Coalition leaders at the formal signing ceremony of their governing agreement. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
We have a government that thinks it owns New Zealand and can override the principles of democracy, writes former civil servant Mark Feary.
New Zealanders don’t need to see bulldozers or Land Rovers at Parliament to feel a sense of demolition. The destruction of our democracy is happening in slower, quieter ways — through legislation and rhetoric that deliberately ignore people, suppress debate, and erode trust in the very foundations of our democracy.
The aborted Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, the Seabed and Foreshore reset, and the new Regulatory Standards Bill might seem like separate policy debates, but together they form a pattern. We have a government that’s willing to reshape constitutional understandings without genuine consultation, careful process, or respect for long-standing norms.
The Treaty principles bill was sold as an “open discussion”, yet it delivered a unilateral declaration that redefined Te Tiriti o Waitangi on the government’s terms. Legal experts and Māori leaders warned that it misrepresented the partnership at the heart of our constitutional identity — but the bill proceeded anyway. For this alone, David Seymour, Winston Peters, Christopher Luxon, and their followers must be held to account.
Then the foreshore and seabed proposals reopened one of the country’s deepest wounds. Rights that were recognised in law have been swept aside for political convenience.
And now the new Regulatory Standards Bill quietly loosens the very mechanisms designed to restrain executive power, giving ministers broad discretion to override rules with limited scrutiny.
Each action might be defended as administrative tidying or providing ideological clarity. Taken together, they signal institutional racism and something even more corrosive — an erosion of character at the top of government. When those in power stop seeing themselves as trustees and start acting as owners of the country, the checks and balances in our system lose their meaning.
What worries me most, after nearly five decades of being part of the machinery of government, is what happens next.
Once the political executive normalises disregard for consultation, evidence, and good-faith engagement, the public service begins to mirror that behaviour.
Departments start drafting advice to fit the minister’s tone rather than the public interest. Legal cautions are softened. Officials learn to write what will be accepted by their ministers, rather than what is evidence-based and in the interest of New Zealanders.
If recognition of Te Tiriti remains at all, it will be relegated to operational policy and reframed as obedience rather than stewardship. That corrosion is subtle but cumulative, and it turns a neutral public service into an echo chamber.
When that happens, we don’t just lose good process, but also the principles that keep democracy honest. What remains of the Treaty relationship becomes transactional. Regulatory integrity is traded for convenience, and the Crown’s word is akin to foreign ideology that is based on selective evidence, or none at all.
A democracy is held together not by statutes alone but by the character of leaders who know that power is lent, not owned. Once that character is lost, leadership fragments, especially among new, or new to New Zealand, public servants.
If this culture beds in — where “winning” replaces stewardship, reactive management replaces leadership, and urgency substitutes for consultation — we risk teaching the next generation of public servants that constitutional corners and fundamental New Zealand values exist to be cut.
The real danger lies in the normalisation of this behaviour.
When government dismisses consultation as a nuisance, treats Te Tiriti as outdated, and derides scrutiny, those habits set a precedent. Future administrations will inherit not just the rules but also the culture that goes with them, and New Zealanders will pay the price.
What begins as expedience ends as orthodoxy. The machinery of government slowly unlearns the discipline of doubt and replaces it with the reflex of compliance. By the time the public notices, the oxygen of democracy — the space to question and disagree — has already thinned.
Rebuilding that space requires courage and clarity. Parliament and the media must rediscover their roles as checks on power. The judiciary must guard the limits of executive reach. The public service must rediscover courage to provide free and frank advice. It must reassert its independence and defend the need for policy grounded in evidence, ethics, and the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
That will mean principled and courageous leaders willing to say “no” and insisting on proper process even when ministers grow impatient. It requires Parliament and New Zealanders holding all sides to account for how power is used, not just what policies it produces.
Our institutions remain strong enough to recover, but only if we defend the character that underpins them. Laws can be amended, but norms and values, once lost, are far harder to restore.
The duty now is not only to resist the erosion of principle, but to model the integrity that once made New Zealand’s democracy the envy of others.
Mark Feary (Ngāi Tahu) worked for nearly 50 years as a public servant in various government departments. He has a background in Indigenous and regional development, and has worked on projects between iwi and government. He believes that process and policy emerge from this collaboration, leading to outcomes that genuinely honour and uplift communities.
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“Consultation” is a pretty poor substitute for democracy. And what is democracy? It is not a system in which the power of the people is either “lent” to or “owned” by the politicians who seek an irrevocable and unconditional mandate for a term of three years (which many of them would like to extend to four years). Yet at the same time they tell us that “a week is a long time in politics”, as it surely is; long enough to seriously damage society and the economy.
With self-determining constituencies, continuous election and the open ballot there would be no need for special or superficial consultation procedures and no possibility of power being either lent to or appropriated by vested interests. Representatives (rangatira) would be bound to listen to their electors, and would be directly and continuously accountable to them. That would be real democracy. With accountability would come stability. Politics would cease to be a guessing game in which the voters either have to take new candidates on trust, or swing mindlessly back and forth between options that have grievously failed us in the past.