Editorial: Maori force growing to quit Labour

This country has seen several attempts to launch a political party dedicated to Maori representation and there is no reason yet to think the latest attempt will be any more successful. Yet the very frequency of the attempts suggests it is only a matter of time before Maori find a way to become an independent force in Parliament. In that respect, one important figure in the latest bid may turn out to be its likely president, Professor Whatarangi Winiata.

Professor Winiata has produced more detailed proposals than probably anybody in the country for a separate exercise of Maori political power. He has advocated not a separate party but a distinct Maori House of Parliament, constitutionally equal to the present House. Both, he suggests, should be subservient to a third chamber, a Treaty House, where a Maori minority would have as much power as representatives of the majority.

That proposition has absolutely no prospect of acceptance in this or any other democratic country. It offends a basic principle of political equality, that each citizen's vote should be given the same weight. Professor Winiata's constitution, albeit endorsed by the Maori Council, is not acceptable to the majority in this country, nor is it ever likely to be. But Maori might not need anything as elaborate to make themselves a force in national politics.

They could design a party to be the Maori political forum of Professor Winiata's design. Indeed, a viable Maori political party would have to be capable of resolving differences within Maori society before taking a position in Parliament. It might need to devise a system of Maori assembly where tribal and other differences can be aired, acknowledged and reconciled to a united policy. If the party could win a crucial number of seats in Parliament, the rest of the country would take a keen interest in its policy-making procedures, especially if the procedures took the form of a national Maori assembly.

MMP allows a party representing potentially 14 per cent of the electorate to exert considerable power. It is an opportunity many of MMP's advocates believed Maori might seize, but they have been slow to do so, preferring to maintain allegiance to the Labour Party. Even now, under the strain of the foreshore and seabed claim, the old ties with Labour are proving resilient. Tainui, at a recent hui, was wary of endorsing the proposed party.

The dilemma, as always, is whether the Maori voice might be more at risk of being sidelined if it was not expressed through a mainstream party. MMP offers the temptation of a Maori party exercising the balance of power but Maori must also consider that a small party is rarely in that happy position. Most small parties most of the time are peripheral players in the political contest and a Maori party would be no exception.

Against that, the party's proponents argue that Maori representatives are peripheral players most of the time in the Labour Party's political calculations - never more than now as the National Party rides a backlash against the special recognition accorded Maori in legislation, local government, education and national rites.

The political interests of Labour and Maori now sharply diverge. The divergence could not be more stark than in the foreshore case, where customary claims clash deeply with Labour's instincts for public ownership. Labour's priority now is to mollify middle New Zealand; Maori, as the recent hikoi demonstrated, are not going to accept a backward step.

Maori mean to keep the recognition they have gained even if the Brash backlash means they can get no further for a while. They must calculate whether they can better hold their position as an independent party with numbers it could bring to bear if the National Party wins power.

It cannot be easy to step outside a comfortable party that has been generally accommodating of Maori interests. But a consensus could be building that this is the time to take the step.