Real estate agents who don't attend Treaty courses will lose their licence
What’s wrong with that? you may well ask. Nothing at all, the answer is, except: “REAA, it is none of your business; mind your own, not the licensees’”.
This is a modified version of an article written for lawyers, published by the Auckland District Law Society (now named Law Association of New Zealand)’s LawNews on13 Jul 2023, under the heading Lessons for lawyers from the regulation of real estate agents. The original article can be found here. It included, “The point is not that a real estate professional should not take Te Kākano (the Seed) if she wants to. The point is that the REAA demands that the real estate professional do so, or she will not be permitted to work in her chosen field. I am publishing my LawNews article again now on Thoughts from the North because what I warned of has happened. Real Estate professionals have had their licences cancelled. One of them is Janet Dixon whose story is told here. Her licence has been cancelled because she refused to take the course
The Real Estate Agents Authority (REAA) requires a licensed real estate professional to undergo continuing professional development (CPD).1
The REAA’s CPD requirements for 2023 include two mandatory topics. The first is the Code of Conduct. These are practice rules setting out the standard of conduct and client care that agents, branch managers and salespeople are required to meet when carrying out real estate agency work and dealing with clients, contained in the Real Estate Agents Act (Professional Conduct and Client Care) Rules 2012.
These rules, required by s 14 of the Act, are a non-exhaustive statement of the conduct expected of licensees. It seems not unreasonable that a licensee should be required to know about them as a condition of being licensed.
The second mandatory topic is different. Part of the diversity and inclusion series, it is Te Kano (the Seed). The only approved training provider is Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. This is what Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi says.
Nau mai haere mai ki Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi
Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi are proud to partner with the Real Estate Authority to co-develop and deliver the first topic in the Diversity and Inclusion Series….
Overview of Te Kākano
Te Kākano consists of three modules:
· Module 1: Te Reo me ōnā tikanga – Māori language and customs
· Module 2: Te Tiriti o Waitangi – The Treaty of Waitangi
· Module 3: Whenua Māori – Māori land
Course completion cost: $29 + GST
The Act prohibits a person from carrying out any real estate agency work unless the person is licensed under the Act or falls within one of the narrow exemptions (eg, is a lawyer or an auctioneer).
When a licensed real estate professional (an agent, branch manager or salesperson who holds a licence under the Act) wishes to renew the licence (which has a 12-month term), the licensee must satisfy the registrar that he or she has completed any continuing education required by practice rules made by the REAA (s 52).
Section 54 compels the registrar to cancel a person’s licence if the person has failed to complete any continuing education required by practice rules made by the REAA (under s 15 which permits the REAA to make practice rules requiring that particular continuing education be undertaken).
No choice
So, any licensed real estate professional who fails to complete Te Kākano (the Seed) with Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi as the only approved provider must be refused licence renewal if a licence has not previously been cancelled for the failure.
The point is not that a real estate professional should not take Te Kākano (the Seed) if she wants to. The point is that the REAA demands that the real estate professional do so, or she will not be permitted to work in her chosen field.
If a particular real estate professional had or wanted to seek business in the Māori land area (I should think it would be a tiny number, if any at all), he or she might find it advantageous to take such a course, but REAA makes them all do it.
There is a difference in kind between the Code of Conduct and the Te Kākano (the Seed) topics.
The first concerns the way professionals should conduct themselves in their dealings with and for members of the community engaged in selling and buying property and the like, as outlined in the “scope and objectives” part of the rules.
They concern professional competence, fiduciary obligations, confidentiality, and other objective requirements relevant to the way the job should be done.
The brief description of the second mandatory topic, Te Kākano (the Seed), does not contain even a hint that it relates to real estate professionals’ conduct. Rather it suggests a REAA desire that attendees learn about Māori language and culture, the treaty and Māori land.
What’s wrong with that? you may well ask. Nothing at all, the answer is, except: “REAA, it is none of your business; mind your own, not the licensees’”.
What an adult human real estate professional decides to learn in matters unconnected with their professional conduct is for them, not REAA, to decide.
Regrettably, as John Stuart Mill wrote in 1859, in his famous essay On Liberty:
The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power….
Kindle Edition, p 19.
The Act gives the REAA power; the REAA says, we want you to do this; do it or you lose your licence.
The motivation cannot be to fulfil the purpose of the Act, of promoting and protecting the interests of consumers in respect of real estate transactions. Obviously, it has nothing to do with that. It is to promote an REAA agenda.
Tikanga
We can tease this out a bit further by looking at tikanga, which is the subject of much discussion at present.
The statement scheduled to the Supreme Court’s Ellis continuance decision ([2022] NZSC 114), under the heading “The nature of tikanga,” contains this:
The term ‘tika’ means ‘to be right’. Tikanga Māori therefore means the right Māori way of doing things. It is what Māori consider is just and correct.
Tikanga Māori includes all of the values, standards, principles or norms that the Māori community subscribe to, to determine the appropriate conduct.
According to the learned writers of the statement, these are for the Māori of whom the writers are speaking, “their own opinions and inclinations”, to use Mill’s words. The Māori of whom the writers are speaking are entitled to follow these values, standards, principles or norms without interference except to prevent harm to others, but there ought to be no attempt to impose them on others.
To put this in ways which have been developed over centuries and are now embodied in international conventions and domestic legislation, “the right Māori way of doing things,” “what Māori consider is just and correct,” “the values, standards, principles or norms that the Māori community subscribe to,” are matters of thought, conscience, religion, and/or belief for those who subscribe to them.
Those within the community who subscribe to them, be they Māori or non-Māori, are absolutely entitled to do so without interference (Bill of Rights, s 13). By the same token, those who do not subscribe to them are equally entitled to go about their lives without being subjected to attempts to make them do so.
Overreach
In 2008, the legislators may not have realised that the REAA they created would in 2023 use its powers the way it has. These so-called independent bodies the government creates enable surreptitious incursions on individual liberty immune from both democratic accountability and the parliamentary and public scrutiny attendant on legislative action.
The Real Estate Agents Act 2008 (the Act) created the Real Estate Agents Authority (REAA) as a Crown entity for the purposes of s 7 of the Crown Entities Act 2004 (CEA) which applies to the REAA except to the extent that the REAA provides otherwise. There is a variety of Crown entities. The REAA is a Crown agent (Part 1 of Schedule 1). The minister responsible for the Act appoints the REAA Board.
Thanks Gary for your well considered commentary on this matter.
Presumably there is no equivalent course requirement to understand the nation's predominantly Anglo Western democratic culture? Clearly a rhetorical question. Even though it would probably make some sense for more recent immigrants. Or perhaps even more appropriate for the profession, a course in Chinese culture.
What puzzles me is how the leadership of such organisations, with REAA being one of many, including the legal profession and judiciary, have allowed themselves to be drawn into an obsessive compulsion to force adoption of CRT and DEI ideology, including promotion of what is essentially the remnants of a pre-industrial tribal culture.
It seems we may have gone past the point of effectively rebutting this pervasive poison of Maori wokeness by reasoned arguments. Maybe the time has come to actually encourage it in the reasonable expectation that the excessive enthusiasm for such bee ess among the wokerati will become so evident that the (mythical?) Common People will rise up in revolt.
Much like what appears to be happening in USA where the outrage builds as the egregious excesses of USAID are publicised.