The Māori seats are not, by definition, for everyone

By Chris Trotter*

Te Pāti Māori's Tākuta Ferris has a point – doesn’t he? Non-Māori campaigning in a Māori seat is a bit on the nose – isn’t it? I mean, if we are going to persist with the Māori seats, then surely the rules of political engagement should reflect their special character.

Why would Labour contest Tamaki Makaurau unless it saw itself as a Māori party? That is to say, a party with a large Māori membership, offering policies reflective of the needs and aspirations of Māori, and seen by a substantial number of voters enrolled on the Māori Roll as a legitimate contender for the seat.

The thing is – and this is where Ferris’s critique acquires its force – if Labour was such a party, then, surely, it would not need to import non-Māori campaign workers. A Labour Party with deep roots in the Māori seats it contests wouldn’t need ring-ins. Indigenous campaign workers would be lining up to back the Labour candidate. And, ahem, Māori voters would be lining up to support them.

My guess is that Ferris saw that photo and choked on its implications. What Labour appeared to be saying was that this by-election is an electoral contest in which all New Zealanders – Māori, Pasifika, Pakeha, Indian, Chinese, African, everyone – is welcome to, and has a perfect right to, participate.

Except it isn’t – is it? Not really. Tamaki Makaurau is a Māori seat; a special kind of electorate created in 1867 by the New Zealand legislature in grudging acknowledgement of the mutual undertakings solemnised at Waitangi on 6^th February 1840. There were just four of them to begin with, there are seven now. Are the Māori seats historical and constitutional anomalies? Quite possibly. What they most emphatically are not, however, is for everyone.

To vote in a Māori seat, one must be registered on the Māori Roll. Those who subscribe to the vision of one big happy multicultural New Zealand family, and wish to participate in its elections, are required to enrol on the General Roll. Which raises an uncomfortable question: What are people registered on the General Roll doing involving themselves in an election that can only be decided by people on the Māori Roll?

By their very presence on the streets of Tamaki Makaurau, were these non-Māori campaign workers implying that there is something not quite right about the Māori seats? Something which their participation in the process is subtly correcting? Might not a person sharing the sensitivities of Tākuta Ferris very easily conclude that these tauiwi were consciously, or unconsciously, siding with those who deprecate the Māori seats as racially divisive and undemocratic?

More likely, however, is that they (and quite possibly the Labour leadership itself) are simply ignorant of the Labour Party’s historical relationship with the Māori seats.

Prior to the 1930s, the selection of candidates for the four Māori seats was generally regarded by Pakeha politicians as a matter best left to Māori themselves. Hapu and iwi located within the electorate boundaries of Northern, Western, Eastern and Southern Māori strived to reach a consensus over who would make the best representative. When successful, this process delivered Māori MPs who remained in place for many parliamentary terms.

All that changed in 1928 when the Māori prophet Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana announced his intention to secure all four Māori seats for his church. When Eruera Tirikātene won the seat of Southern Māori for Ratana in 1932, it was decided that he would cast his vote alongside Labour. T.W. Ratana had been impressed by the party’s willingness to consult with him on policy matters of common concern to Māori and Pakeha workers. By 1936, with two Māori seats in Ratana’s hands, a formal alliance was concluded between Labour and the church. By 1943, Ratana held all four Māori seats.

The important word to remember here is “alliance”. Ratana may have joined, or, more accurately, affiliated itself to Labour, but it remained separate and distinct from the party. Ratana similarly stood outside the traditional power structures of iwi and hapu, evincing a pan-Māori ideology in which the Treaty of Waitangi occupied a central position. Visions and prophecies powered the Ratana movement’s political mission in a way very few Pakeha Labourites understood. The party benefited from the church’s affiliation – especially in the 1946 and 1957 elections, when Ratana voters secured the four seats Labour needed to retain/regain power – but its distinctive character remained.

The radical economic, social, and cultural changes that shaped New Zealand politics in the final quarter of the Twentieth Century altered profoundly the Māori-Labour relationship. A new generation of Māori leaders was emerging which owed less to Ratana religiosity than it did to postwar decolonisation movements and the global reassertion of Indigenous people’s rights. The priority among this new group was to become Labour Māori MPs; not prophets and visionaries, but hard-nosed political players.

This political evolution, like so many others, was disrupted by the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and 90s. The Fourth Labour Government’s radical sequence of uncompromising free market “reforms” devastated working-class Māori communities. As the economic and institutional foundations of Māori employment, education, health, and housing fell victim to the neoliberal assault, the “gap” between the life experiences of Pakeha and Māori, which had been closing, widened dramatically.

Unsurprisingly, Labour’s fifty-year grip on the Māori seats was loosened and then lost. As other electoral options multiplied, Ratana’s automatic endorsement of Labour candidates ceased.

Historically, the emergence of the Māori Party/Te Pāti Māori bears comparison with the emergence of Ratana itself as a political force. Here again we find the Māori response to disruption, deprivation, and betrayal; the search for trustworthy Pakeha allies; and the turn to visions and prophecies to navigate a world in which even the most fundamental descriptions of reality are routinely, and bitterly contested.

Are we really entitled to be outraged that Tākuta Ferris took exception to the version of reality that draws no constitutional distinction between Māori and General seats, and is indifferent to the tikanga of Indigenous representation? Or, when the President of Te Pāti Māori, John Tamihere, expresses (however confusingly) his own disappointment that immigrants, or the children of immigrants, from India, China, and Africa – all of whose forebears were required to wage protracted struggles against European and Japanese imperialism – should not feel acutely embarrassed about collaborating with a Pakeha party campaigning to reclaim Tamaki Makaurau from Te Pāti Māori.

If Labour recognises no vital differences between Māori and General seats, then the principled political course would be to abolish Indigenous representation altogether. If, however, Labour sees the Māori seats as New Zealand’s response to the political marginalisation of Māori; an imperfect attempt to offset the devastating consequences of their conquest and dispossession by Imperial Britain, then maybe Labour shouldn’t be contesting them at all.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.