National softens tone on Maori

The National Party looks likely to repackage its policy towards Maori, fearing its hard-line stance turned off too many urban voters at the last election.

Leading up to Waitangi Day, and his 2006 speech to the Orewa Rotary Club, Don Brash told the Herald on Sunday his party needed to reaffirm the policies he outlined at Orewa in previous years "in a way that does not make us anti-Maori".

He denied his party was taking a softer line on Maori issues, saying he was never anti-Maori but opposed to "disastrous affirmative action programmes" and claims that the Treaty of Waitangi was "about two distinct groups of people".

"We need to highlight the positive things needed to assist Maori out of the bad statistics, and remove obstacles that specifically hold back Maori," he said.

But he also conceded he would be trying to avoid "losing another spokesperson" when he delivered his fourth speech at the Orewa Rotary Club on January 31.

Maori Affairs spokeswoman Georgina te Heuheu was dumped after she refused to endorse the race relations approach detailed in Brash's 2004 Orewa speech on race-based privilege.

Welfare spokeswoman Katherine Rich was sacked last year after she wouldn't support financial penalties for women who had further children on the DPB.

"I'll need to find a male Pakeha to lose a portfolio," Brash joked, "so people don't think I have a thing against women or Maori."

Brash was reluctant to reveal the content of his Orewa speech, but said it would not focus on any particular policy area.

Since January 2003, his annual appearance at the Orewa Rotary Club has been a highlight of the political year. While the race relations speech is known as Orewa I, it was his second time at the club.

Brash said he preferred to forget his first speech there. "If you remember, that's when I suggested the unemployed could line up outside post offices each day for work."

The line brought derision from many, as New Zealand Post Office had long been corporatised into Post Shops. Since that day, the Opposition Leader's Orewa speeches have caused anticipation and controversy.

But this year, Brash said, he would take a broad view and "draw threads of policy together".

Brash said National was also planning use more private members' bills "in a positive agenda".

For example, he planned to push for reform of Maori land ownership so it could be used to benefit owners "in the same way as owning land helps other New Zealanders".

Maori incorporations have complained they cannot sell their land and reinvest the money elsewhere.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY