JOHN MCLEAN: Woke Entrenchment

Mechanisms of ideological Identitarian societal capture…complete with a case study.

I’ve written screeds on how Woke/Critical Social Justice/Identitarianism/Neo-Marxism/Post-Modernism – call “it” what you will - has been entrenched in New Zealand society.

New Zealand’s only indigenous strain of Wokery is Māorification. All the rest - Trans activism, biological sex denialism, the hierarchy of victimhood and oppression and all other Woke Slop – has been mindlessly imported from foreign Western universities.

The Woke Māorification of New Zealand comes in various forms. There’s the incoherent and divisive Critical Race Theory narrative that anyone with any Māori ancestry, no matter how fractional, is (and forever will be) oppressed by a system devised by humans without such ancestry. There’s the historically false notion that Māori, as an invented collective, have not accepted a unitary central government for all New Zealanders, such that a nascent Māori nation is about to bloom.

Sensible New Zealanders are forced to suffer the amorphous and entirely fabricated Treaty of Waitangi “Principles”. We see the supplanting of New Zealand’s Christian heritage by strident Māori mysticism as NZ’s new State religion. Then there’s all the Māorific forced conformity, self-censorship and cultural safety. And so on, and so forth.

I’ve explored at length the main mechanisms by which New Zealand is being Māorified. We have the Public Service Commissioner, Sir Brian Roche, running interference, protecting the public service from any attempts by the elected Government to de-Māorify public agencies and shielding Māori Mafia from scrutiny and accountability. See The Cock Roche and the Heron.

We have Woke educational and judicial systems, powerfully immune from governmental efforts to tone down the racialization of New Zealand. The current Government appears to have simply given up on removing “Treaty Principles” references from legislation, an express commitment under the National/NZ First coalition agreement.

Even ACT Party leader David Seymour, previously a staunch opponent of co-governance, has thrown in the towel, defending local authorities’ rights to enter into co-governance arrangements with Māori groups. Speaking with The Platform’s Sean Plunket on 26 March, Seymour said that local governments should be entitled to enter into co-governance arrangements with Māori groups; entitled to do so without endorsing referenda from local constituents and free from democratic legislative constraint on such racialized co-governance.

The mechanisms of Māorification are deep and pervasive. Turn over almost any rock and you’ll find entrenched hope for an eternal race-based New Zealand. Take, as just one example, incorporated societies.

In 2022, the departed Labour Government passed a new Incorporated Societies Act. The 2022 Act replaced incorporated societies legislation dating back to 1908. So far, so good. But embedded in the new incorporated societies legislation are explosive sleeper cells for Māorification.

The new Incorporated Societies Act enables incorporated societies to include in their constitutions expressions of their “tikanga” (customs, value and practices that guide behaviour and decision-making in accordance with Māori cultural principles) and “kawa” (Māori protocol and etiquette). All incorporated societies are required to be re-registered, with a new, compliant constitution, before the close of 5 April 2026.

Wokesters, race hustlers and critical race theorists have latched onto the “tikanga” and “kawa” permissions to impregnate incorporated societies’ constitutions with all sorts of Māorification. And New Zealand incorporated societies, numbering about 24,000, are ubiquitous.

Let’s take, as just one example, the incorporated society known as the New Zealand Association of Counsellors Incorporated. NZAC is the body to which most New Zealand counsellors belong. Its President is a woman named Huhana Pene.

All ten of NZAC’s national office staff are biological women. Coincidence? I think not. Feminization of Western societies is a powerful force behind Wokery. NZAC’s Executive Director is Tess Casey.

NZAC’s new constitution, which you can find on the online Incorporated Societies Register, is totally Māorified.

Under NZAC’s constitution, “NZAC’s purpose is to improve and enhance the mental health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders by supporting and growing the counselling profession”. So far so good. But then things immediately get Woke Weird.

The constitution then states:

This [NZAC’s purpose] will be achieved by:

a. Te Roopu Kaiwhiriwhiri o Aotearoa / the New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) is committed to honouring our responsibilities under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and acknowledging Tino Rangatiratanga of tangata whenua.

b. Te Roopu Kaiwhiriwhiri o Aotearoa / the New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) is committed to contributing to the healing of the ongoing injustices of colonization and the intergenerational effects that many of our communities continue to suffer.

In other words, NZAC’s constitution expressly provides that it will somehow fulfill its purpose by honoring responsibilities under the Treaty of Waitangi, acknowledging Māori self-determination/sovereignty and committing itself to healing ongoing injustices of colonization and its ongoing effects. How doing those things could possibly contribute to “supporting and growing the counselling profession” is a deep and dark mystery.

NZAC’s constitution then states NZAC’s “KAWA”, which I repeat in full:

KAWA

This Constitution shall be interpreted in regard to the foundational guiding principles and philosophy of Ngā Pou.

Mana Whakahaere

Our governance and management systems are ethical, uphold tikanga and value indigenous knowledge. They are underpinned by a commitment to partnership.

Mana Motuhake

We uphold self- determination and our responsibility for exercising critical thinking and taking action against racism and discrimination.

Mana Tangata

We uphold the sanctity and dignity of a person’s right to be. We respect the diversity of humanity inherent in all people, expressed as Tapu i te Tangata. All members are welcomed and included in NZAC.

Mana Māori

We uphold, value and honour te reo me ōna tikanga me nga Matauranga Māori katoa.

Mana Mauri

We nurture and protect the essence of Te Taiao, inherent in the environment.

Mana Moana

We acknowledge the place of Aotearoa in Te Moana Nui A Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean) and that this pre-dates Te Tiriti. We respect and value our shared history and connections with the peoples of the Pacific.

Equity

We acknowledge our responsibilities to social justice and recognise that different levels of advantage require different approaches and resourcing.

Active Protection

We actively work towards protecting the rights of individuals and communities, including tangata whenua.

But NZAC’s spanking new constitution doesn’t stop there. NZAC’s constitution creates a separate category of membership for individuals with Māori ancestry (Ngā Tumutumu), with their own forum (Te Rōpū Māori) and Māori co-chair of NZAC (Te Ahi Kaa) and supporting officer (Te Kaitumutumu) for the Māori co-chair.

All of this is under the umbrella of NZAC’s guiding principles -“Ngā Pou”, exhaustively described on NZAC’s website, including the following:

Counsellors affiliated with NZAC must undertake continuing professional development, including this Critical Race Theory indoctrination:

What can we make of this? First, none of NZAC’s pervasive Māorification can possibly be raising the standard of counselling in New Zealand. Skilled counsellors ought to take all “counsellees” as the come, with all their unique facets, foibles and backgrounds, and without racial stereotyping. NZAC Māorification is just misguided, performative piffle. NZAC’s constitution entreats all counsellors not to counsel but, rather, to indoctrinate vulnerable and suggestible people who need counselling with Māori Critical Race Theory.

More generally, we can safely say that NZAC’s constitutional Māorification is far from aberrant. Expressly encouraged by the new incorporated societies’ legislation to include tikanga and kawa, a multitude of New Zealand’s 24,000 societies have included radical Māorification in their constitutions. And the legislated Māorification invitation wasn’t accidental. It was yet another deliberate ploy to permanently raceify New Zealand and New Zealanders.

Lastly, statutory Māorification of incorporated societies is set to endure. With appropriate political will and concerted action, legislative references to Treaty Principles and suchlike can be removed. Māorification, once entrenched in constitutions, is far harder to expunge. The neo-Marxist March through New Zealand’s institutions marches on. The Post-Modernist Wreckers may win in the end, but that’s no reason to stop fighting.

John McLean is a senior lawyer who writes at John's Substack