Key blasts 'divisive' harping by Harawira

Prime Minister John Key says Hone Harawira's constant recitals of his "one-sided perspective" of New Zealand's history are "negative" and do nothing to improve race relations.

The Maori Party will meet today for its first caucus meeting of 2010 to consolidate after a bruising year.

The day-long gathering in Auckland will be the first meeting of the full caucus since Maori Party MP Harawira's renowned "white mother*******" email, referring to Pakeha raping Maori lands.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said the meeting would give them a chance to settle in again after the controversy over Mr Harawira, which was a difficult time for the party.

"The party has been working really hard looking at how we use our kaupapa and tikanga [rules and customs]. We will be talking about that."

The party had hoped to have left the Harawira controversy behind, but it was reignited after Mr Harawira spoke at the Parihaka Festival last weekend, saying he did not withdraw from his comments about Pakeha "raping" Maori land and "ripping us off".

"All I was doing was holding up a mirror to New Zealand," he said.

Mr Key, at his first media conference since returning from holiday, said one of the reasons that National formed an arrangement with the Maori Party was to improve race relations a process he believed Mr Harawira was now damaging.

"In my view the comments of Hone Harawira both in his most recent speech and pre-Christmas are ... quite divisive, and ultimately they are negative. They are not helping the process. They are actually hindering the process."

He hoped one of the hallmarks of his Government would be improved race relations. While he understood there was room for improvement, he said Mr Harawira was "stirring up a one-sided perspective of history" and the constant relitigation of the past was not helpful.

Labour MP Kelvin Davis has also criticised Mr Harawira for focusing on the past. In a blog on Labour MPs' Red Alert, Mr Davis, a Maori MP based in Northland, noted that Mr Harawira had said a lot about "raping and pillaging" by Pakeha when it would be better for Maori to look to themselves to solve modern-day ills.

"We can accuse all and sundry of raping and pillaging our land, foreshore and seabed but we, as Maori, have done a helluva a lot to ourselves too.

"We would do well to hold a mirror up to our own faces, but it's a helluva lot easier to blame those bloody Pakehas."

He said Mr Harawira also seemed to believe a repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act was a cure-all for Maori woes.

"We are generally dumber, sicker, poorer, more pissed, drugged and pregnant than any other group of people in New Zealand. We know the problem, but what's the solution? Well let's repeal the Foreshore and Seabed and put the F&S into Maori title. We can be dumber, sicker, poorer, more pissed, drugged and pregnant at the beach. That'll make all the difference."

He personally believed education would do more.

Today's caucus meeting will be the first time Mrs Turia will personally see Mr Harawira since the email, which had pushed the party's leadership to request him to resign before a strong outpouring of support for him from its membership.

Mrs Turia said the primary reason for the caucus meeting today was to make decisions about where the focus would lie in the year ahead. Issues included the Foreshore and Seabed Act, upcoming Treaty settlements, plus the party's social welfare Whanau Ora package and water rights.