Manufacturing settler-colonial consensus: ‘conservative’ media commentaries and the Treaty Principles Bill

This article investigates how selected media commentators in Aotearoa New Zealand framed the Treaty Principles Bill (TPB). Drawing on a discourse analysis of opinion pieces in The New Zealand Herald, Stuff and Newstalk ZB, this paper examines the rhetorical and ideological work in selected media commentaries by prominent media professionals in Aotearoa. The analysis identifies three dominant media frames – hegemony of logocentrism, spectacle of the indigenous other and weaponization of multiculturalism – that collectively manufactures a settler-colonial consensus around the TPB.