On 23 July, 2025, Stanford spoke to Sean Plunket on The Platform. He wanted answers about the place of Te Tiriti in the Act.

Plunket: Is it going to stay in there? (from 7 mins)

Stanford: … I don’t want to be doing this five or six times. I want to do it once and I want to do it right … There will be changes.

Plunket: Will they be the changes that the people who are making smoke come out of my text machine right now will agree with?

Stanford: I think that they will. But, they need to wait. It is important that we get it right … I don’t want to be talking about the Treaty, I want to be talking about reading, writing, maths, achievement.

Plunket: So the way to do that is get the Treaty, get all this Treaty stuff, out of education, right?

Stanford: In one go.

This interview supports the one that Plunket had with Michael Johnston on 4 July, where he said that Stanford was being politically sensible to not remove it at this point.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW HERE

I have wondered about the extent to which the ideological positions Stanford has been repeatedly exposed to from Rata and The New Zealand Initiative would influence her thinking. We saw Stanford echoing Rata’s views about cultural responsiveness being a “misdiagnosis” of our education challenges when she was on a stage in Florida in late June, 2025 – a glimpse that that exposure was influencing her thinking. And here we have Stanford explicitly stating a position that aligns almost exactly with Rata and emails she sent to Stanford and Luxon in late June, 2025.

Why does this matter? – All politicians are influenced by thinkers and ideology.

The issue we have with Stanford is she has repeatedly allowed those thinkers, who are at the extreme end of right-wing thinking, to influence and direct the work of government in ways that go against the spirit of or violate public service guidelines and democratic process. This video is clear evidence that Stanford shares one of their key aims, and she is going to make use of “legislative vehicles that are coming up” to realise it, “soon”. We should all be alarmed that one small group is able to exercise such power.

This not-so-slow erosion of democratic guardrails is a warning sign, identified by democracy scholars like Levitsky and Way, that we are experiencing democratic backsliding. That is how all of us, bar a select few, lose our voice, any chance of meaningful participation, and our dignity.

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