Maori seats
November 25th, 2004 at 9:17 am by David FarrarFew were surprised that National has announced it will not stand candidates in the seven Maori seats next year.
This is of course really the only decision one could make, after deciding earlier on a policy to abolish the seats, which were only meant to be temporary when established.
ALso as I blogged in March, one can hardly claim they are necessary because of Maori under-representation in Parliament, as in reality there are 40% more Maori in Parliament than their share of the adult population. And that doesn’t include Clem Simich or David Cunliffe 
The stats are slightly changed now Donna has been evicted, but not significantly. Just down to 19 MPs now.
In the NZ Herald story on the issue, they also report that the latest polls show Labour will lose every Maori seat except Tamihere and Mahuta.
No tag for this post.
November 25th, 2004 at 11:18 am
I don’t think Helen should be sneering at Brash. She is due for a humiliation in the Maori seats herself.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 11:18 am
It’s almost hpynotic watching Maori destroy themselves as a political force. While it’s doubtfull that in the event of a Labour/Maori/Greens/Whoever coalition they’ll suffer the same fate as the Alliance/United Future and self-destruct after a single term they’re much better off with members in a strong and successful Labour party than they will be scrambling for patronage alongside the Greens and NZ-First; in the (not-unlikely) scenario in which they cost Labour the election they will be totally marginalised by a victorious National government.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 12:18 pm
Dim, you remind me of the erstwhile Iraqi Minister for Information. The Maori Party is destroying itself by taking five seats off you blokes, by using your generously donated TV network to encourage new members, by constantly reminding its potential members that your duplicitous white leader preferred talking to a sheep, by enlisting the support of a significant and growing fundamentalist church group, by stealing from you the support of Ratana and by assisting in the demise of Labour’s last hope, Tamihere. Yes they are pretty destuctive alright! Of course, the final nail in the coffin of the Maori Party will be the appointment of Dr Sharples as Minister for Maori Affairs and Mrs Turia as Minister for Police in a coalition government. Then you’ll really be able to lecture them on what a pack of political dimwits they are.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 1:24 pm
I’m not a Labour party member, uh, Adolf, so the Maori party isn’t taking anything off me.
All of your arguments support my original point, that by causing so much damage to Labour the Maori party is strengthening the National Party. In the event of their win National will probably see their victory as an anti-treaty issues mandate and the Maori will be much worse off than they were under a sympathetic Labour government.
I can’t make my point much plainer than that.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:21 pm
It clears the way for the National Party to abolish the seats as they intend to do. Something the National Party has been wanting to do for years. Might make it easier for Labour as it is not obvious the National votes will go to the Maori Party.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:27 pm
Crikey Adolf, did you even read Dim’s post?
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:28 pm
The Maori party by winning the maori seats will help labour !!
Vote:Remember the list vote , and only the list vote determines the total seat tally for a major party.
So the Maori party wins most of the maori electorate vote and gets say 5 seats. The list vote for the maori seats mostly goes to labour so gives them say 4 seats. But since they have only 2 Maori electorate seats they get an extra 2 seats from the list.
Which ever way you look at it means extra seats for labour, but losing electorate seats doesnt matter as long as they dont go to national , they catch them from the proportion of list votes they are due since most Maori voters will split their vote
November 25th, 2004 at 4:44 pm
Maori over-represented in parliament is like saying men are over-represented too, but it disregards the fact that we don’t all vote on race or gender lines. So over-representation is not a correct description. If we had proper proportional representation based on parties rather than race or gender we would never need to talk of over- or under-representation. I think MMP should be reformed to 120 list MPs and abolition of all electorate MPs, general and Maori ones.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:47 pm
Dim, my apologies for tarnishing your image but you did such a good job of impersonation you sucked me right in. I think you do the Gnats an injustice. You mistakenly confuse “anti treaty issues” with “anti Maori.” Labour were sympathetic, as you put it, only when they thought the votes were in the bag and I would hope the Gnats were not so stupid.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
All very profound,but what is a Maori. We are assailed with statistics (mainly negative)on every aspect of their lives. Yet the definition is some-one with a bloodline to a native no matter how diluted or in some cases ‘one who feels as though he is Maori’.How can statistics on aspects of health,wealth,crime etc possibly be valid if they could change by excluding those with weaker blood links. Accordingly I applaud the decision to abolish their racist seats based as they are on tenuous blood links.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 7:11 pm
I applaud the decision to abolish the race based seats because they are race based. Tenuous blood links have nothing to do with it, Baxter.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 7:58 pm
Personally I think that electorate seats are hark back to the days where we had to send people on horse back to find out what was happening. We should move to a proper system of PR.
However I think the only people who should deciede if maori seats should be aboloshied are maori voters.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 8:26 pm
Stef- Why do you think that?
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 9:20 pm
Hans – the point I am making is that one can not claim Maori are under represented, as like men there are more in Parliament than their proportion of adult population. So just as one would not claim we need men only seats, we don’t need Maori only seats.
Stef – our system is fully proportional. And there are great benefits for a local area to be able to have an official representative. I’d hate to have every single MP a list MP accountable to the Party only.
And if you think only Maori voters should decide on keeping the Maori seats, would you also advocate that if there were male only seats, that only men get to decide if they are retained?
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:28 pm
… … Similarly, if enough women got together and said we want women-only seats, would the rest of us be denied the right to have a say in this. Cos that’s what you are saying of you say that only Maori sould decide the fate of Maori seats.
Hey, why stop at Maori and wimmens seats? We could have special seats for red-headed people, or old people, or left-handed people (anything less than 17 left-handers in Parliament would surely be regarded as discriminatory), or Roman Catholics, or people who live in rental accommodation, or classical music lovers, or pet owners, or dope smokers … …
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:35 pm
… …And of course there is the paradox of the Beneficiary seats. Beneficiaries will always be under-represented. The paradox being that if you have beneficiariary-only seats, the incumbents would instantly cease to be representative on incumbency … …
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:38 pm
What about university seats? In bygone days (in fact up until the 1940s or 50s) Oxford and Cambridge had special university seats in the House of Commons. It was considered good form for candidates to campaign for their adversary – at four o’clock in the morning with pots and pans outside the dons’ windows. If we’re going to retain Maori seats, lets have university seats (say one each for our four proper universities), gay and lesbian seats, disabled seats, pasifika, chinese seats, and Indian seats.
Let’s face it – having segregated seats reserved for candidates and electors of a specific ethnicity does not put New Zealand in good company internationally. Iran, for intsance, springs to mind – where there majlis has seats reserved fot official state registered minority religion. Lebanon (currently manipulated by Syrian influences) has Christian seats. Zimbabwe’s ZanuPF regime under Robert Mugabe has made ethnicity a criteria for parliamentary candidates in all seats.
On the other hand, you won’t find ethnic-based electorates in the House of Commons, US Congress, Australian Federal or State parliaments or the Nordics.
I know which group I would rather be in.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:39 pm
What about university seats? In bygone days (in fact up until the 1940s or 50s) Oxford and Cambridge had special university seats in the House of Commons. It was considered good form for candidates to campaign for their adversary – at four o’clock in the morning with pots and pans outside the dons’ windows. If we’re going to retain Maori seats, lets have university seats (say one each for our four proper universities), gay and lesbian seats, disabled seats, pasifika, chinese seats, and Indian seats.
Let’s face it – having segregated seats reserved for candidates and electors of a specific ethnicity does not put New Zealand in good company internationally. Iran, for intsance, springs to mind – where there majlis has seats reserved fot official state registered minority religion. Lebanon (currently manipulated by Syrian influences) has Christian seats. Zimbabwe’s ZanuPF regime under Robert Mugabe has made ethnicity a criteria for parliamentary candidates in all seats.
On the other hand, you won’t find ethnic-based electorates in the House of Commons, US Congress, Australian Federal or State parliaments or the Nordics.
I know which group I would rather be in.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:55 pm
And remember this folks. Any person who claims to be Maori, can (subject only to moving home) have their democratic say in the election of every one of the 120 MPs. As a non-Maori, I can only have a democratic say in 113 of them. Who is really being discriminated against by this racist system?
Vote:November 26th, 2004 at 1:50 am
First up legbeforewicket your incorrect. Both
Maori and Pakeha have the same amount of sway in terms of MPs as Pakeha 52 seats. Their electorate plus the list MPs. I don’t have anyway sway on tauranga voters to stop electing winston peters anymore than I do in Tariana turia’s electorate.
As for why. First up I don’t have much for geography as a way of breaking up up the country. First up large numbers of people don’t vote on the basis of geographical issues at a central level. The person who is elected doesn’t have to live or have lived in the electorate to represent me.
Which brings me to other ways of dividing up these electorate seats. I have no problem with say creating gender based seats, more ethnic seats or whatever as a way of dividing the country.What’s the problem. Geography seems just an arbirty division as gender or whatever. As long as the division is reflective of the population as a whole and that people can opt in or opt out I see no problem.
As for the counter-balance to the party arguement seems to ring in really hollow. The only person who succesfully resigined from their party to form another in the last ten years or so was tariana turia (save jim anderton and the alliance split) and she was running practically unoppossed. A person’s party has far more sway than their name when electing local MPs. Who decides who gets to run in the electorate? The party. Ok in national the local electrate committee has a far higher say than in labour which perhaps colors our perspectives somewhat.
Also I find it interesting that we already have another affirmative action policy with regards to the south island receiving a guranteed 16 seats I don’t see anyone howling about the undemocratic nature of that. Yet as an exiled aucklander I don’t see the need for a minumum representation for those who still inhabit the south island. But it’s pragmatic because of the size of the south island to ensure that you have enough coverage or things start getting expensive.
As for why maori should decide I’m a political pragmatist. Aboloshing the maori seats should go to the electorate via a referendum because you are making major changes to the consitution of parliament. Obviously I think that if it did then there would be a clear majority against the maori seats.
But To quote a former president of AUSA, ‘you don’t want to fuck off the maoris.’ The fallout from the rest of the population voting against this will be that you further radicalise a lot of Maori who will see this a big slap in the face. And you’ll have an even more marganlized minorty feeling even more marganlized. Seems like a recipe for a whole of pain for not much gain.
Vote:November 26th, 2004 at 9:02 am
Stef – we can change where we live, and often do. We can not change our gender or race, and giving certain races or genders more rights simply because of their gender or race is to be blunt repugnant.
The SI gain no advantage in having 16 seats. The NI get the samne number of seats per capita.
I agree that the seats are best abolished by referendum, and I beleive that is what will happen. But it will be one in which all NZers can vote, and I beleive the majority will vote to abolish them.
Vote:November 26th, 2004 at 1:41 pm
Sorry to wonder back to the point, but has anyone here actually bothered reading why the Maori Representation Act was passed in 1867? At the time, there was a property qualification to vote and collective land tenure effectively disenfranchised Maori despite the fact they’d never formally been excluded from the franchise in the first place. The Maori seats were oringinally designed as a temporary measure until the natives got with the program. Politicians being politicians, some MPs also noticed that the proposed Maori seats would redress the imbalance between the North and South Islands caused by the goldrush population boom in Otago; others were convinced it didn’t really matter because Maori would go the may of the moa.
That didn’t prevent the number of Maori seat being fixed at 4 (out of 76), where it remained until 1993, rather than allocated on the same population-based formula as the rest of Parliament. This had nothing to do with the fact that 50% of the population in 1860 was Maori.
If anything guaranteed Maori under-representation in Parliament, it seems to me the Maori seats – and a raft of separate and unequal regulations applied to Maori – were the cause not a solution.
Last time I looked, the property qualification was abolished over a century ago. The world didn’t end when the electoral system evolved beyond the Victorian assumption that only white, Anglican, land-owning men were competent to vote or hold political office in this country. Why should Maori cling to another relic of Victorian paternalism? The likes of Sandra Lee, Merita Turei, Georgina Beyer and Georgina te Heuheu don’t find being Maori a barrier to success in mainstream politics – and they do a damn sight more to represent the diversity of Maoridom than five-sevenths of the Maori seat MPs.
Vote: