‘Critic’ has an article on John Ansell launching a ‘Colourblind’ campaign to address what he calls ‘Treatygate’.

Treatygate” is the “attack brand”, and will involve a series of brief, hard-hitting advertisements designed to incite “anger” in “hothead” voters. Treatygate aims to “expose the 40 year state brainwashing campaign that has distorted the history of Crown-Maori relations”.

Speaking to Critic, John Ansell, the advertising guru behind the campaign, described the planned advertisements for Treatygate as “short sharp little messages with one piece of evidence in each one”, such as that “Maori companies pay 17.5% tax, [while] others pay 28%.”

According to Ansell the primary goal of the Treatygate campaign is to “expose the bias and enrage the public”. “You have to make the public mad… otherwise we’re the passionless people, we won’t rouse ourselves to oppose the politicians unless [the public] have the information.”

After the public have been fired up by the Treatygate campaign, “Colourblind State” aims to harness this anger to get 80% or more of the public to vote in favour of a referendum question along the lines of “Should New Zealand be a colourblind state, with no race-based political representation, policies, or funding?”. Ansell intends to submit his referendum question by the end of August, which will give Parliament three months to approve it. After that, Ansell and his fellow campaigners will have one year to gather the more than 300,000 signatures required to trigger a citizens initiated referendum.

Ansell has done radical before, noteably last year when he overegged a racially charged advertising campaign started by Act. But Critic is a student paper, is this a serious exposé?

Ansell’s blog confirms that it is.

TREATYGATE — Time to Expose the Con

It explains the double-pronged campaign I’m planning to end the Treaty Grievance Industry.

But What Can We Do?

It will take money, but I believe the secret of success is a powerful public education campaign using the plainest of English, rolling out one fascinating fact, one ad or poster at a time.

The goal is to get sheepish Kiwis, ‘the Passionless People’, to understand what has been done to them, and to tell their politicians, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!”

If we can make Treatygate a Top Three issue when the big parties do their polling, then our leaders will have no choice but to listen and act.

Here’s the plan…

How to Defeat the Con

1. Launch Colourblind New Zealand, and set a goal to lock in one law for all by December 2014.
2. Raise a $2 million fighting fund so the politicians know we’re able to embarrass them.
3. Petition for a referendum at the 2014 election. Question: “Do you want New Zealand to be a Colourblind State, with one law for all, and no racial favouritism of any kind?”
4. How to make the PM obey the referendum result? Run lots of bold Treatygate ads telling voters just who has been conning them, and how.
5. If media refuse to run these ads, use rival media to expose them as part of the con.
6. Bombard government MPs with instructions from their voters to obey their will.
7. Support local body campaigns on Maori wards (typically attracting an 80% NO vote).

With your support I hope to work full-time on this project until we achieve a Colourblind New Zealand.

The racially-rigged Constitutional Advisory Panel has already begun the process of changing the constitution by stealth, meeting mainly with Maori groups in contravention of its pledge to meet a wide range of New Zealanders.

So there’s not a moment to lose.

Because truth does matter.

(I don’t support Ansell’s proposed campaign, I’m reporting on it).