Ele Ludemann: Māori seats well past use-by date

The Royal Commission on Electoral Reform recommended that if a proportional system was adopted, the Māori seats should be abolished.

That they weren’t abolished when MMP was adopted was a mistake that should be rectified.

After the last First Past the Post election in 1993 there were only eight MPs who identified as Māori; in 2020 there were 25.

The new parliament will have 32 Māori MPs which is 26% of parliament and nearly twice the percentage of Māori in the country.

Labour – Nine MPs out of 34 (26%). Labour has seven List MPs who are Māori, one Māori seat and one Māori MP who won a general seat.

Greens – Six MPs out of 15 (40%). Five List MPs and one Māori MP who won a general seat.

Te Pāti Māori – Six MPs out of six (100%). Six Māori seat MPs.

National – Five MPs out of 48 (10%). All five won general seats.

National is often criticised for its electorate selection process, but all five of its Māori MPs were selected in, and won, general seats. That is five times better than Act, the Labour and Green Parties all of which have only one Māori MP in an electorate.

The Māori Party has one more but only in Māori seats.

NZ first – Four MPs out of eight (50%). All List MPs.

ACT – Three MPs out of 11 (27%). One Māori MP who won a general seat and two List MPs.

That there are now almost twice the percentage of Māori MPs as the percentage of Māori in the country is one of the reasons that the Māori seats are well past their use-by date.

There other reasons:

• Most Māori seats are far too big, as are the bigger general seats. I haven’t been able to find the current area of electorates but they won’t have changed much since 2008 :

Name Area                         sq.km
Te Tai Tonga                      161,443

Clutha-Southland                38,247

West Coast-Tasman           38,042

Te Tai Hauauru                   35,825

Waitaki                                34,888

Ikaroa-Rawhiti                    30,952

Kaikoura                             23,706

Waiariki                              19,212

Te Tai Tokerau                   16,370

Hauraki-Waikato               12,580

Tamaki Makaurau                  730

Tamaki Makaurau and Hauraki-Waikato are outliers, being much smaller than the others, and in 2008, 21 general seats covered larger areas.

But the other five Māori seats, like the general electorates of Kaikoura, Waitaki, West Coast Tasman and what is now Southland, are far too big geographically.

Te Tai Tonga is by far the worst/ It covers all of the South Island, Stewart Island/Rakiura, the Chatham Islands, and extends into the North Island to include Wellington and parts of the Hutt Valley as far north as Avalon. All electorates have the same number of people, plus of minus five percent, but it is impossible for anyone to effectively represent constituents spread over such a large area and for constituents to have ready and regular access to their MP.

 

* Last month’s election resulted in an overhang because the Māori Party gained more seats than its electorate vote entitled it to. There is already talk that the next parliament could have a bigger overhang with 127 seats if Labour gifted the Māori Party the Māori seats by not seriously contesting them. That would be a stupid thing for Labour to do. It would upset many of its volunteers and risk losing supporters who would be put off by the Māori Party’s radical separatist agenda. But being stupid doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

 

* Two of the 32 Māori MPs are party leaders and three are co-leaders. The two leaders are expected to be part of the coalition government and will almost certainly be in cabinet, as will several other Māori MPs. Māori won’t just have many voices in parliament, they will have many in government and cabinet.

 

* The 32 Māori MPs cross the political spectrum. That is to be expected because Māori, like the rest of us, hold a variety of political views and therefore no party, or MP can speak for all Māori. Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett were never celebrated for being leader and deputy leader of the National Party, and MPs in any parties that don’t think the supposed right, which almost always means left, way, are criticised for not being real Māori. Those defending the continuation of Māori seats hold the condescending, and racist view, that all Māori hold the same world view or worse, that unless you think a certain way you’re not a real Māori and the only way for Māori to be represented is with Māori seats..

Many defending the Māori seats say the decision on whether they remain should be up to Māori . That would be like saying only pensioners should have a say on superannuation policy. The existence of Māori seats impacts us all by the way it shapes parliament and therefore we are all entitled to a view on whether or not they’ve passed their use-by date.

A lot of Māori already show they don’t want separate electorates by opting to register on the general roll, as they are able to do.

National, Act and NZ First have had policies to abolish the Māori seats in the past. If as is likely they form a coalition government, they’d have the power to follow the Royal Commission’s recommendation to abolish them and they should.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.