By Laura McQuillan
The controversial ad man behind race-based election campaigns for the National and ACT parties is launching a new "racial equality" campaign about what he calls "the Treatygate con".
Advertising guru John Ansell designed National's 2005 "Iwi/Kiwi" billboards, and worked with ACT early in its election campaign last year, creating its newspaper ad, "Fed up with pandering to Maori radicals?", but split from the party when it refused to take a polarising position on Maori issues.
He is now seeking backers for a $2 million "Colourblind New Zealand" campaign, which he describes as "a major campaign to expose and expunge the corrupt Treaty Industry".
He told NZ Newswire that "elites" in Parliament, the judiciary, academia and the media are guilty of covering up New Zealand's true history and helping "Griever Maori" extort money from the taxpayer.
"We should be saying ‘Look, show a bit more gratitude and get your hands back in your pockets, stop expecting money from other people, look to yourselves'," Mr Ansell said.
On his blog, Mr Ansell says the "Treatygate con" includes branding anyone who questions Maori entitlement as a racist, "pretend[ing] that Maori are indigenous to New Zealand, when they sailed here just before the Europeans", and pretending Maori are a separate race, "even though they're all part-Pakeha".
Mr Ansell says he has spent the past year studying the history of relations between Maori and the Crown - which he calls "basically a lot of lies (that) have been told for the last 40 years", or "Treatygate".
"What else do you call a sustained state indoctrination programme that basically twists our history in order to make one set of people feel guilty enough to shovel billions of dollars at another set?" he said.
"We've been fed the idea that those of us of British descent need to feel guilty for the supposed crimes of our forebears, and we've just sort of taken that unquestioningly as the facts, but when you look into it, you find that that is actually a lot of nonsense.
"We put fraudsters in prison. Now, this is one of the most massive frauds that has ever been perpetrated on the New Zealand people."
Mr Ansell believes 80 percent will support his cause.
"Although I am pilloried and called a racist and all this sort of stuff, it's only a minority who think that. Just about everybody I talk to says `oh, well done'."
He has also contacted multimillionaire ACT Party backer Louis Crimp - who has publicly expressed his own views on Maori - and says he is "right behind" the campaign idea.
"He's one of a number of people that say `good on you, this is exactly what we need'," Mr Ansell said.
He is hoping to take the campaign to a level "that will terrify the government".
"I'm certainly not there yet but a lot of people have to give a little and a few people will have to give a lot if I'm to reach that target."
Mr Ansell also plans to petition for a referendum at the 2014 election, asking voters the question, "Do you want New Zealand to be a Colourblind State, with one law for all, and no racial favouritism of any kind?".
He plans to lodge the petition with Parliament's clerk later this month.
NZN