Issue 83 - editorial

Getting on a roll.

Tena ano tatou

It would have been hard for us not to cover the recent signing of the so-called ‘Treelords’ forest agreement between the Crown and a number of central North Island iwi. If would be even harder not to have noticed the flurry of signings being rushed through in the dying months of this Parliament.

Depending on your point of view this could be seen as a government keen on advancing justice and the Treaty settlements process; getting on with rubber-stamping a series of long worked on and well thought out settlements.

Or is it a government with its ear to the ground and eye on the polls, very keen to curry favour with disillusioned Maori voters?

We won’t really know until later in the year when there’s a General Election.

Right now most of our people are probably not worried too much about elections. They’re far too busy wrestling with wildly increased fuel costs which in turn put up food and other costs. They’re busy just trying to survive.

But there is something I’d really like you to think about. As the Maori Party’s candidate for Ikaroa-Rawhiti you may accuse me of electioneering. But this year for the first time since voting began in this country, there is a real chance for Maori to decide who gets to form the government. You can do that by voting for the Maori Party and its seven candidates at the next election.

But to vote you have to be on the roll – preferably the Maori roll. There has been alarming news in recent weeks about tens of thousands of names being wiped off the electoral rolls because their unopened enrolment packs were returned to sender.

Twelve hundred names were wiped off the Ikaroa-Rawhiti roll alone, and 10,000 people on the Ikaroa-Rawhiti roll didn’t bother to vote at the last election. Isn’t that a terrible waste of power and mana?

In our story A close call, Tamati Kruger talks about young people in Tuhoe realising for the first time that their vote does have a value. And that’s something we all need to realise. So the first thing is to get on the roll. Tipuna, parents, siblings – make sure the whanau are on the roll. Then, most importantly, make sure they exercise their two votes later this year.

In the past Maori have mainly voted for either Labour or National which has resulted in their choice being in power about half of the time. It’s also resulted in a series of stop start, on off, policy changes each time.

So why wouldn’t you want our people to have a major say in government all of the time? It’s worth thinking about.

Kia ora