Terry Dunleavy: A party for Maori and friends

COMMENT




The formation of an independent Maori-based political party is now as inevitable as it will be timely.

Inevitable because significant numbers of Maori realise they can no longer rely on the long-trusted judicial systems represented by the Privy Council, the Court of Appeal, the Maori Land Court or the Waitangi Tribunal to protect their interests.

Nor can they continue to place their trust in a Labour Party that has patronised them or a National Party that has lately betrayed them.

They must now unite and take their case to the fountainhead of lawmaking and power, Parliament, where, thanks to the proportionality that underpins MMP, they will be able to exercise a balance of influence in the governance of the country.

Timely because now as never before in recent generations, they have a cause which unites previously disunited iwi and hapu - protection of what they perceive to be their customary rights to the foreshore and seabed.

Timely also, because, as never before, they have in their ranks leaders more than capable of holding their own with Pakeha in Parliament and in the Beehive.

Thanks to its vacillation (to put the most kindly interpretation on it) on the foreshore and seabed, Labour can no longer take the Maori vote for granted, as it has since the compact made in 1936 between Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, founder of the Maori church that bears his name, and Labour Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage.

The current leadership of the Ratana movement must surely be asking itself what it has gained for its people from that association, and whether it should transfer its allegiance to a new Maori-based party early enough to be able to exert influence on its direction.

The policy u-turn by National is no less pronounced. When I became active in National Party organisation in 1959, it could boast the active involvement of luminaries such as Pei Te Hurinui Jones, Henry Ngata and Maui Pomare.

In 1991, in one of his first acts as Prime Minister, Jim Bolger inspired his caucus and party to commit to redress and reparation of the awful thefts of Maori land and resources during the mid-19th century.

To head the project as treaty settlements minister, he appointed able lawyer Doug Graham. What then happened has been one of the more heart-warming aspects of our history.

That benign National attitude to Maori, apart from continued commitment to settlement of treaty grievances, has now been turned on its head by the present leadership and party caucus, which has earned feelings of despair and deep-seated animosity from most of the few Maori supporters it once had.

New Zealand First enjoyed spectacular success in 1996, capturing from Labour all the then Maori constituency seats.

But its subsequent decisions to support the abolition of those seats and its refusal to stand candidates in them probably rules it out as the principal means by which Maori might achieve a balance of political power.

No other existing party offers even the remotest shreds of hope for Maori political influence.

I use the term "a Maori-based" party. While it will be led and driven mainly by Maori, and its target will be the constituency seats reserved for voters on the Maori roll, the new party will gain support from many Pakeha who share Maori regard for the Treaty of Waitangi as the founding document of modern New Zealand, and who can cast their list votes for that party.


A Maori lawyer acquaintance was moved by these words that I wrote in a private message to Maori friends working toward the formation of the new political party: "One of the things I have noticed (and you must have noted it also) is that, when exposed to expressions of Maori culture, most Pakeha show signs of being uncomfortable and inadequate to the point of feeling 'threatened'.

"It's not only that they don't understand those parts of tikanga which are only in te reo, but they also feel a sense of powerless or inadequacy in the face of a culture which is different, which they know belongs in New Zealand, but which they don't understand.

"They feel like outsiders, and they don't like that feeling, even though they will not admit it.

"It forces them to admit to themselves that, in this area, they are inferior. No one likes to confess inferiority, and that feeling breeds self-doubt and leads to animosity."

My Maori lawyer friend commented: "For once in my life I find myself wanting to help Pakeha rather than counter them. To also sow a different seed which lets Maori and Pakeha know that this is our collective country, our heritage, our culture.

"I do not know if I am maturing or slowly selling out or both. But I do know that we have a need for new leadership. Leadership that celebrates what brings us together as cultures - rather than promoting difference. Leadership with a positive vision for our country and our people, and the courage and perseverance to deliver on that vision."

Amen to that. This confirmed to me that there will be a Maori-based party, supported also by sympathetic non-Maori embraced by the inclusiveness that is one core people-oriented tenet of tikanga Maori.

Reservations expressed by some attending the hui last weekend at Hoani Waititi marae about a lack of the finance and practical resource so necessary for the launch of an effective party will be easily overcome once well-resourced Maori institutions such as Ngai Tahu, Tainui, other iwi incorporations and trusts realise that their own political party offers the best hope for protection of their people's interests.

And when it happens, the new party must not be condemned as being racist or divisive.

It must be seen in exactly the same light as other parties formed over the years by New Zealanders with a common interest: the workers and trade unions who formed Labour, the liberal conservative farmers and business people who formed National, the protagonists of a flat-tax society who formed Act, the promoters of a flat-earth society who formed the Greens, and the self-confessed defenders of family and Christian values who formed United Future.

Just another band of New Zealanders flexing their combined political muscle, even if, in this instance, from a unique position as first settlers, to whose ancestors binding promises were made by the Crown in return for their cession of sovereignty.

* Terry Dunleavy, of Takapuna, is a former office-holder in the National Party, and a Pakeha member of Te Whanau o Hato Petera.