Look at schools. Students are expected to perform haka. Nose-rubbing ceremonies. Karakia before meals. Pōwhiri at assemblies. Teachers pressure participation. Principals enforce it. Opt out, and the child is shamed, isolated, treated as if challenging a belief system is a crime. Literacy, numeracy, science — the skills kids actually need — become secondary to spiritual observance. The rituals are compulsory, not optional. And the government calls it culture.

Local government is no better. Māori wards. Reserved council seats. Special consultative rights. Sections of the Local Electoral Act, amended in 2021, removed voters’ ability to reject these wards. Public opposition was ignored. Ancestry became a ticket to influence, competence and civic participation became irrelevant. This is apartheid, codified.

The pattern is repeated across legislation. Every law that enforces Māori-specific consultation or privileges spiritual beliefs over evidence cements inequality. No other religious or cultural group in New Zealand has anything remotely comparable enshrined in law. Tikanga is treated as untouchable. Spiritual authority is mandatory. Secular neutrality has been abandoned.

Consider ancestry itself. Humans are one species. Interbreeding has been the norm for hundreds, thousands of years. There is no pure bloodline. There is no ancestral claim strong enough to justify special legal rights. Yet here we are, watching a legal framework that elevates heritage, spiritual belief, and ritual above civic equality and merit.

Every morning in classrooms, every council meeting, every government office where Māori-specific rights dictate action, the contradiction is visible: laws that claim fairness while codifying privilege. Laws that pretend to honor culture while enforcing belief. Tikanga and ancestral authority have been injected into the machinery of the state, quietly, legally, and often unquestioned.

And the public? Most don’t notice. Or they’re told it’s just culture, harmless, necessary. Few realize culture and spirituality are inseparable in this context. Tikanga is religion. Haka is spiritual. Karakia is sacred ritual. Yet legislation treats them as neutral. That dissonance is baked into every page of law, every policy guideline, every government directive.

This isn’t just a contradiction on paper — it has real consequences. Laws that pretend to be neutral are quietly shaping the world we live in, deciding who holds power and who is sidelined.

The laws we’ve built are not neutral. They speak in tongues, they bow to gods, they reward ancestry over ability. Secularism isn’t a preference anymore — it’s the missing framework that could restore clarity and fairness. Until we recognize that, we are wandering in a fog of ritual, policy, and entitlement, blind to the very principles that once made this country ours to share equally.

The choice is stark: allow this wave of spiritual bureaucracy to define every classroom, council chamber, and court, or demand a system that serves citizens, not deities, not lineages, not mandates wrapped in myth. The answer will define New Zealand for generations to come.

John Robertson is a patriotic New Zealander who frequently posts on Facebook.