NZ Herald editorial: Can the Maori Party survive?

Opinion

The tears shed by the Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell over the election result were perhaps so much for himself or his lost seat or even for his party's last foothold in Parliament. It could also have been for what this result will likely mean for the place of Maori in New Zealand politics.

The Maori Party was formed on the idea that an indigenous minority needs a distinctive voice in national politics, independent of other political parties because its interests and status cannot be completely satisfied by a mainstream party.

It was born in protest at the last Labour Government's attempt to erase customary tribal claims to the foreshore and seabed. But if the founding idea was sound, the creation of an independent party probably should have happened 10 years earlier, when the country adopted MMP.

Proportional representation looked certain to give Maori a distinct presence in politics, so certain that the 1986 royal commission on electoral reform thought they would no longer need a separate electoral roll and reserved seats in Parliament. MMP was adopted in 1993.

For a few years thereafter it seemed Winston Peters' newly formed New Zealand First party would represent Maori interests. It won all five Maori electorates at the 1996 election. But the seats returned to Labour in 1999 when NZ First's coalition with National ended badly for both.

Following the foreshore and seabed, the newly formed Maori Party won four of the six Maori electorates at the 2005 election. Flavell was one of the original four, with co-leaders Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples and Hone Harawira. At the next election, the Maori seats had increased to seven and the Maori Party won five of them. They were invited to join the incoming National Government - and they did.

It was a step designed to prove the party's independence of Labour and its belief in working inside governments of either stripe. The working arrangement survived for nine years. But while the Maori Party has functioned as a link between the Government and the Iwi Leaders' Forum, it has steadily lost the confidence of Maori voters.

It lost two electorates in 2011, one of them to Harawira, who had left to form his own party, Mana, in opposition to National. At the 2014 election, when Turia and Sharples retired, the Maori Party retained just one electorate, Flavell's, enabling it to bring in one additional MP, Marama Fox, on its party vote. As impressive as she has been, the party's failure to win any seats this time takes her out of Parliament too.

Flavell has announced he will not try again. He can be lachrymose by nature but he must be deeply disillusioned. The party's survival probably now depends on Fox, the equally impressive Northland GP Lance O'Sullivan, who says he will stand next time, and Dame Tariana Turia, who says she is coming out of retirement to help.

But it is hard to sustain any party without the resources available to members of Parliament, and even diehard Maori Party supporters must be wondering if a majority of Maori voters will ever share the kaupapa.