One of the fundamental questions facing Māori politicians and Māori political parties is, are they inside or outside the tent? Working within the system or against it?
The first iteration of Te Pāti Māori was determinedly inside. It even went into government with National and Act. It won a string of policy victories – most notably overturning Labour’s foreshore and seabed legislation and introducing Whānau Ora, a family-centric social services delivery model rooted in tikanga and mātauranga Māori. It also negotiated the survival of the Māori electorate seats, which National had pledged to abolish once all Treaty of Waitangi settlements had been resolved. But by 2017, all those seats had returned to Labour and the Māori Party was out of Parliament.
Jacinda Ardern’s government in 2020 boasted the largest Māori caucus in history. Members were very much pro-system and in-tent, using their influence to deliver co-governance, a reduction in the prison population and Māori wards in local councils. These came at the cost of tremendous political capital to Labour, but Māori voters punished their MPs anyway, with Te Pāti Māori – the new, more radical iteration of the Māori Party – recapturing six of the seven Māori seats.
Its MPs have heard the message from their constituents and conspicuously situated their party outside the tent. It is a protest movement operating out of Parliament, rather than a standard parliamentary party. The coalition government acts as the perfect villain for its purposes and its Budget day push for a new Māori parliament takes its against-the-system strategy to its logical conclusion. Why not erect your own tent?
Māori parliament
There have been Māori parliaments before: mock ones during the protest movements of the 1970s, but the Kotahitanga assemblies of the late-19th century played a key role in the post-New Zealand Wars era, when Māori had minimal power or influence in mainstream politics. The notion of resurrecting some form of Māori parliament has been much discussed by constitutional theorists, who note that our current system lacks an upper house: perhaps a Māori chamber would be appropriate under the partnership principle of the treaty? Or perhaps, they suggest, New Zealand could adopt the Norwegian Sami model, in which the indigenous people of Scandinavia have their own representative body, with limited sovereignty delegated to them? Or maybe New Zealand could have a tricameral government consisting of iwi and hapū, the crown and a joint deliberative body? The public loves parliaments so much, why not have three?
Given the current state of our race relations, it’s hard to see any of these coming to pass. But it’s also hard to see that Māori remain underrepresented in mainstream politics. The government – which Te Pāti Māori depicts as a white supremacist movement conducting a genocide against Māori – includes a significant Māori ministry: Winston Peters, Shane Reti, Shane Jones, Tama Potaka, Nicole McKee, Casey Costello and, outside the cabinet, Karen Chhour. None of them represent Māori electorates. But of the 567,000 Māori enrolled to vote in last year’s election, just under 200,000 cast a candidate vote in a Māori seat; less than half of them voted for Te Pāti Māori. Thousands of them cast party votes for Act (Act!), more than 8000 for New Zealand First and nearly 10,000 for National. Many Māori on the general roll (where Māori traditionally skew left) supported right-wing parties.
Te Pāti Māori and Labour’s Māori caucus have form for attacking any Māori disagreeing with their politics as inauthentic, not real Māori (unlike themselves), sometimes even race traitors. We’re unlikely to see a functional or representative Māori assembly emerging from this style of politics but it will be a fine platform for more media stunts and accusations of mass extermination.
The JT factor
The most influential figure driving this radical new model of politics is a very established, rather conservative, infamously cunning former Labour cabinet minister. John Tamihere is the Te Pāti Māori president and widely regarded as the strategic and organisational force behind his party’s success. But he’s also coming under scrutiny for the complicated arrangements behind Te Pāti Māori’s funding. One of its most generous funders has been the Waipareira Trust, the urban Māori community charity run by Tamihere in West Auckland. Much of its funding comes from the state via the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, where Tamihere is chief executive. After a lengthy legal process, the Charities Commission last year instructed the Waipareira Trust to claw back $385,000 of interest-free loans advanced to Tamihere for two political campaigns.
Now, Stats NZ is investigating claims that Te Pāti Māori misused Census data and personal information collected during the Covid-19 immunisation campaign to help win Tāmaki Makaurau – a Māori electorate it captured off Labour by a margin of only 42 votes. There have been calls for a wider inquiry into the party’s funding and campaigning activities. In a battle of wits and lawyers between Wellington’s regulators and Tamihere, the smart money would go on Tamihere.
Labour will regard all of this with horror. It is desperate to win back the Māori electorates but Tamihere will be very hard to beat. His candidates can escalate to ever more radical policies and statements, while Labour’s are constrained by its need to win over centrist Pākehā votes.
The right-wing parties can gleefully point out that a vote for the left coalition is a vote for an even more radical form of co-governance, ethnic separatism and a party that is calling for a literal revolution.
It’s hard to build a coalition inside the tent when a pivotal partner is outside it, gleefully trying to burn the tent down.
