MATUA KAHURANGI: The PPTA’s political circus
- Administrator
- Oct 23
- 2 min read
Teachers turn activists on the public’s dime
The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) used to represent educators. Today, it’s a political pressure group masquerading as a union, and its latest stunt confirms just how far it’s drifted from neutrality.
The PPTA is now selling Toitū Te Tiriti merchandise through its website - complete with slogans, banners, and talking points straight from political activism. This isn’t about education. It’s about ideology. When a union openly campaigns against government policy and pushes one side of a divisive constitutional debate, it abandons its duty to represent all teachers, regardless of their political beliefs.
Their so-called Toitū Te Tiriti campaign is “centred in Te Ao Māori” and aims to oppose the Treaty Principles Bill, oppose removal of Te Tiriti references in legislation, and build union cultural capacity. In other words, it’s a political manifesto disguised as professional development. The PPTA isn’t just lobbying for teachers - it’s lobbying for a particular leftist worldview, and doing so under the banner of education.
When they’re not busy printing merchandise, PPTA members are on the streets waving rainbow flags during strikes - strikes that leave classrooms empty and parents scrambling for childcare. Those same flags appear in their Rainbow Resources section online, where teachers are urged to make schools “more inclusive” for “students of diverse sexualities, gender identities and sex characteristics.”
Inclusion has been twisted into indoctrination. Instead of focusing on literacy and numeracy, teachers are being encouraged to play amateur psychologists, guiding children into complex identity politics that have no place in the classroom. Kids don’t need ideological grooming - they need reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Parents have every right to feel frustrated. When schools become battlegrounds for political causes, education suffers. When teachers’ unions become campaign headquarters, trust evaporates. And when the people paid to teach our children spend their time marching with banners and selling political merchandise, it’s not just unprofessional, it’s a bloody insult to every taxpayer who funds the system.
The PPTA loves to talk about “building cultural capacity” and “affirming diversity.” What they never talk about is academic performance, discipline, or preparing students for the real world. Perhaps because those things don’t fit neatly on a t-shirt.
Matua Kahurangi writes here
Follow the money. Where does the PPTA funding come from? If its from the government why hasn't the government stopped it and had the justice department investigate possible misappropriation of funds? If the funding comes from union members (and union membership is voluntary) how many union members have resigned their membership? If the funding comes from another source, why hasn't the government made that information public? Follow the money and keep in mind, Luxon is the problem.
National and no opinion luxon may as well join the i don't know what a woman is labour party.
This is disgusting. Cancel your union fees. The teachers have lost the plot.
Worse than that how is it possible for these unions to COERCE teachers to participate in their political protests? Surely this oversteps a boundary? Teachers have to report to these supervisors. They use whatever power they can get their hands on.
I'm too angry to comment civilly! Sorry!