by John Robertson

New Zealand is being culturally hijacked — and we’re all meant to smile, nod, and pay for it.

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. This forced bilingualism isn’t “inclusion.” It’s a political power game. A language spoken fluently by less than 4% of the country is being rammed into every crack of public life — whether we want it or not. And if you speak up? You're a racist. That’s the level of intellectual rot we’re dealing with.

Te reo isn’t “thriving.” It’s being artificially kept alive with millions of taxpayer dollars. That’s not revival — that’s resuscitation. You’re funding it whether you use it or not. Whether you like it or not. Whether you even asked for it or not. And most of us didn’t.

Let’s talk about passports? Nah — this goes way beyond passports. This is government departments rebranding into unreadable bilingual soup. This is schools shoving the language into everything from maths to science. This is councils pouring money into dual signage while rates skyrocket and roads fall apart.

This isn’t progress. This is delusion — bought and paid for with public funds while hospitals are understaffed, crime’s rising, and people can’t afford groceries.

You want to speak te reo? Go for it. No one’s stopping you. But don’t turn it into some kind of compulsory national religion, then act shocked when people get sick of the sermon.

And here’s the brutal truth: most Kiwis aren’t using it, don’t need it, and sure as hell didn’t ask for it to be injected into every document, form, website, meeting, and school lesson. English works. It unites us. It functions. It’s the language of 99% of this country.

But the moment you say that out loud? You get called names by people who ran out of arguments years ago.

This isn’t racism. This is common sense.

The real extremists are the ones demanding total submission to their cultural vanity project — and calling it diversity.

Enough. Call it what it is: ideological coercion disguised as kindness. And it’s long past time it was exposed and rejected.

If we want to kill this bilingual circus once and for all, we need to go straight for the jugular. Three laws are keeping this nonsense alive: the Māori Language Act 2016, the Public Service Act 2020, and the Education and Training Act 2020. These are the lifelines feeding te reo into every corner of public life — from bloated government departments to classrooms where kids are being force-fed a language most families neither asked for nor use.

If this government had a spine, it would scrap them today. If not, then the next election needs to be a wrecking ball. Repeal the laws. Dismantle the machine. Cut off the funding, cut out the rot — and give this country a break from the cultural hostage-taking. Enough. Is. Enough.

Originally published on BreakingViews.