Erica the Woke vs Hobson’s Choice
Hobson’s Pledge Accidentally Satirise Themselves in Most Self-Parodying Attack Yet
It takes a special kind of ideological flat-earthery to look at Erica Stanford, a National Party education minister who could comfortably pass for a Margaret Thatcher tribute act in a North Shore book club and call her a woke radical. But such is the spectral paranoia of Hobson’s Pledge, a group so committed to racial amnesia they make goldfish look like archivists.
Their latest tantrum is over an Education Bill clause requiring school boards to “give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi.” Not “hand the keys to Ngāpuhi.” Not “require co-governance on every PTA.” Just “give effect to the Treaty” a founding document, mind you, that New Zealand signed in 1840 and has been ignoring ever since with the sort of discipline usually reserved for parking fines.
But in Hobson’s Pledge land, this is tantamount to full-blown Marxist-Māori insurrection.
Let’s be very clear - Hobson’s Pledge is not a thoughtful civic group with concerns about constitutional nuance. They are the last surviving foot soldiers of a race-blind fantasy, bayoneting the air in defence of a fictional past where everyone had the same chances, as long as you were Pākehā, male and preferably a banker’s nephew.
Who Are Hobson’s Pledge Really?
Founded by Don Brash, a man who once ran for Prime Minister on a platform that sounded like it was cobbled together from talkback radio and a Grey Power newsletter, Hobson’s Pledge exists to stop any meaningful recognition of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Their claim? “One law for all.”
Their reality? One law that ignores colonisation, disinherits iwi, flattens history and ensures the structural advantages of white New Zealand remain completely untouched.
Brash and Co. cry foul at any shift toward Māori partnership, despite that being the whole premise of the Treaty. Their ideal New Zealand is like a buffet where Māori are invited to eat last, told they should be grateful and scolded for asking why there’s no food left.
But it’s not just a local pathology. Hobson’s Pledge are card-carrying members of a global fraternity of nostalgia-drenched reactionaries. Think -
Advance Australia, which campaigned furiously against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Canada’s True North, which thinks reconciliation is an expensive guilt trip.
America’s PragerU, who believe slavery ended in 1865 and therefore racism no longer exists.
Scandinavia’s right-wing populists, who find Indigenous Sámi rights inconvenient to the myth of unitary white wholesomeness.
The common thread? They don’t want equality. They want equilibrium, where white cultural dominance remains undisturbed and everyone else shuts up about the past.
Smoke, Mirrors and Colonial Perfume
Groups like Hobson’s Pledge wrap themselves in the language of democracy - "equality", "fairness", "treating everyone the same”, while surgically removing context, history and structural analysis from the conversation. It’s equality with a lobotomy.
They pretend to be grassroots movements representing “ordinary people,” while often being funded, supported, or cheered on by elite interests terrified that racial justice might interfere with land holdings, political dominance, or white discomfort.
And the moment someone like Erica Stanford, a conservative, white, law-and-order politician—suggests, just maybe, we should follow through on the most basic interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi, they go full Chicken Little.
You could not write parody better than this. Erica is not Hone Harawira. She is not Metiria Turei. She is not planning to change the national anthem to a haka or replace math with pūrākau. She is proposing the grotesquely offensive equity in education. Specifically so Māori kids don’t get churned out of the system into dead-end futures and intergenerational hardship.
If that makes her woke, then Jesus was a community organiser in a dress.
Laughing at the Pitiful Cruelty
Let’s laugh, but bitterly, at the grotesque absurdity of it all. These people spend their lives attacking anything that looks like compassion. They look at educational underachievement and say, “Don’t fix it, that’s favouritism.” They see a policy designed to stop racism and scream, “That’s racist to white people.”
It is not just disingenuous. It is cruel. It is a deliberate strategy to sustain ignorance, justify inequality and poison every effort toward reconciliation.
And when the bar is so low that Erica Stanford looks like a revolutionary, we are not in a healthy democracy—we are in a hostage situation with our past.
🧾 Press Release from Hobson’s Pledge
FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION
Contact: Media@HobsonsEcho.nz
Hobson’s Pledge Condemns Radical Woke Coup in Education System
In a shocking affront to the sacred principle of racially homogenous ignorance, the Government has caved to woke extremists by inserting dangerous Treaty-ist language into the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). Requiring school boards to “give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi” is nothing short of institutionalised apartheid.
“This is not what William Hobson signed up for,” said Spokesman Winton Civil-Islington III, holding a monograph of 19th-century naval etiquette. “He said we are now one people. We just think it should be one white people.”
Hobson’s Pledge calls on the Government to immediately reverse this ideological kidnapping and return to a system where Māori know their place, preferably behind a lawnmower, not a curriculum.
We are deeply concerned that ‘mana whenua’ might be allowed to speak in schools, or that te reo Māori will continue infiltrating our nation’s signage without a public referendum. If unchecked, children might learn empathy, history, or their own names in the language of their ancestors.
Hobson’s Pledge urges all right-thinking New Zealanders to fight this constitutional vandalism and defend the right of every child to grow up blissfully unaware of colonialism.
✉️ Letter to the Editor – Principal’s Federation
To the Editor,
I never thought I'd see the day where improving Māori educational outcomes would be branded as radical.
As the president of the National Principals’ Federation, I’ve seen first-hand what happens when you ignore the Treaty. Māori students disengage, communities disconnect and schools become pipelines to nowhere.
This bill finally aligns school boards with what we've known all along, that equity takes commitment, not platitudes. Hobson’s Pledge would rather maintain the status quo, where structural disadvantage is painted over with slogans like “one law for all.”
Shame on them. And kudos to Erica Stanford for doing the bare minimum and still being crucified for it.
– Maree Thompson
President, NZ Principals’ Federation
✉️ Letter to the Editor – Parent of a Māori Student
Dear Editor,
I’m the mother of a 14-year-old Māori boy. He’s smart, curious, and generous. He also spent three years thinking he was stupid because none of his school’s lessons reflected who he was.
This new clause? It gives us hope. It tells my son that his identity is not a problem to be fixed. That maybe, just maybe, he has a place here.
And Hobson’s Pledge? They’re scared of that. Scared that if Māori succeed, it might cost them the myth that they earned everything on merit.
To anyone reading this. Don’t be silent. Speak up for our kids. Don’t let hate wear a suit and call itself patriotism.
– Hana Rangi
Parent, Auckland
📞 Phone +64 275 665 682
✉️ Email john.luxton@regenerationhq.co.nz
🌐 Contact Form www.regenerationhq.co.nz/contact
If you’d like to read more RegenerationHQ thinking on SME business and other things, go here – www.regenerationhq.co.nz/articlesoverview
🔹 RegenerationHQ Ltd - Business Problems Solved Sensibly.
Supporting NZ SME Owners to Exit Well, Lead Better and Build Business Value.