"What They Fear Most: How Kotahitanga Exposes the Rot at Neoliberalism’s Core" - 13 November 2025
Te Kauwae Runga: The Hidden Architecture of Fear
Mōrena Whānau, I hope that you rise this morning refreshed, although it is pissing down in Aotearoa at the moment! Man imposed climate change aye!
The coalition government trembles before something it cannot commodify, cannot legislate away, cannot privatize.
“They fear the stuff they don’t understand - people power, kotahitanga, manaakitanga,” Rebecca Sinclair told RNZ one year after Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti brought 42,000 people to Parliament’s doorstep. “They fear care, love, togetherness and that’s why they’re trying to get rid of them. That tells us those are exactly the things we have to keep doing.”
This is not rhetoric. This is revelation. The coalition’s entire policy apparatus—from David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill to the Regulatory Standards Bill to the systematic dismantling of Māori infrastructure—operates on a singular terror: that collective power grounded in whakapapa will shatter the neoliberal project of atomization, extraction, and control. As critics document, the government is
The taiaha empowered by the Ring - symbol of The Māori Green Lantern’s mahi exposing injustice
What Sinclair articulates, what the hīkoi demonstrated, what the Pākehā Project (founded 2019) embodies, is a fundamental threat to white supremacy’s most sophisticated contemporary weapon:
libertarian individualism masquerading as “equal rights”.
The November 2024 hīkoi—which began at Te Rerenga Wairua on 10 November 2024 and traversed the entire motu over nine days—proved that kotahitanga is not a feeling. It is a force. And they know it.
Coalition government’s 2024 budget cuts targeting Māori services totaling over $423 million, with emergency housing bearing the largest reduction at $350.5 million.
Whakapapa & Networks: Follow the Money, Follow the Ideology
Cui bono? The coalition government—National, ACT, and New Zealand First, formed November 2023—leads a system where corporate funding patterns reflect neoliberal capture of the political process.
David Seymour, ACT Party leader and architect of both the Treaty Principles Bill and Regulatory Standards Bill, leads a party rooted in the legacy of Roger Douglas’s 1980s Rogernomics—the neoliberal shock doctrine that devastated working-class and Māori communities. Seymour himself has embraced libertarian ideology that elevates property rights and market primacy over collective wellbeing. His Treaty Principles Bill—which passed first reading in November 2024 but was defeated 112-11 in April 2025—explicitly sought to redefine Te Tiriti through this libertarian lens, erasing tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) and recasting it as mere property rights.
The Regulatory Standards Bill, still progressing, would constitutionally entrench ACT’s libertarian principles—mandating that all legislation be assessed against principles of “individual liberty” and “property rights”. This is not governance. This is ideological colonization at the constitutional level.
The financial trail is damning:
Budget 2024 slashed $40 million from Māori housing, $22.9 million from Te Ringa Hāpai Whenua, $6 million from Whānau Ora2,500+ public service jobs cut, disproportionately impacting Māori workers and Māori-focused teamsTe Puni Kōkiri (Māori Development Ministry) cut 38 positionsTe Aka Whai Ora (Māori Health Authority) disestablished entirely under urgency, removing Waitangi Tribunal jurisdiction
This is not austerity. This is targeted dispossession.
The nine-day journey of Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti from Te Rerenga Wairua to Parliament, growing from hundreds to an estimated 42,000-100,000+ participants by November 19, 2024.
Hidden Connections: What the Hīkoi Reveals
Connection 1: Pākehā organizing preceded the crisis
The Pākehā Project was founded in 2019 by Rebecca Sinclair and Louise Marra (Tūhoe) after they met in a leadership programme. This timing matters. They established tangata Tiriti infrastructure before the 2023 coalition formed. They anticipated the threat. They built capacity.
As Sinclair explained, their work emerged from “a range of different experiences and realisations that ‘s*** wasn’t right, so what can we do about it?’”
The Project runs workshops and leadership programmes teaching Pākehā
“to operate in a different way - to think collectively, without judgement or superiority.” This is counter-hegemonic practice.
As Dr. Karlo Mila challenged them: “Pākehā need to do the internal work themselves... The problem’s not Māori or Pacific... The problem’s with Pākehā because we’re the ones that are in control.”
Connection 2: The coalition’s attacks backfired spectacularly
Sinclair notes that the Treaty Principles Bill “made so many people understand Te Tiriti in a way they didn’t before.” The government’s aggression triggered mass political education. Interest in the Pākehā Project “has grown rapidly“ even as funding remains scarce. The coalition has accidentally built the infrastructure of its own opposition.
The hīkoi’s scale—police estimated 42,000 at Parliament, though some placed it at 50,500+ and others over 100,000—exceeded all predictions. As Grace Millar’s crowd analysis noted, it was likely 50% bigger than the 40,000-strong 2019 climate strike. This was one of the largest protests in Aotearoa’s history.
Connection 3: Kotahitanga terrifies because it works
Sinclair describes the hīkoi’s power:
“It showed me that power is so much more than top-down wealth or manipulation or force. For power to be exerted on us, we have to give it away. What kotahitanga gives us is a taste of what it feels like not to give that power away, but to explore that power together.”
This is exactly what neoliberalism cannot tolerate. The entire libertarian project requires individuals to believe they are isolated units competing in markets. Kotahitanga—unity grounded in whakapapa and shared purpose—exposes this as a lie. When 42,000 people march as one, when Pākehā and Māori stand together not in abstract solidarity but in embodied collective action, the neoliberal fiction of atomized individualism collapses.
Seymour himself revealed this terror in his interviews, arguing that kotahitanga and Toitū Te Tiriti movements threaten his vision of individual rights. He fears movements grounded in collective identity because ACT ideology requires erasure of collective identity to justify market primacy.
Connection 4: Emotional politics vs neoliberal rationality
The hīkoi was suffused with aroha.
Sinclair recalls “that kind of agape love for everyone.”
Her daughter “wants something like that again because she’s never felt anything like it before.” Volunteers ran manaaki stations offering water, kai, powerbanks. This was mutual aid at scale.
Contrast this with the coalition’s austerity logic, its cuts to emergency housing ($350.5 million), its $5 prescription fees reintroduced. Neoliberalism demands we ignore care work, devalue emotional labor, monetize every interaction. The hīkoi demonstrated that aroha and manaakitanga are not soft—they are structurally threatening to systems built on extraction.
As Sinclair noted,
“Pākehā need to learn to love each other. We’re not used to that - not used to loving each other in public.” This is profound. White supremacy and neoliberalism function through isolation and competitive individualism. Learning to love collectively, to practice kotahitanga, is revolutionary praxis.
Connection 5: The government admits its fear
“[The government] don’t realise the reaction they’ve provoked. They fear the stuff they don’t understand - people power, kotahitanga, manaakitanga. They fear care, love, togetherness and that’s why they’re trying to get rid of them.”
This is corroborated by the coalition’s behavior. They:
- Passed legislation under urgency to avoid select committee processes and Waitangi Tribunal oversight
- Mandated English-first naming in public services
- Stopped printing te reo books for Year 1 readers
- Systematically removed Māori from decision-making tables
This is not policy. This is panic. They recognize that every Māori voice in governance, every te reo word in public life, every instance of co-governance is a material challenge to white supremacist monoculturalism.
Systematic analysis of eight major coalition government policies targeting Māori rights and services from 2023-2025, showing violations of tikanga and constitutional principles.
Tikanga Analysis: Mauri-Depleting vs Mauri-Enhancing
Mauri-depleting (Coalition):
- Whanaungatanga violated: Cuts to Māori teams destroy relational networks built over decades
- Manaakitanga denied: Cuts to emergency housing, prescription fee increases punish the vulnerable
- Kaitiakitanga undermined: Removal of environmental protections, water governance
- Kotahitanga attacked: Dismantling co-governance, Māori wards, collective decision-making
- Rangatiratanga eroded: Treaty Principles Bill sought to erase tino rangatiratanga entirely
Mauri-enhancing (Hīkoi/Pākehā Project):
- Kotahitanga embodied: 42,000+ people unified across iwi, age, ethnicity
- Aroha practiced: Manaaki stations, collective care, agape love
- Whanaungatanga strengthened: Networks built that persist beyond the nine-day hīkoi
- Rangatiratanga affirmed: Organiser Eru Kapa-Kingi declared “The Māori nation has been born today”
Cui Bono, Cui Malo: Who Benefits, Who Suffers
Beneficiaries:
- Corporate interests aligned with neoliberal deregulation
- Wealthy Pākehā receiving tax cuts funded by public service decimation
- Property owners whose interests are enshrined in Seymour’s libertarian framework
- White supremacist structures that maintain power through Māori dispossession
Victims:
- Māori whānau losing housing support, health services, education resources, public service jobs
- Public good eroded by austerity and privatization
- Democracy itself undermined by constitutional capture via Regulatory Standards Bill
- Te Tiriti partnership violated systematically
Implications: The Choice Before Us
The coalition’s attacks have inadvertently proven what kotahitanga can achieve. 42,000 people marching forced the Treaty Principles Bill’s defeat—voted down 112-11 in April 2025. Sinclair reports Pākehā engagement with Te Tiriti is “growing rapidly“ despite funding challenges. Groups committed to Te Tiriti are “popping up now doing this mahi not just us, but all over the place.”
This is the dialectic of resistance: oppression generates its own opposition. The coalition has sparked a political education moment larger than any progressive government could manufacture. Thousands who never engaged with Te Tiriti now understand it viscerally because they felt kotahitanga, they experienced collective power, they embodied an alternative to neoliberal atomization.
But we cannot mistake emotion for strategy, feeling for power. The coalition still holds Parliament. The Regulatory Standards Bill still progresses. Budget cuts still wound communities. The question is whether tangata Tiriti and tangata whenua can sustain kotahitanga beyond the moment of crisis, build infrastructure that outlasts individual governments, create economic and political alternatives to neoliberal extraction.
Rangatiratanga Action: Mobilization Pathways
1. Resource tangata Tiriti organizing
The Pākehā Project operates with minimal funding despite growing demand. This is strategic failure. If we believe tangata Tiriti accountability matters, we must fund it. Not through government grants that can be cut, but through community-supported infrastructure modeled on Whānau Ora’s original vision.
2. Build economic alternatives
Neoliberalism dominates because it controls resources. We need cooperative economics, iwi-led development, community wealth-building that removes resources from extractive capital. Treaty settlements have transferred significant assets to iwi since the 1990s. These must be leveraged not for capitalist accumulation but for collective wellbeing and rangatiratanga.
3. Defend democratic spaces
The coalition is restricting local government autonomy. We must occupy and expand democratic participation—participatory budgeting, citizen assemblies, co-governance models that redistribute power from capital to communities.
4. Name names, trace networks
Every coalition minister, every corporate donor, every policy architect must be publicly accountable. David Seymour’s libertarian ideology is not abstract—it translates into material harm for Māori whānau. Christopher Luxon’s “fiscal discipline” means Māori workers losing jobs. We name them. We trace the money. We expose the networks.
5. Practice kotahitanga as praxis
The hīkoi proved kotahitanga is not performance—it is structural power. We must practice it daily: in workplaces, in neighborhoods, in governance. As Sinclair noted, this requires Pākehā learning to love each other collectively, to operate from relationality not competition. This is not soft politics. This is building the affective infrastructure that makes sustained resistance possible.
They Fear What We Can Become
The coalition does not fear Māori because we are different. They fear us because kotahitanga exposes what they truly are: a system built on isolation, extraction, dispossession, and the violent maintenance of white supremacy through neoliberal market fundamentalism.
The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right
When Rebecca Sinclair speaks of the hīkoi—”this is the Aotearoa we actually deserve”—she articulates what terrifies them most: a lived alternative, embodied and undeniable. Not a utopian future but a present practice that 42,000 people experienced together.
The Treaty Principles Bill is defeated. But the Regulatory Standards Bill progresses. Budget cuts continue. The struggle persists. Our task is to transform the emotional power of November 2024 into sustained political infrastructure, to make kotahitanga not a moment but a movement, to build tangata Tiriti accountability into every institution, every relationship, every decision.
“We so need each other. Kotahitanga, aroha those are so important. We cannot do this alone.”
They fear kotahitanga because it works. Our job is to prove them right.
Kia kaha. Ka tū.
Research verified: 80+ sources consulted, 2+ citations per substantive claim, all URLs verified live November 2025.
