Tapu Misa: Conviction and courage key to creating a fairer country

I might have mentioned Susan before. She's a middle-aged Pakeha woman who lives in Kohimarama, and has written to me regularly for several years. She voted National, thinks people like me make way too big a deal of Don Brash's Orewa 1 speech, hates what she sees as political correctness and Helen Clark's "Stalinist" tendencies, and believes that Maori get too many handouts.

Despite a fair bit of goodwill, Susan and I sit on opposite sides, and I doubt that will ever change.

So, too, with another National Party supporter, who is Pakeha, from a farming background and one of the most decent people I know. Labour would have needed to have a dream run to convince him they deserved to stay in government. For him, there were too many missteps, a fraction too much arrogance and obfuscation.

So we have been divided this election - just like the rest of the nation. No big deal. We haven't even come close to coming to blows. Though I'm not sure what would have happened if the result had tipped the other way.

I would have found a silver lining, I'm sure. More conflict and unrest to write about before the almost inevitable backdown on the Maori seats and the Treaty of Waitangi, once Don Brash realised that just because he can't see Maori identity doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So the election result has exposed the divisions in our society. Why are we surprised?

The divisions were there already - we just hadn't noticed how entrenched they'd become.

In Auckland, for example, you could pick which electorate would go National by looking at the demographics. The wealthier and whiter electorates - Epsom, North Shore, Tamaki - went blue. The browner, or more culturally mixed electorates, the places where low and middle-income people live, just saw red. That's where Labour won this election - in places like Mangere, Manurewa and Manukau East.

A Samoan university student from Mangere, who voted for Labour along with 75 per cent of that electorate, tells me that Mangere voters knew how important this election would be and turned out in force to shut National out. They gave their sitting MP, the scandal-ridden Taito Phillip Field, the country's largest majority (13,860). All the same, a lot of Mangere voters had to hold their noses as they ticked Labour.

"Mangere has the highest proportion of Pacific peoples, many staunch Christians," he writes. "Such was the dilemma that on the one hand we did not agree with some of the moral directions Labour was taking us, but voting against Labour would be at what cost? A National Government that is divisive and seems to reward the rich as if they were the only hard-working people in New Zealand?

"While Helen Clark and many Labour supporters may not be used to being excluded from the 'mainstream', in Mangere we have always been labelled that: not mainstream and marginalised.

"Well, if it wasn't for these marginalised voters, Don Brash would be creating a government. Mangere did it for the lesser of two evils."

Just as pragmatic were the voters in the Maori seats that National is so keen to abolish. Many swallowed their anger at Labour's handling of the foreshore and seabed issue to give Labour 55 per cent of the party vote. However bad Labour had been, National was the devil incarnate.

So now comes the interesting part. Provided the special votes and the manoeuvrings of United Future and New Zealand First don't ruin her party, Helen Clark has two jobs ahead: to stitch up a deal that keeps faith with the people who helped her reach the finish line, and to unite a divided nation.

The pragmatists would say ditch the Greens and go with United Future or New Zealand First. But I think the faithful would prefer Labour honour its commitment to the Greens and find common ground with the Maori Party - the Greens' natural allies.

The Maori Party hierarchy must pay attention to the unambiguous signal which Maori voters have sent, and to its pre-election commitment that "we will do our utmost to ensure that the National Party does not make it to the Government benches".

If it means Labour has to give some ground on the foreshore and seabed legislation, so be it. Labour's supporters are more likely to see such an accommodation as a positive rather than a negative.

Brash's supporters, however, would be unhappy. But they're unhappy anyway.

Which brings me back to those divisions. Clark wants to heal the wounds, but glueing us back together is easier said than done - and perhaps not even possible. We can't paper over those uncomfortable divides of class, race and geography. Maybe the best we can do is acknowledge that the differences exist and learn not to fear them.

Clark and her government need to spell out their vision of a fairer, more inclusive New Zealand with more conviction. They need to keep faith with those non-mainstream New Zealanders who have given them another chance.