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Peter Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week.
Stop the presses!
A political party wants the Māori electorates back on the election agenda. New Zealand First says let’s have a referendum and let the people decide.
The Winston party thinks it knows what the people would decide – we’d vote for their abolition, although probably only by narrow margin.
Total votes on Māori wards in last year’s local body elections actually favoured their retention by 52.3 per cent to 48.3 per cent but because it was a council by council vote, 25 of the 42 voting on the issue had them removed.
The Māori electorate issue is a tried and true political tactic, designed to make some news headlines and generate a bit of radio talkback. Yet the idea has been mooted and moved, discussed but discarded, so many times in the last quarter century that any cynical observer realises nothing will ever come of it.
Because when courage is needed to actually deliver on the policy, no politician in this country has that attribute in the necessary quantity.
The key point is the essential wishy-washiness of the current National Party when it comes to race issues.
Remember that Bill English (in 2003), Don Brash and John Key all promised they would get rid of the Māori seats. English and Brash never had the opportunity because they didn’t make it to power. Key just reneged because he became mates with Pita Sharples and allowed us to be signed up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
These days Christopher Luxon cowers in the face of Māori criticism of him and his party. Remember last year he said there wasn’t one thing he liked about ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill? That was the bill that said the government has the right to govern and that all citizens were equal before the law – and Luxon didn’t like any of that!
Unforgivable.
After Winston brought the issue back to the election year table, Luxon is fiddling with his cutlery and napkin.
“It’s something we haven’t discussed around the caucus table,” he told Newstalk ZB.
For heaven’s sake, don’t you have an opinion on it? Can’t you give us a hint of your thinking?
His avoidance of the topic says it all. He won’t allow National under his leadership to entertain the idea.
However, in the movement to have the Māori seats removed, Winston Peters is far from blameless. In 2017 he campaigned on a referendum being a “bottom line” for his party in any coalition. He went with Labour and the line was quietly erased. It’s reported he never even suggested the idea during negotiations.
Then there’s ACT. Their policy has long been the abolition of race-based electorates but when they had the opportunity to do something about it in 2023 coalition negotiations didn’t move on the matter. They should be backing New Zealand First’s idea for a referendum or at least pushing for the system they used with assisted dying – pass legislation but make its implementation subject to a referendum.
It’s well recognized that MMP has taken away the need for separate Māori representation in the parliament. Over a third of the cabinet and more than a quarter of MPs now have some Māori ancestry. The 1986 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform recommended no Māori roll and no Māori constituencies.
But the royal commission also made what is essentially a racist and unworkable recommendation. It said “parties primarily representing Māori interests” would have the threshold for representation waived. Apart from that definition being extraordinarily ill-defined, the threshold waiver would lead to ineffective one MP parties represented in parliament. That’s why the parliament of the time put the issue in the too-hard basket and baulked at Māori seat abolition.
As the voices of the left are allowed to holler louder and louder, and the long march through our educational institutions strides on unabated, politicians from the right and centre-right will have occasional burps about making moves on the Māori constituencies. New Zealand First has just exhaled.
Don Brash and Hobson’s Pledge reckons separate Māori representation will be gone by 2030.
But with the parties of the left not interested in engaging and National shy on the issue, we should tell them they’re dreaming.
The Māori seats will never be abolished.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
