January 19, 2025.

⁂

https://theintegrityinstitute.substack.com/p/maxim-institute

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/draft-history-curriculum-misses-600-years-of-aotearoa-new-zealands-past-panel/26NXF6L7FKZPZWNAWXFROXVANI/

https://theintegrityinstitute.substack.com/p/the-new-zealand-initiative

"The Van Velden Vanishing: What Her Departure Really Means for ACT" - 24 March 2026

"Ka Noho i Roto i te Ahi: The Government's Toll Booth to Hell and the Green Party's Open Gate" - 24 march 2026

"Ka Noho i Roto i Te Ahi: The Green Party's Fossil Fuel Crisis Offer and the Hidden Architecture of Transport Injustice in Aotearoa" - 24 March 2026

""NOISY VOICES": HOW SHANE JONES IS GUTTING OUR MOANA FOR CORPORATE PROFIT" - 24 March 2026