The war on woke has identified a new enemy: brown tape. Unsurprisingly, Māori already know we have way too many rules.

Over the weekend, the New Zealand First Party declared new threats from the anti-growth agenda had been identified in the war on woke. The Party’s call was loud and clear: it’s time to fight the real enemy, which isn’t just wokeness and red tape, but also the environmental green tape, blue tape slapped on by “glamourpussies up in the United Nations” and, most important of all, brown tape.

Brown tape being, in the words of deputy party leader Shane Jones, the “random hapus [sic] invoking the names of taniwha and getting a bit of money, putea, to make the taniwha go away in order for a project to go ahead” and also “Māori Party blood traitor politics and victimhood”. It paints the picture of a poetic struggle against power, albeit in a very violent way. The message is clear: Māori practices are getting in the way of growth and progress.

On the surface, the idea of targeting brown tape seems like it could be a populist gimmick intended to invoke an us vs them mentality which in practice weakens social cohesion, undermines tikanga Māori and keeps us under the thumb of The Man. It might remind you of that time just last month when Act Party leader David Seymour tried to blame high power bills on karakia.

But karakia is just one tiny piece of brown tape. New Zealand First has upped the ambition – by removing all brown tape ever, Māori will be able to enjoy restrictionless living on the whole, which is good for us. Let’s throw out the whole roll of brown tape. How? I’ve gathered some ideas to get the tape rolling, so that everyone can get behind it and together we can make New Zealand the most productive, tapeless nation of all:

• Ease bottlenecks in the hongi line by removing the prime minister from it.
• Alleviate consumer burdens by removing the requirement for every under-30 on the marae to peel potatoes in the wharekai.
• Bypass consenting processes so that whaea can put every social event on Facebook Live.
• Make fisheries more efficient by removing the requirement to throw out the first fish for Tangaroa.

• Cutting the cut off time between switching from the general roll to the Māori roll. A serious, pioneering country should be able to do this overnight.
• Improve consumer confidence by introducing rapid response to shoe theft on the marae.
• Improve biosecurity measures by banning all boil-ups with raw doughboys.
• A ban to ban the ban on gang patches.
• Improve workplace health and safety by banning matua from playing Luther Vandross’ ‘Dance With My Father’ until everyone’s gone to bed.

• Fast-track pōwhiri so that when you’re told it’s only going to take an hour, it will only take an hour.
• Automatic approval on building consents for garages made exclusively for piss ups. 
• Ease reporting obligations by exempting hāngi smoke from environmental emissions reports.
• Ease registry burdens by allowing hapū to register themselves by creating Facebook pages.

• Remove overlapping reporting obligations by making the most senior aunty the head decision-maker and gossip-relayer.
• Improve medicines access by letting the bro do his side hustle, no questions asked.

Should these new tape-cutting initiatives fail to unite the masses, there could be another way to slice all of the brown tape issues in one fell swoop. There is a common thread that binds those – Seymour, Peters and Jones – most concerned with brown tape, and it’s not just the fact that they’re all sons of the north.

Bear with me here. Peters, the world’s biggest Sir Apirana Ngata fan, alongside Jones, who once wore an “AOTEAROA 1990: 150 years of oppression” shirt, and Seymour, rejectee of Ngāti Rēhia, aren’t so different after all. As the most senior Māori ministers in cabinet, they’re well aware of the various threatening forms that brown tape can take on, whether it’s a karakia, a long pōwhiri or a disagreeable brown person getting in the way. So, if those most concerned about having too much tape can’t figure out the path to growth and progress, maybe they were the brown tape all along.