Historic chance to transcend race lost

It's always a little sad when people of talent and political skill take a wrong turn and miss their opportunity for a place in history, preferring irrelevance instead.

I'm responding to the news that Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples, the Maori Party leaders, have agreed to fill up their dance cards with John Key of National and John Banks of Act.

Yes, yes, they plaintively argue, it's only for confidence and supply. We're still against asset sales and charter schools and we want to campaign to wipe out poverty, which may take as long as twenty years. Yeah, right.

I've always been a bit sceptical of race-based politics, but two instances come to mind that have caused me to think more deeply.

Nelson Mandela overcame the violent elements of his party, the African National Congress, to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That made possible forgiveness for past misdeeds against blacks by the ruling whites and paved the way for a more functional majority-ruled South Africa, without a bloodbath.

In the US, Martin Luther King began his campaign as a movement for black civil rights. Its initial aim was redress of the wrongs of a racist past .

While laudable in itself, the goal of equality for blacks was not King's sole aim after his historic march on Washington in 1963. By 1968 King was engaged in the greater goal of social justice for all races. His martyrdom occurred in Memphis, where he came to take part in strike action by garbage workers demanding a living wage.

It is this last aim that truly elevated King's lofty work, taking it beyond the self-interest implicit in race-based politics, no matter how moral their aim. This is the opportunity that history had held out to the leaders of the Maori Party, Tariana and Pita. It is not a cause that could be undertaken by Hone Harawira in that his own racism is so deep and blinding.

While clearly focused on issues of concern to Maori, Turia and Sharples are intelligent enough and sufficiently enlightened to be able to seize an opportunity to represent the interests of the economically and socially disadvantaged, regardless of race.

After all, it's the 99 per cent who are suffering from the increased GST and its inflationary offshoot in the cost of everything so that the one-per centers can enjoy their tax cuts. In the long run it's the disadvantaged who will suffer from poor schools, poor health, poor economic opportunity.

So why would these two join with the likes of John Banks and John Key? Whose interests do Act and National represent? National, all along, has been floating asset sales to pay for the taxes they don't collect from our millionaires. And when those asset sales go through, will anyone absolve Tariana and Pita of complicity? How can the Maori Party, the people whose basic principles include the notion of tangata whenua, sit alongside those eager to sell off our patrimony?

I've alluded to the answer before, but it's worth repeating. Orwell's Animal Farm tells the story of the rebellion of the farm animals against their human masters after frustration over their exploitation. They campaign for equality of all animals but the brightest among them, the pigs, become the leaders and turn the campaign slogan from "All animals are equal" to "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".

At the end, the leaders of the two sides, humans and pigs, sit around the conference table to iron things out. Orwell's last line says it all: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."