‘One people’ campaign

A new ‘‘anti-separatism’’ campaign fronted by former National Party leader Don Brash has been launched to pressure politicians into opposing preferential treatment of Maori.

The campaign group is calling for an end to separatism and racebased laws.

The campaign, Hobson’s Pledge, is named after the first governor of New Zealand, Captain William Hobson, and his statement upon signing the Treaty of Waitangi that ‘‘we are now one people’’.

The campaign says it wants to ‘‘arrest a decline into irreversible separatism’’ by ending race-based structures and co-governance models, but claims ‘‘we are not in any sense anti-Maori’’.

Brash said the catalyst for the campaign were government policies which would ‘‘create a constitutional preference for those with a Maori ancestor’’.