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Should Maori Electorate Seats Be Entrenched?
By Patu Manawa
Should Maori Electorate Seats Be Entrenched? Chronology: For many hundreds of years land in Aotearoa (more commonly known as New Zealand) was communally owned by numerous iwi/hapu (maori tribes). During the establishment of the NZ Parliament the colonial government thru much sleeze & underhandedness passed into legislation a law which stipulated that only persons who owned individual land are eligible to vote, thus deliberately disadvantaging maori in terms of political participation. Bearing in mind that at that time european immigrant settlers also known as pakeha numbered approx 2000 as opposed to tangata whenua (maori) who numbered approx 200,000. Contrast that to today's population maori number approx 350,000 & pakeha & others number approx 4 million. 158 years ago the Labour government wanted to do something towards honouring the Treaty Of Waitangi, as a result they established 4 maori electorate seats to represent maori concerns. When MMP was legally set up as the new electoral system it opened the way for more maori electorate seats to be established. There are now 7. Today the maori seats are been referred to by many as apartheid & or racist. For the above reasons I beg to disagree. Certainly there are self serving connotations & or unfruitful arrogant remarks from both sides of the fence. Personally I abhor racism & believe in doing what's best for our beautiful country as a whole. But the question remains should the maori seats be entrenched? For me tho I'm on the maori roll, I'm a bit unsure? But I think for most of maoridom the answer is a resounding yes! God bless New Zealand.
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Contributor's Note
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This intel first appeared on: http://www.ldsglobalforum.com/2008/11/should-maori-electorate-seats...
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Interesting article. Before MMP, the Maori seats did the Maori a disservice as they voted so strongly for Labour, that their votes were effectively devalued. Had they been split across the general electorates, they would have taken more seats to Labour and also had a better bargaining position. With the MMP system having reserved seats for groups such as Maori, means they can have effective representation in parliament, as with the Maori Party, without running the risk of distorting proportionality and it looks like they realised this in the way they supported Maori for the electorate vote while still giving a strong party vote for Labour. BTW, I think the paragraph "158 years ago the Labour government wanted to do something towards honouring the Treaty Of Waitangi, as a result they established 4 maori electorate seats to represent maori concerns" is wrong. The first Labour government was in the mid 1930s, a mere 80 years ago. IIRC, the maori seart were established well before then, possibly it was by the Liberal Party ... If so it gets complex as both National and Labour claim to be a continuation of Liberal. There is a certain legitimacy to both claims as the main group that formed Labour was a break-away from the Liberals and National was the result of a number of mergers with several of the factions being originally break-aways from the Liberals.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
The 158 years is what was mentioned by Maori TV several days ago. But perhaps I have the wrong party? Kind regards, Patu
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