SovCits used fake ID to access Parliament, Government House, police say

Catherine Hubbard of

By Catherine Hubbard of

A group who believe they are exempt from New Zealand law managed to gain access to the Prime Minister's floor at Parliament using fake identification, according to a police intelligence presentation.

The police powerpoint presentation, released to Stuff under the Official Information Act, said members of sovereign citizens group Mauri Nation used fake ID to reach the Prime Minister's floor at Parliament.

The presentation from the Police Security Intelligence and Threats Group in November last year, does not say whether the Prime Minister - then Jacinda Ardern - was present.

It said the group served documents to parliamentary staff. The group confirmed to Stuff that members had gone to the Prime Minister's floor in December 2020 but denied using fake ID to do so.

Police referred questions on the incident to the Parliamentary Service but its chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said the service could not comment on matters relating to security.

Members of the same group, who claim to be the rightful successors of Aotearoa and believe New Zealand to be run by an imposter business entity, also used fake identification to bypass security at Government House, police said.

In response to Stuff questions, a Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet spokesperson said on 22 December 2020, members of the group arrived at Government House misrepresenting who they were.

They were briefly admitted to the grounds, before being escorted off site, and police were notified.

The spokesperson said at no time did the group gain access to Government House, and the governor-general was not in residence.

"Government House is confident the appropriate security protocols are in place."

Through the Crown of the Mauri Nation website, Stuff was referred to a woman called Lady Crown Turikatuku III, who said she was the Sovereign Crown of the Mauri Nation.

Turikatuku III, speaking from Australia, said the documents were a "royal decree" and were served by a group of people to the Prime Minister's personal assistant, the Treasury solicitor, and the secretary to the governor-general on 22 December 2020.

She denied using fake ID and said the group simply presented themselves as men and women.

"There's no threat, it's just serving them," she said.

Turikatuku III said she was served a trespass notice and final orders.

Sovereign citizens, known as SovCits, are a movement of who broadly believe the New Zealand government is illegitimate, and consider themselves exempt from the law.

Equipped with pseudo-legal information rooted in historical laws and principles like the Magna Carta, SovCits have provided government departments with extensive paperwork to try and evade their legal obligations.

The Crown of the Mauri Nation website says it is "the highest authority in Aotearoha/Aotearoa/Nu Tireni/geographical Land Mass New Zealand". It lists offices in Waipu, Northland and in Parramatta, New South Wales.

The police document also revealed that 880 people had sent "unwanted" paper correspondence to government ministers or police.

It said that the last four years, 1270 individuals have shown indications of holding Sov Cit beliefs, and 130 people demonstrated SovCit beliefs during vehicle stops.

Pseudolaw expert Dr Stephen Young, an associate professor of law at the University of Otago, said SovCits serving documents on local and central government was concerning, but in some ways was "par for the course".

"There's a big movement among them to dissociate from the state, to say that they're not subject to the state, so they'll use other types of documentation."

"So from the state's perspective, this could be fake identification. But for them, they believe it's identification for some other state or for some other nation that they belong to."

SovCits would serve notices, affidavits, and what they called self-executing contracts on government to say 'I'm no longer subject to you', he said.

"This is something that's going to show that I'm already separate from the government and if you continue to enforce the law against me, then you're in breach of our law, and we're going to charge you millions of dollars, or at more extreme levels, there could be death threats."

While he was unfamiliar with Mauri Nation, Young said sometimes indigenous activists were finding SovCit ideas and working with them, while in other cases SovCits were appropriating indigenous sovereignty and indigenous movements for themselves.

SovCits might make "entirely fraudulent claims" that they had authority from an iwi or a tribe.

Young said from talking to people in the police and in government, they were aware of the threats that SovCits posed, and were taking steps to mitigate that as much as possible.

"But it's also important probably not to overstate the threat. In some sense, we don't really have any evidence here that they're dangerous like they are in the US."

- This story was first published by Stuff.