Tēnā koe, Mr. Prebble,
Recently, you resigned from the Waitangi Tribunal and publicly declared your disapproval of the organisation, claiming it has lost its purpose. However, your actions following this resignation raise serious questions about your sincerity. Your first misstep was choosing to become the only Tribunal member to appear on a right-wing podcast hosted by Sean Plunkett and Julian Batchelor—two individuals known for their calls to disband the Tribunal and their overt anti-Māori rhetoric. This decision has shattered any credibility you might have had as someone who served on the Tribunal with honest intentions.
You’ve stated that you are pro-Treaty, that you value the document, and that you voted in favor of the Waitangi Tribunal Act 1975. Yet, this narrative mirrors a troubling pattern in Aotearoa New Zealand: self-proclaimed “pro-Treaty” advocates—figures like John Ansell, Julian Batchelor, and Andy Oakley—who, upon closer inspection, oppose honoring the Treaty and dismiss it as a “gravy train.” Your claims begin to sound hollow in this context.
Let me jog your memory about your own history, which you seem to have conveniently forgotten. Fifty years ago, as a new Labour MP, you voted for Matiu Rata’s Waitangi Tribunal Act 1975—not out of some deep commitment to the Treaty, but because you were whipped into line by party discipline. Dissent wasn’t an option. It’s disingenuous to now present this as evidence of your unwavering support for honoring the Treaty, as if it were a principled stand rather than a mandated vote.
For clarity, the Waitangi Tribunal was established in 1975 as a Crown entity, owned and appointed by the Crown, to investigate breaches by the Crown to provide non-binding recommendations—recommendations the Crown can, and often does, ignore. Yet, in your telling, this modest body has morphed into a menacing force. On Sean Plunkett’s platform, you painted the Tribunal as a bastion of Marxist propaganda, wielding the Communist Manifesto to transform Aotearoa New Zealand into a Stalinist state, with the Beehive as the Politburo. This rhetoric—replete with MAGA-style talking points—wouldn’t be out of place on Fox News. You spoke of communist regimes that murdered millions in pursuit of equality, suggesting the Tribunal has adopted a “socialist manifesto” hell bent on the state controlling the means of production.
Let’s unpack this. The Tribunal exists to address the Crown’s historical confiscation of Māori land—private property socialized by the state and handed to British colonists under fee simple titles at a time Karl Marx was living in Britain. If anything, that process resembles communism: state control over the means of production. The Tribunal, by contrast, seeks redress for those wrongs, not to impose some collectivist nightmare. Your use of “communism” seems less about ideology and more about a discomfort with Anglo-Saxon sensibilities being challenged by the realities of colonial history. It’s as if you’re shielding colonial New Zealanders from the offense of facing their past, rather than grappling with the principles you claim to misunderstand.
No one seriously believes you joined the Waitangi Tribunal to engage in good-faith discourse or resolve historical claims. Your appointment feels more like a deliberate move to disrupt the organisation from within. Your resignation and subsequent media tour only reinforce that suspicion. If you truly valued the Treaty, your actions would reflect it—instead, they undermine it.
Ngā mihi,
Joe Trinder
