KEY POINTS:
Helen Clark made a significant concession on TV's
Sunrise programme this morning when she said she could see no problem with Labour supporting the entrenchment of the Maori seats but through entrenchment of the Maori option (see end for clarification).
Last week she repeatedly avoided answering
in the affirmative after Tariana Turia said entrenchment would be a "bottom line" for any party that wanted the support of the Maori Party.
Clark's message, and only message, was that Labour was committed to keeping the Maori option - a chance for voters of Maori descent to decide every five years whether they want to be on the Maori roll or the general roll.
She would not say Labour would support entrenchment - which would give Maori seats the same protection against change as the general seats - a 75 per cent majority of Parliament or a simple majority in a referendum.
The Maori seats issue is critical.
It is the only non-negotiable policy so far stated by the party that is looking most likely to hold the balance of power after November 8.
Turia restated on TV One's smaller leaders' debate last night that entrenchment was a bottom line - and that meant supporting its draft bill to amend the Electoral Act all the way through Parliament, not just introduction as has been the case in other support agreement eg NZ First's bill to expunge references to the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation.
But in Clark's interview with Oliver Driver this morning, it was apparent she has been talking to someone like Sir Geoffrey Palmer or Margaret Wilson about constitutional matter.
She downplayed the relevance of entrenching the Maori seats saying it could be overturned by a simple majority "by a marauding right wing Government."
Technically she is right. But technically so could the entrenchment protections given to a three-year term, the voting age and the way the general seats are calculated be overturned by a simple majority.
All the above are cited in clause 268 of the Electoral Act as requiring any repeal or amendment of them to be passed by a 75 per cent majority or a majority in a referendum.
But clause 268 itself is not entrenched. So technically, a simple majority of Parliament could repeal the whole of clause 268 then reinstate the bits it wanted.
The outcry that would accompany such a cavalier move would make it pretty hazardous for the survival of the Government that pursued it I would have thought.
Perhaps the answer is to entrench section 268 along with the Maori seats- both of which would, under standing order 267, would require a 75 per cent majority of the House in the committee stages of the debate.
Act's Rodney Hide put his weight behind the Maori Party last night, supporting any move to entrench the Maori seats on the basis that what was good for the general seats should apply to the Maori seats too.
The most puzzling answer last night was from United Future's Peter Dunne who said that he too had been born in a tent after Winston Peters said his family was so poor he had spent the start of his life in a tent.
Dunne has explained today that he was born eight weeks premature and spent two months in an oxygen tent at Calvary Hospital in Christchurch. When I asked him if there had been anything wrong with him as a baby, he said "impatience."
I had a call from the PM's office this afternoon to say they didn't believe she had gone as far as saying she would entrench the Maori seats. When I listened to the Oliver Driver interview again, I think they had a point. She actually said she would have no problem entrenching the Maori option.
The effect would be the same - giving the Maori seats protection - and it is a significant advance on what she was saying last week when asked about entrenchment. "I don't make policy up on the hoof," was her response then.
Driver today asked Clark if she could live with entrenchment of the Maori seats as allowed for in a bill it has drafted.
This is Clark's full quote: "Well I'd like to see the bill. Labour is very committed to the Maori electoral option. Can't see any problem with entrenching that. In fact you wonder why it isn't entrenched now. But I would offer a word of warning Ollie, and that is that it is not designed to make things as secure perhaps as people think because the entrenching clause itself can always be overturned by a 50 per cent majority. So if you get a determined right wing National Party Government which wants to get rid of Maori seats, in the end they will find find a way to do, entrenchment or not."