If you are brown, have some cunning and some spare time you can get on the consultancy payroll at your neighbour’s expense.

Once there your wishes and prejudices can overrule elected councillors in local government.

In the past a majority of your neighbours had to elect you before you could throw your weight around in local government.

Now a self-appointed, self-defined Maori can tell you and I when, where and what we can dig or build on our own land. A motorway can be held up for months by a taniwha. International feature films can be held to ransom. Sand from one beach cannot be used to replenish another. Frogs being flown from one town to another must have solemn honour guards of befuddled elderly Maori.

Until 2002 this official fawning to racism by local government had no legal justification. Now the law tells all local authorities that they must take part in the charade.

It looks like a great deal for Maori.

But it comes at great cost.

The actual costs are invisible. High amongst them are the endless delays caused by so-called consultation.

The bright ideas frustrated.

The vital public infrastructure projects that are stalled.

The talented people who will never be persuaded to serve as councillors when they see the time wasting and hypocrisy of consultation.

But the real damage and cost is to Maori.

The rights that they have been given are a poor substitute for property rights. They can’t do anything positive with them. They can’t develop land or initiate improvements. All they can do is obstruct or remove obstruction. The only way to benefit is by extortion.

Maori are increasingly being seen as the obstacle to progress.

They are being perceived as greedy ticket clippers who contribute nothing of value.

A stream of Treaty payments and consultancy fees are not wealth.

Genuine wealth creation comes from providing improvements that people want, not from taking fees for letting them through drafting gates you have built across their rights.

Maori are being conned.

They are being given a false authority and they are being sold a false expectation that the mythical principles will give them future affluence and respect.

We don’t apologise for detesting the Treaty Industry.

The Treaty itself is a fine document that should protect, not threaten, the valuable rights and freedoms of all New Zealanders.

It has been wrapped in spurious principles and unauthorised, illegitimate, political hypocrisy.

ACT supports the Treaty, but not what is being done in its name. Give your Party Vote to ACT.