Issue 74 - editorial

The gloves are coming off

Tena ano tatou

Don Brash’s resignation at the end of 2006 and John Key’s elevation to the leadership of the National Party has created a lot of interest, not least among Maori.

The messages Don Brash gave during his time as leader turned Maori off, but then they weren’t aimed at Maori anyway.

John Key’s initial comments like: ‘Maori have a special place in this country because they are tangata whenua’ had us leaning forward again, listening for what would come next. Members of the Maori Party and John Key broke bread together and that caused speculation about what this might mean in the lead up to the next general election.

We heard last year that National might support the Maori Party in a bid to get the Foreshore and Seabed debate back into Parliament, and that there might be a pull back on their hard line on the Maori seats.

But now we know those hopes were raised in vain. Obviously the word back from the ‘blue bleachers’ wasn’t good. There are signs too that maybe the media and other political parties’ gloves are about to come off in the public treatment of the Maori Party.

Labour list MP Shane Jones somehow managed to blame the Maori Party for the failure of the last Maori option to produce another Maori seat; that’s despite around 15000 people joining the Maori roll.

Then John Key dashed Maori hopes saying the Nats won’t support the Foreshore and Seabed issue being referred to a select committee again, and then added another blow by stating that if National has its way the Maori seats will be gone by 2014.

The media believes it has spotted a schism between Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples, and Sean Plunket of Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report recently ended the honeymoon by turning his testy interruptive interviewing technique loose on Pita Sharples. Maori and their MPs need to realise that the next election campaign has begun. The irony is that just as Maori are starting to get some traction in the political arena, the rules are being changed; and that impetus will come in the end from both Labour and National, and maybe other parties too.

In the bad old days when there were only four Maori seats the arrangement suited Labour because they always won them. And it suited National too because it confined the entire Maori vote, and therefore the electoral damage, to just four seats.

Again in those bad old days, regardless of how many voters were on the Maori roll, we only had four seats. Today we have seven, but at the next election the South Island general electorates will have an average of just over 57 500 voters; the North just over 57 000; but in the Maori seats we will average 60,000 voters, making our vote worth considerably less than a voter in the general seats.

The political playing field is not as severely tilted against Maori as it used to be, but it is still tilted. And moves to abolish the Maori seats will only serve to rapidly bring back the bad old days.

Our cover girl Georgina Beyer has lived through some bad times too. She’s about to bow out of national politics and her life story - at least so far – makes for remarkable reading. As usual this issue of Mana is packed with a range of stories that we hope you enjoy reading, and as always, we welcome your feedback.