#3 - Reuben P. Chapple 2008-10-30 13:40 - (Reply)

More "Maori" in Parliament? The Maori Party looks increasingly likely to hold the balance of power after the upcoming election. Its bedrock negotiating position with respect to potential coalition partners is that the Maori Parliamentary seats be entrenched in law. The Maori Party also wants every New Zealander classified by ethnicity (presumably on the basis of boxes ticked on the census form) and all 18 year olds of even remotely Maori descent placed automatically onto the Maori electoral roll. Every census shows more Maori marrying or cohabiting outside the group with which they culturally identify. There has been a corresponding exponential increase in the number of New Zealanders with Maori ancestry. Should the Maori Party get its way, the number of Maori seats would need to be expanded every election to keep pace with a growing “Maori” population. Over time, these clever race hustlers will have manipulated our representative democracy to engineer a "reverse takeover" of our Parliament. Before this is allowed to happen, the New Zealand public needs to understand why we have separate Maori seats in the first place, and whether there is a valid argument for their retention. If not, they must be abolished. When the Maori Representation Act was introduced in 1867, the right to vote rested on a property qualification, and was restricted to property-owning males. It is now widely held that the Act was introduced because Maori were disenfranchised by their multiple ownership of land. This is incorrect. Maori in possession of a freehold estate to the value of twenty-five pounds – even if “held in severalty” – were entitled to vote. The real problem was the disputed ownership of customary Maori land which had not yet become subject to a registrable proprietary title, the proof of the then prevailing electoral requirement. When the 1867 Act was still at the Bill stage, the view was expressed in Parliament that the Maori Land Court (established in 1865) would have resolved all these questions within five years. The Maori Seats created by the Act were intended as an interim measure for five years only. It was hoped that by this time enough Maori would hold land under freehold title to remove the need for separate representation. However, in 1872, the temporary provision was extended for a further five years. Before that period expired, the Maori Representation Continuance Act 1876 decreed that separate representation would continue “until expressly repealed by an Act of the General Assembly.” In effect, the 1867 Act gave Maori the manhood franchise 12 years before European males were accorded the same right. It was not until 1879 that the Qualification of Electors Act introduced European male suffrage as an alternative to the property qualification. Universal suffrage in 1893 extended voting rights to all New Zealanders, subject only to an age qualification. Any practical reason for separate Maori seats had altogether disappeared. However, “politics as usual” kept the Maori seats in place for more than a century past their use-by date. Politicians have always liked the fact that a separate Maori constituency could be pork barrelled in return for political support. When Parliament finally reviewed the Maori seats in 1953 along with a major re-alignment of Maori electoral boundaries, the vested interests of both Labour and National meant the issue was quietly allowed to fade from view. In the 1946 General Election, the two parties were tied for general seats. It was only Labour’s hold on the four Maori seats which enabled it to remain the government. National, for its part, feared that cutting the Maori seats would bring thousand of Labour-voting Maori flooding onto the general roll in its marginal rural electorates. In the 1980s, the Maori seats were increasingly linked with the independence aspirations of Maori nationalists, and turned into a political hot potato. Pressure exerted by these groups meant that after the MMP electoral system was introduced in 1993, the number of Maori seats became tied to the number of New Zealanders electing to register on the Maori roll. After several well-publicised taxpayer-funded enrollment drives, these seats have increased in number from four to seven. It is today widely believed that the Maori seats have some kind of quasi-constitutional status and should be retained as long as Maori want them. This is a bogus argument for retention. The Treaty of Waitangi does not provide for separate Maori political representation. Nor is there any constitutional basis for its existence. What the Treaty does provide for is that all New Zealanders, irrespective of cultural affiliation, ethnicity, religious belief, or indeed any other distinguishing characteristic, will enjoy equality in citizenship. This means the universal suffrage subject only to an age qualification that has been in place since 1893. The Maori Party’s non-negotiable demand for the Maori seats to be entrenched in law with all 18 year olds of Maori descent placed automatically onto the Maori roll thus poses a serious threat to our representative democracy. The Maori seats have to go, as do the race-hustlers of the motley Maori Party, none of whom would stand even a remote chance of gaining election in a general seat by playing the race card. If John Key and the National Party undertook to place all New Zealanders onto a single electoral roll as a first order of business on becoming the Government, I predict they would be able to govern alone on a landslide. ENDS