The great gaslighter

You have to admire David Seymour’s ability to completely misrepresent reality.

Like yesterday in this Herald opinion piece where he calimed that the Treaty Principles Bill “commits to protecting the rights of everyone, including Māori, and upholding Treaty settlements. It commits to give equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights to every single New Zealander. The challenge for people who oppose this bill is to explain why they are so opposed to those basic principles.”

Or where he claimed that te Tiriti created a partnership between races.

Or that there are groups who want to “nullify the debate”.

Committing to protecting the rights of everyone sounds great but is nothing more than what existing law achieves. Seymour’s bill does not provide added protections. Check out the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 or the Human Rights Act 1993 if you need confirmation.

And suggesting that you have to change the Treaty of Waitangi principles to preserve fundamental human rights and if you oppose this you are also opposed to human rights is the gaslight to end gaslights.

Making a virtue of upholding treaty settlements is weird. Of course they should be upheld. The Bill would however nullify every treaty right that has not been formally recorded in a settlement deed. I wonder why Seymour did not mention this.

And te Tiriti is clearly not a partnership between races. it is an agreement reached between the Crown and Māori.

As for nullifying the debate I presume that Seymour means opposing the circus that he has created. As the Waitangi Tribunal has found if enacted his bill would be “the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty / te Tiriti in modern times. If the Bill remained on the statute book for a considerable time or was never repealed, it could mean the end of the Treaty / te Tiriti.”

Seymour is that interested in a civilised debate on his bill that when former National Party Minister Christopher Finlayson said that the bill was doing great damage he said that Finlayson was showing haughtiness and bitterness.

And when former National Prime Minister Jenny Shipley said that Seymour was inciting civil war he cast aspertions on her tenure at Mainzeal.

Shipley’s comments were prescient and thoughtful.

I was young enough to remember Bastion Point, and look, the Treaty has helped us navigate. When people have had to raise their voice, it’s brought us back to what it’s been – an enduring relationship where people then try to find their way forward.

And I thought the voices of this week were completely and utterly appropriate, and whether they breach standing orders, I’ll put that aside.

The voice of Māori, that reminds us that this was an agreement, a contract – and you do not rip up a contract and then just say, ‘Well, I’m happy to rewrite it on my terms, but you don’t count’.

I would raise my voice. I’m proud that the National Party has said they will not be supporting this, because you cannot speak out of both sides of your mouth.

And I think any voice that’s raised, and there are many people – Pākehā and Māori who are not necessarily on this hīkoi – who believe that a relationship is something you keep working at. You don’t just throw it in the bin and then try and rewrite it as it suits you.

She was scathing in her description of what Seymour is doing:

I just despise people who want to use a treasure – which is what the Treaty is to me – and use it as a political tool that drives people to the left or the right, as opposed to inform us from our history and let it deliver a future that is actually who we are as New Zealanders … I condemn David Seymour for his using this, asking the public for money to fuel a campaign that I think really is going to divide New Zealand in a way that I haven’t lived through in my adult life. There’s been flashpoints, but I view this incredibly seriously.

And there are reports that National and NZ First want to shorten the select committee process for consideration of the bill. And that National MPs are being deluged with emails and that their support is taking a hammering.

And as I type this thousands upon thousands of Hikoi marchers are descending onto Parliament.

And David Seymour has not ruled out speaking to the crowd.

I suspect that he is grinning from ear to ear.

It is hard to imagine a better example of gaslighting than what he is doing now. Or another time when a minnow party has been allowed to create this amount of chaos in pursuit of the redneck vote.