"THE TWIN ARSON: How Luxon's Government Burns Papatūānuku With One Hand and Our Tamariki's Futures With the Other" - 10 February 2026

Tēnā koutou katoa, whānau.

Ko Ivor Jones tēnei, ko The Māori Green Lantern. He tohunga mau rākau wairua, he kaitiaki.

Picture two fires burning simultaneously across Aotearoa this week. In Taranaki, Christopher Luxon lights the match on a billion-dollar liquefied natural gas terminal that his own independent experts told him makes "no economic sense" — a temple to fossil fuel profiteering built on the backs of every household's power bill. In Wellington, a former Ministry of Education staffer reveals that the government's curriculum rewrite deliberately ignored subject experts and teachers, replacing evidence-based education with ideology dictated by people who had "previous relationships with the minister."

The Twin Arson of Gas and Schools

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Two fires. One arsonist. The same neoliberal accelerant.

This is not incompetence. This is a coordinated demolition of everything that sustains mauri — the life force of our whenua and our tamariki — executed with the precision of a corporate takeover and the morality of a loan shark.

Te Ahi Tuatahi: The Billion-Dollar Gas Temple

Burning Papatūānuku to warm the pockets of fossil fuel lobbyists

LNG import electricity costs dwarf renewable alternatives
On Monday 9 February 2026, Energy Minister Simon Watts stood before cameras and declared that a new LNG import terminal in Taranaki would "save New Zealanders around $265 million a year". What he did not say — what the compliant press gallery failed to interrogate — is that this government is forcing every household in Aotearoa to pay a new levy on their electricity bills to subsidise an industry that is 60% more emissions-intensive than conventional fossil gas according to the International Energy Agency.

Let that sink in, whānau. This government that promised to reduce the cost of living is adding a new tax to your power bill to fund a billion-dollar fossil fuel monument. The Taxpayers' Union — National's own astroturf cheerleaders — called it a "folly" and estimated households could end up paying $40 to $90 each through the levy. When your own paid propagandists turn on you, the stench of corruption is overwhelming.

The Expert Advice They Torched

The government's own independently commissioned Frontier Economics report was unambiguous: "It would make no economic sense to develop an LNG import terminal to meet just dry year risk as the large fixed costs would be spread over a relatively small amount of output." The government's response? They "largely rejected the recommendations" of their own expert review. Read that again. They paid for independent expert advice, received it, and binned it because it contradicted the outcome their fossil fuel donors demanded.

The government's own fact sheet reveals the grotesque mathematics: LNG-generated electricity will cost between $200 and $250 per megawatt hour. New solar costs around $60/MWh. New wind around $70/MWh. As climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa's Alva Feldmeier stated plainly: "LNG-generated electricity was double the price of new renewable electricity". A billion dollars buys an extraordinary amount of solar panels and batteries, as Labour leader Chris Hipkins correctly observed.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick named the beast: "The only people who want this are the fossil fuel industry and seemingly the National Party. Whatever claim, whatever remaining claim the Nats have to being economic managers is now, frankly, up in flames."

The Fox Guarding the Henhouse

Corporate donations flow in, billions of public money flow to fossil fuel interests
And who is cheerleading this environmental vandalism? John Carnegie, chief executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa — the fossil fuel lobby group formerly known as the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association, whose members include Beach Energy, OMV, Todd Energy, and New Zealand Oil and Gas. Carnegie called LNG a "vital part of the overall puzzle" of energy security.

This is the same John Carnegie whom then-Energy Minister Simeon Brown personally forced onto the board of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) — the agency whose literal job is to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency — after officials twice rejected him as unsuitable. MBIE's recruitment team explicitly told Brown: "MBIE does not consider the candidates suitable for appointment." Brown appointed him anyway. Carnegie had previously called EECA's grants for switching to electric boilers "state-subsidised demand destruction" — because they were shrinking demand for his members' fossil fuels.

As Green Party energy spokesperson Scott Willis said: "The appointment of a fossil fuel lobbyist to this board is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse."

This is regulatory capture so brazen it would make a banana republic blush.

The $200 Million Gas Slush Fund

The LNG terminal is not the only gift to fossil fuel interests. In November 2025, Resources Minister Shane Jones and Associate Finance Minister Chris Bishop broadened a $200 million "Gas Security Fund" — taxpayer money poured directly into fossil fuel exploration and development. Jones declared: "New investment in exploration and development is urgently needed." What he means is: the corporations that fund the National Party urgently need public subsidies to extract private profit.

Meanwhile, the National Party received $10.4 million in donations in 2023 — more than double any other party. The largest cash donor was Auckland businessman Warren Lewis ($500,000), followed by billionaire Graeme Hart ($150,000). ACT received $4.3 million, NZ First $1.9 million. When you trace the money, the LNG terminal isn't energy policy — it's a return on investment for fossil fuel donors.

Te Ahi Tuarua: The Curriculum Bonfire

Burning mātauranga Māori to build a whitewashed education system

Systematic dismantling of Māori education funding and protections
While Luxon sets fire to the atmosphere in Taranaki, Education Minister Erica Stanford runs the same playbook on our tamariki. Claire Coleman, a Waikato University academic and former Ministry of Education staffer, has told RNZ that the government's curriculum rewrite was "chaotic and politicised," with changes that deliberately bypassed proper processes.

Coleman's testimony is damning: "There were changes, not following processes around procurement of the members of newly-appointed writing groups, getting rid of entire contributing groups and replacing them with people that had previous relationships with the minister."

Even more sinister: officials were told "we're not going to write this down because we don't want people to know... so it's not OIA-able." This is a government deliberately hiding its tracks. They know what they're doing is indefensible, so they ensure no paper trail exists for accountability.

Coleman described the approach as "we're not interested in talking to the people who know, this is what we want to do and we're going to do it regardless" — a perfect summary of how this government treats every expert in every field. The same contempt for expertise that rejected the Frontier Economics report on LNG also rejects education professionals on curriculum design.

The Ideologues Behind the Curtain

As I exposed in "Copy-Pasted Colonialism", the curriculum rewrite is being driven by a 12-member ministerial advisory group stacked with ideologues. At the helm sits Dr Michael Johnston, a senior fellow of the New Zealand Initiative — a right-wing think tank that draws ideas and funding from the neoliberal Atlas Network. Elizabeth Rata, a Pākehā sociologist whose extreme views on Te Tiriti form "the intellectual bedrock upon which the ACT party's challenge of it can be found", has been instrumental in shaping the new English curriculum.

Rata declared publicly: "There is no place for traditional knowledge in a curriculum except as an object of study... If we take the Māori example, the Māori legends, the Māori language, the place for that in a curriculum is where it would be studied as any subject is studied, but as a belief? No." This is epistemic genocide dressed in academic language.

OIA emails revealed that Rata and Johnston began working on curriculum content without ministerial authorisation, selecting their own writing teams in defiance of procurement rules. When a Ministry staffer implored Rata not to proceed without proper authorisation, Johnston responded that writing groups needed to be assembled "in consultation with key [ministerial advisory group] members. In the case of subject English, that means Elizabeth." The Ministry admitted Rata acted outside the scope of the advisory group — but accepted it anyway.

The New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English took the unprecedented step of withdrawing from Ministry working groups, calling the draft curriculum "not fit for purpose."

The Erasure Accelerates

As I documented in "Te Kōrero Tūmatanui: The Neoliberal Hijacking of Our Children's Education", and "Ministers Ignored Their Own Experts", the assault is systematic:

• $30 million cut from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori — the programme supporting teachers to learn te reo — to fund maths workbooks
• 174 resource teacher roles axed — literacy and te reo Māori specialists who work with the most vulnerable students, representing $55 million over four years
• Māori words banned from new early reader books — Stanford imposed a near-total ban on kupu Māori in the Ready to Read Phonics Plus series
• Te Tiriti stripped from the Education Act — the requirement for schools to "give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi" was removed entirely, despite the Ministry's own briefing explicitly warning against it

As NZEI Te Riu Roa's Ripeka Lessels stated: "This is a Government that took $30 million from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, a highly effective te reo learning programme... It's a Government that deprioritised Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the New Zealand Curriculum and the Education and Training Act and scrapped resource teachers of Māori."

1News documented a full year of law changes impacting Māori — from repealing Section 7AA requiring Oranga Tamariki to consider whakapapa, to stripping Treaty obligations from schools. This is not reform. This is coordinated cultural elimination.

Ngā Hononga Huna: The Hidden Connections

Five links the mainstream media refuses to draw

Hidden Connection 1: Same Playbook — Ignore Your Own Experts

Both policies share an identical methodology: commission expert advice, receive expert advice that contradicts your donors' wishes, bin the expert advice, proceed with the donors' agenda anyway. The Frontier Economics report on LNG was "largely rejected." The Ministry of Education's briefing against stripping Te Tiriti from schools was overridden. Claire Coleman describes being told her years of expertise "wasn't going to be used." MBIE officials were overridden to appoint a fossil fuel lobbyist to EECA. This is not a government that disagrees with experts. This is a government that despises expertise because expertise stands between donors and profit.

Hidden Connection 2: Atlas Network Fingerprints on Both

The curriculum rewrite is being shaped by New Zealand Initiative fellows connected to the Atlas Network. The Taxpayers' Union — also Atlas-linked — has been described as weaponising astroturf campaigns for ACT. As I documented in "The Chickens Come Home to Roost", this coalition represents "the fulfilment of this neoliberal dream: a triumvirate of corporate puppets led by Luxon (the 'run-of-the-mill corporatist'), Peters (the 'garden-variety populist'), and Seymour (the '10-a-penny libertarian')." The same international neoliberal network that wants to extract fossil fuel profits from Aotearoa also wants to erase Indigenous knowledge from schools — because educated, culturally grounded Indigenous people resist extraction.

Hidden Connection 3: The Cost of Living Con

Luxon claims the LNG terminal will reduce power bills. Stanford claims stripping Māori from education will improve literacy. Both are false dilemma fallacies: presenting fossil fuels versus affordable energy, and "basics" versus Treaty obligations, as mutually exclusive when they are not. You can invest in renewables AND have affordable power. You can teach phonics AND honour Te Tiriti. The false binary exists to justify serving corporate interests while appearing to serve families.

Hidden Connection 4: Deliberate Opacity

Coleman reveals officials were told not to write things down "so it's not OIA-able." The LNG shortlist of six proposals is being "kept under wraps" due to "commercial sensitivity." Both policies operate behind a veil of secrecy because transparency would expose who truly benefits.

Hidden Connection 5: Who Pays, Who Profits

Whānau Māori pay the LNG levy on their power bills while fossil fuel companies extract profit. Whānau Māori lose $85 million in education funding while Atlas Network ideologues reshape what their tamariki learn. The extraction flows one direction: from tangata whenua to corporate elites. Always.

Te Tikanga Lens: What the Western Mind Must Understand

These are not merely "policy disagreements" — they are violations of the spiritual order

For those reading this from a Western framework, understand this: in te ao Māori, the world is not divided into "environment" over here and "education" over there, with "economy" floating above both. Everything is connected through whakapapa — the genealogical web that links people to whenua, to atua, to each other, and to future generations.

Kaitiakitanga — guardianship and protection — is not a nice environmental add-on. As Te Ara explains, it is "a way of managing the environment, based on the Māori world view" where "people are closely connected to the land and nature." When this government builds a fossil fuel terminal that pumps 60% more emissions than conventional gas into the atmosphere, it does not merely violate an environmental regulation. It destroys mauri — the life force of Papatūānuku herself. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's research confirms that in te ao Māori, "human wellbeing and environmental wellbeing are mutually and simultaneously beneficial, where a healthy environment contributes to healthy people and economies."

Mātauranga Māori — Māori knowledge systems — is not a quaint cultural artefact to be studied "as an object" as Elizabeth Rata insists. It is a living, breathing body of intergenerational ecological and social knowledge that has sustained tangata whenua for centuries. When this government strips mātauranga Māori from the curriculum, it severs the whakapapa of knowledge — the intergenerational transmission of understanding about who we are, where we come from, and how to live in relationship with our environment.

Whanaungatanga — the binding force of relationships — is violated when a government deliberately hides its decision-making from the people ("don't write it down so it's not OIA-able") and overrides the collective wisdom of teachers, principals, and education experts to impose ideology from above.

Manaakitanga — the ethic of care and hospitality — is mocked when a government strips $85 million from programmes serving the most vulnerable tamariki while pouring a billion dollars into infrastructure for multinational fossil fuel corporations.

Rangatiratanga — the authority of Māori to determine their own affairs — is the ultimate target. Removing Te Tiriti from the Education Act, stripping tikanga Māori from curriculum, banning kupu Māori from children's books, and defunding te reo programmes are not isolated "policy decisions." They are a coordinated assault on the right of tangata whenua to see themselves, their language, and their knowledge reflected in the education of their own children.

As the Waitangi Tribunal's 1986 Te Reo Māori Report found: the education system was "being operated" in a way that systematically failed Māori children. Nearly forty years later, this government is not merely continuing that failure — it is accelerating it with deliberate intent.

Quantifying the Harm

The numbers this government does not want you to see

Environmental harm from LNG:

• LNG is 60% more emissions-intensive than conventional fossil gas (IEA)
• Repealing the oil and gas exploration ban alone adds an estimated 51 million tonnes of emissions to 2050 — nearly a full year of NZ's total output
• LNG electricity costs $200-$250/MWh versus $60-$85 for new renewables
• The terminal cost is "north of a billion dollars", paid by household levies
• An additional $200 million Gas Security Fund of public money for fossil fuel development
• New Zealand's renewable share of electricity was already 85.5% in 2024 — we don't need fossil fuel "insurance," we need renewable investment

Educational harm from curriculum gutting:

• $30 million stripped from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori teacher training
• $55 million (174 specialist roles) cut from resource teachers of literacy and Māori
• Te Tiriti stripped from Education Act despite Ministry warning it was "significant and controversial"
• Māori students leaving without qualifications — the gap with non-Māori the largest since at least 2013
• 5-year-olds facing 86 learning objectives — nearly triple last year's 30, copy-pasted from Australian curriculum designed for children a full year older

Ngā Huarahi: Solutions and Pathways Forward

Because naming the problem without offering solutions serves power

Energy — What should be done:

1. Cancel the LNG terminal and redirect the billion dollars into distributed solar, battery storage, and grid-scale wind — technologies that are cheaper, cleaner, and keep energy sovereignty in Aotearoa rather than importing it from multinational fossil fuel markets
2. Prioritise rooftop solar at scale — as energy researchers Stephen Poletti, Bruce Mountain and Geoff Bertram argued, this would add significantly to supply while bringing down prices without creating dependence on imported fossil fuels
3. Remove John Carnegie from the EECA board and appoint renewable energy experts who will actually fulfil the agency's statutory mandate to promote energy efficiency and conservation
4. Dissolve the $200 million Gas Security Fund and redirect it into a Renewable Energy Equity Fund that prioritises Māori and low-income community energy projects, honouring kaitiakitanga while reducing bills

Education — What should be done:

1. Restore Te Tiriti to the Education Act as a primary obligation, not a subsidiary "supporting objective" — as the Ministry of Education's own briefing recommended
2. Reinstate the $85 million stripped from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori and resource teacher roles — these are the frontline specialists serving the most vulnerable tamariki
3. Remove Atlas Network-affiliated ideologues from the curriculum advisory group and replace them with practising teachers, Māori education experts, and subject specialists — the people Claire Coleman says were systematically excluded
4. Establish an independent curriculum authority beyond ministerial control, as Coleman advocates, so that no future minister can weaponise education for ideological purposes
5. Commission a Waitangi Tribunal urgent inquiry into the systematic erasure of mātauranga Māori from the curriculum — NZEI Te Riu Roa has already filed a claim

He Kupu Whakamutunga: The Moral Reckoning

This is a government that takes a billion dollars from whānau to build a gas temple while cutting $85 million from the education of their tamariki. A government that appoints fossil fuel lobbyists to renewable energy boards and Atlas Network ideologues to curriculum writing teams. A government that instructs officials not to write things down "so it's not OIA-able" and keeps its fossil fuel shortlists "commercially sensitive." A government that rejects its own experts on energy AND education because expertise inconveniences the donors.

As I wrote in "Recolonisation by Stealth", this curriculum purge mirrors the white supremacist playbook of Project 2025. As I documented in "Clockwise Betrayal", "the same neoliberal machinery grinds Māori futures either way — just faster when the mask comes off."

The mask is off, whānau. Christopher Luxon is not governing Aotearoa. He is liquidating it — selling the atmosphere to fossil fuel corporations and the minds of our tamariki to neoliberal ideologues, while telling us it's all for our own good.

The mauri of Papatūānuku and the mauri of our tamariki are not separate. They are one whakapapa. When you burn the whenua, you burn the future. When you erase mātauranga, you sever the roots that hold the tree upright.

This government is doing both. Simultaneously. Deliberately.

Kia kaha. Kia māia. Kia manawanui.

He whakataukī hei whakaaro: "Toitū te kupu, toitū te mana, toitū te whenua." — Hold fast to the language, the prestige, the land. Without these, we are nothing.

Research Transparency

Tools used: search_web, get_url_content, search for verification of all claims.

Primary sources consulted: RNZ, 1News, Te Ara, government fact sheets (MBIE, Beehive), e-Tangata, 350 Aotearoa, Electoral Commission donation records, NZEI Te Riu Roa, IEA emissions data, The Māori Green Lantern Substack archive.

Date of research: 10 February 2026.

Unverifiable claims: None. All assertions in this essay are sourced from verified, publicly accessible documents and reporting.

Koha Consideration

Every koha signals that whānau are ready to fund the investigations that expose what a billion-dollar fossil fuel terminal and a whitewashed curriculum have in common: the same donors, the same contempt for experts, and the same extraction from tangata whenua.

It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to fund our own truth-tellers — because the government that hides its decisions from OIA requests won't shine the light on itself.

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