While I’m in favour of eliminating the Maori seats within a realistic timeframe, I could almost accept your statement and live with the compromise of principle to avoid the inevitable angst if it weren’t for the inexorable increase in the number of Maori electorates. It was until only a short time ago (mid-1990s) that the number was fixed at four. Now we have a population-based formula that adds extra Maori electorates from time to time.

However, enrolled voter numbers in the Maori electorates are flawed, based as they are on choices of people who “identify as Maori”, i.e. it can be an entirely subjective matter unrelated to any Maori heritage or any material / minimum proportion of Maori blood. That is about as logical as my being able to enrol in the general electorate bordering the one in which I live, based purely on my professed “identification” with that alternative electorate. Both sets of circumstances could lend themselves to manipulation of elections.

So I remain with the basic principle, that all NZers should be treated equally. We should be enrolled as voters, with neither privilege or disadvantage, to be allocated to electorates corresponding to our places of residence. Presently it is wrong that most people have no option as to their allocated electorate (unless they move home!) whereas others can chose at whim between two different electorates.

No, I don’t. I so, SO don’t!
I would say we are very lucky here in that the examples of Fiji, Nazi Germany et al simply don’t seem to apply here. Foreigners I know are always telling me how lucky we are to have a country where there are distinct racial groups, but we have (their words) “no racial issues.” You just don’t see violent separatist ideals or racial hatred being espoused here, do you? I don’t understand why this is. But after watching an episode of Bro’Town you feel like you almost know.

And look at the kinds of protest action we have seen from Maori groups, from Parihaka right through to modern times. Look at Bastion Point or the way the foreshore & seabed Hikoi was organised. Look at the way the Maori Party conduct themselves, with their consultation Huis amongst their voters. Look at the way young Maori radicals are always kept in check by their elders who are content to play a longer game using the (English-derived) legal process that they know they signed up for with the Treaty. No bombs. No guns. No internet beheadings. What we have would be utopia in a lot of people’s eyes.

In this sort of climate, the Maori seats cost so little, and appear to mean so much to Maori. Why risk upsetting the apple-cart? Because it offend Don Brash’s idea of what a democracy should be like? Please. I like the guy but I don’t believe our democracy is so weak that having 7 Maori seats puts it all at risk.

Or maybe it’s just that (in the words of an American I know) everything’s cool here because the stakes are just so much lower”

[DPF: Yes we are lucky to have so many good things about our country. But race based seats remain an inappropriate way of organising our electoral system. The Royal Commission on MMP had a superior way of looking after Maori representation]

Criticising the Maori seats as “racist” is all very well from a libertarian point of view, but to do so you have to pretty wilfully ignore the history of this country and the very definitely race-based wars and power struggles [and land thefts] there have been.

[DPF: And we see Fiji as an example of what happens if you continue to divide seats by ethnicity. You also fail to understand the massive difference between Maori self-organising voluntarily as a party such as the Maori Party do, and between the state having separate electoral rolls for NZers based on the racial makeup of your ancestors]

[DPF: If you read what they said, they were in fact not being partisan, which was nice]

“the National Party’s vision, to make our parliament more diverse and truly representative of the population that now make up our country”?

[DPF: National with seven Maori MPs has shown how you can do it, with no need for race based seats]

yes sadly the contrast with the ‘others” is stark. No contribution hands out dispise our culture and demand we change to meet their demands

Sorry, I forgot to make the point before that CUISINE is an exceptional, perhaps the only, area in which “multiculturalism” is a “plus”. I’d hate a world of meat-and-3-boiled-veg evening meals, weetbix breakfasts and cut-bread lunches.

“I’m sorry people, I just cannot join in this celebration of “racial diversity”. I think it is going down the wrong track. I think it shows an incorrect focus. I think it is PC nonsense. I congratulate any MP who makes it through the election process and into Parliament. Good on everyone on both sides of the house. As for your race, I couldn’t give a stuff. I just want you to do your damn job.

Preferably to cut taxes and reduce the size of government.”

I agree that “diversity” is going down the wrong track but I presume, Redbaiter, that you would agree with what I just said above. The willing assimilation into our culture on the part of the greater majority of Asian immigrants, and their energetic and positive contribution to our social strength, is like a victory for humanity. Melissa Lee’s speech is just incredible, tears to the eyes stuff as far as I’m concerned; here’s a recent immigrant telling us how she feels about crime and murdered kids. It’s not the culture she and her parents moved to this country to partake in the blessings of, that has brought these shames about, and she does well to make a cause celebre of it.

And what’s more, if I was a betting man I’d put money on it that a whole parliament of NZ Asians WOULD give us much smaller government and lower taxes along with getting tough on crime and the causes of social breakdown. A whole parliament of NZ Asians would do a whole lot better job than the wishy washy apostates that run NZ, they’d actually restore our culture…..

Asian immigration has been a blessing for this country.

Google “Antony Young”. This guy is one of the best New Zealanders I know. He is one of many Asians who refer to themselves with pride as “Bananas”; yellow on the outside, white on the inside. They held a conference in Auckland a couple of years ago, called the “Going Bananas” conference.

They work hard, take responsibility for themselves, achieve, bring up kids to do the same, their marriages stay intact, almost none of them are a net drain on the country’s finances, they assimilate into our culture, they do not agitate for special treatment for their own culture, they left that behind, and they don’t WANT the stuff they left behind to follow them here. Contrast the attitude of the great majority of Asians here, to the attitude of the great majority of Muslims in all the European nations where they are a mounting problem now.

Not that we haven’t got a whole lot of Cultural Marxist white ants in our institutions who despise our own culture and badly WANT immigrant cultures to rock the boat; the Asian “bananas” are a severe disappointment to them.

I wish the “bananas” a resounding victory in the culture wars that are being played out in our society.

Preferably to cut taxes and reduce the size of government.

National has done a great job of trying to broaden its supporter base. The example of these two new MPs along with the constructive relationship with the Maori Party are reasons why National got elected.

Let’s just hope The Other Channel returns to blame mode rather than thoughtful analysis!

http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Politics/tabid/370/articleID/83539/cat/67/Default.aspx#video

And of Melissa Lee:

http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Politics/tabid/370/articleID/83537/cat/67/Default.aspx#video