One of two things is going on inside the Government.

One, they know they are in trouble and likely to lose the next election so they're going hell for leather and getting as much of their agenda in place as they can. Or are they literally are completely removed from the real world and don’t have a clue?

How else do you explain today's activity at Cabinet that involves them moving forward on Māori self-determination plans?

The plan comes out of He Puapua, the document they have 1. They tried to pretend it didn't exist and 2. When it did exist, they played it down as no big deal.

The document that talks of separate parliaments, legal systems, and health services. What part of that can they possibly believe is a vote winner? What bit is the bit that excites middle New Zealand? What part of their plan to get re-elected involves going to ordinary, everyday New Zealanders and explaining that running separatist systems is something that we are all going to love and embrace?

It's a vote killer, short of the clique of separatists who long for this nonsense. It is political death and yet here we are today looking to move it forward.

It's also a two-fold debate. The first bit that has aggrieved so many is the fact this hasn’t even been debated. No one asked us, we haven't talked about it, and it wasn't part of the election. It's a bit like Three Waters, what part of the election campaign featured Three Waters? It's been done in secret.

The second part, even if you did debate it, what possible sense is there in going down a separatist path? What country having done down a separatist path thought they had made the right call?

The Labour Party some of us have voted for in previous years was not this party. Labour was once centrist with a hint of the left. Their welfare was a little more generous, their social programmes a little more widespread, and the hiring policy in the public sector a little more liberal. But separatism has never been, nor should it, ever be part of any major political party in this country.

The Māori Party? You expect it. But Labour? The party of Savage, Fraser, Nash, Nordmeyer, Lange, Palmer and Kirk? Come on.

How has this been party been so badly hijacked by the radicals? Why is today's decision even on the agenda?