This is the last of the KP reposts for now as we have run out of political parties (bar one) to repost and I am working on the Gareth Morgan/TOP one at this time.
In the 10 months since I wrote this and today little has changed in the public space visa a vis the political prospects for any Maori political party except that The Maori Party and Mana are still hanging in there and had a brief surge in the polls a few months back where they jumped to 4% (up from 1% or less) before slumping back to 1% a month later.
And while housing, immigration, the environment, badly behaved politicians and all the rest get time in the media Maori politics and issues usually do not.
This is, in part, because the ruckus around Waitangi Day this year seemed to present things as a tangled web of conflicting views and voices that had no hope of being solved but mostly because the NZ media just does not cover Maori political issues like every other political (or potentially political) issue.
In in the last 10 months I have taken every opportunity I had to talk to people (Maori and Pakeha) about their views on the situation and while there were no common positions one common theme kept coming up: the gap between tribal and urban Maori and where the wealth from the Treaty of Waitangi really seems to be going (read: the tribal elites).
Its not an issue I am going to get into now but its definitely one I am interested in because with NZ being run by a greedy elite dedicated to slash and burn austerity, benefit the rich only, politics it might make some sense if those ideas ideas and views might proliferate in the tribal elites as well.
But the issue in this post is can Mana/Maori make something of their alliance in this election and the 4% jump a while back indicated that there is potential but its needs to be on polling day to have any effect.
I like the fact that Tuku Morgan has a plan but its the execution of that plan I think might be at fault and the current mood of the electorate is all about punishing the old and arrogant while rewarding whatever populist speaker who shouts the loudest and nothing I have seen indicates that Maori are immune to that particular mood or that Tuku has figured out how to crank up such a populist stance.
Also this is the most famous post I ever wrote for KP as it ended up being part of one of Bryce Edwards political roundups; my proudest moment as a blogger.
This post has taken a while to write, mostly because there
was not much to actually write about without straying into territory that was a
lot deeper than I wished to go (something Chris Trotter noted recently in the
media) but also because the subject in question, the Maori Party, has not been
around as long as most of the other political parties and as such does not have
as much of a history that people might want to read about in a blog post such
as this.
But things have taken a turn recently and there has been a
spate of activity within the party and the subsequent media focus, so suddenly
there has been a lot more material to work with which means that a post I was
putting off can now be completed.
To begin the recent outburst of media activity seems to
relate to the party gearing up for the election in 2017 with the olive branch
being extended to Hone Harawira and Mana, the Maori King saying he would not
vote Labour and the party refusing to support Helen Clark’s bid for UN
secretary general.
Whose behind all this seems to be Tukoroirangi (Tuku)Morgan, through his election as the president of the party. Morgan was
previously an adviser to the Maori King (which goes a long way to explaining
why the King might suddenly bag Labour in his speech) and his recent comments
in the media about rebuilding the party and winning back all seven Maori electorate seats from Labour fit in nicely with the current tone of the
messages the party is sending.
All of this is a clear signal that Labour won’t be able to
count on the support of the Maori Party come the next election (something which
John Key has welcomed) and that the party wishes to re-build the bridges with
Harawira (something which Key has not welcomed) and that that the losses of
Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia in leadership have not been made good with the
addition of Tu Ururoa Flavell or Marama Fox.
And part of the problem with the party is leadership.
Flavell and Fox have not really filled the shoes left by Sharples and Turia (at
least not yet) and it looks like the task has fallen on Morgan’s shoulders to
do the strategic thinking for them. It’s not that Fox and Flavell are doing a
bad job steering the party’s ship but for a party becalmed in the polls and
electorate there has to be more than a steady as she goes approach on the
tiller**.
Currently the party has two MPs in parliament by virtue of
Flavell winning the Maori electorate seat of Waiariki and bringing Fox in with
him as a list MP. All of the six remaining Maori electorate seats are currently
in Labour hands.
In the polls, the party has languished around the 1% mark
for so long that they are now in the same position as Peter Dunne and United
Future; reliant on a single seat in marginal circumstances for access to
parliament.
Policy wise the party can claim to have had some successes
with Whanau Ora programme and related funding aspects and while there have been
some minor successes in respect to their other policy planks (health especially
but also in housing, employment and family violence) these have yet to
translate into either the general or Maori electorates, as increases in their
polling.
Another problem is that there have been nearly a dozen
different vehicles for Maori politics in the last 45 years. From Labour in the
80s (until the fallout over the economic reforms), to NZ First in 96 (when the
scooped all Maori electorate seats), to the various splinter parties that
formed out of the Tight Five when they left NZ First to a range of others
(including representation in ACT and National (although how genuine these were
is questionable)) which makes the Maori Party just the current vehicle in a
long list of vehicles for representing Maori in Parliament.
So at this time Morgan’s actions to beef the party up are
definitely needed but have yet to show any fruit.
Nothing seems to have come out of their overtures to Mana
(and given Hone Harawira’s dislike of National and the Maori party’s alliance
with them as well as the internal squabbles which lead to him leaving and
forming Mana (now dead in the polls after its bizarre alliance with Kim Dotcom)
it seems that the band will not be getting back together soon.
The attacks on Labour also may yet backfire given that the
majority of the Maori electorate seems to prefer Labour to the Maori Party at
this time and how much influence the Maori King has is not currently clear.
Perhaps in time his words will have an effect but the issue may be less the
message and more the medium (the King) as in other countries, royalty usually
tries to appear neutral or apolitical for good reason (that being that once you
choose sides its somewhat hard to reverse position and if your horse does not
win, then you no longer have friends in the big house).
So 10 out of 10 to Morgan for taking action but minus
several million*** for not thinking things through because the real issue,
which seems to have dogged the Maori party is somewhat the same as the
situation into which they have put the King; that being a partisan one.
The formation of the Maori Party was in direct relation to
Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed Legislation in the mid 2000’s and the party
remained in opposition until National took power where it decided to throw in
its lot with them. This lead to the party getting into government (a definite
success) and the previously mentioned policy successes but at the cost of
playing the partisan card.
In the case of the other political parties such partisan
antics are normal and can be suspended when there is general common ground (the
recent security and intelligence legislation is a good example) but since the
Maori party is formed around a defined racial and not political core this has
issues.
As the parties own goals/kuapapa state, the project of the
party is to represent all Maori and to respect all parties but in these
circumstances, by coming out swinging at Labour, they have done just the
opposite. This is not likely to resonate well with any Maori who have voted
Labour (or Green or even NZ First) in either the Maori or general electorates.
And with 16% of the population identifying as Maori and the
party’s own 1% polling this means that there are more people this message will
drive away than appeal to.
The party’s siding with National has never sat well with
many people and Sharples and Turia have defended it in the past by pointing to
the successes they achieved only by being in parliament, something which I
agree with, but by playing such a partisan position now and signalling no
future co-operation with Labour they have (whether they believe it or not) just
shifted the party out of the middle and well towards the right.
Now there is no valid argument for saying that National is
anti-Maori but it would be hard to defend the range of National government
policies which have had negative outcomes for Maori in both the current and
previous National Governments.
Conversely there is no real argument to say that Labour is
pro-Maori but the biggest bone of contention between Labour and Maori seems to
be the previously mentioned foreshore and seabed issue and the biggest
reservoir of angst over that seems to be the Maori party itself rather than the
Maori electorate.
In short Tuku “underpants” Morgan may have just cut the
Maori Party’s throat in a well-meaning but ultimately suicidal plan to bring
the party back to life. The party currently lives on Flavells single seat alone
and I would bet my bottom dollar that Labour will be campaigning hard in that
electorate in 2017 to remove it from him seeing that there is no room for
compromise in the other camp.
So come the 2017 election we may see the Maori Party waka
run aground on rocks that were on the chart but ignored due to hubris or bad
captaining. The problem being that in and of itself the party was one of the
better vehicles for bringing Maori issues into parliament than many of the
others. The star to which they all steer is always the same but the vehicles do
not seem to be able to complete the voyage.
*-knowing my luck probably sooner rather than later.
**-Yes I was trying to pack in as many nautical metaphors as
possible.
***-Zaphod Beeblebrox in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
No comments:
Post a Comment