Frank Newman: Ugly racial politics

The debate regarding Maori wards is divisive and could be very ugly when it comes into focus ahead of next year's local body elections.  Intimidation by Maori is already present to varying degrees and especially ramped up when the radicals sense they may lose their racial privilege, as was the case with the Kaipara District Council.

The referendums on Maori wards to be held in tandem with the local elections is a critical moment for the future of race-based representation. The result will either embed them for a very long time or challenge their place in a democratic society.  Although Maori wards have been available to councils for 20 or so years, it was Nanaia Mahuta’s tapestry of lies to take away the petition right that removed the barrier to their introduction.

Ironically, the Clark Labour government included the petition right when it allowed Maori wards, and there was a very good reason they did so - democracy. There is a foundation stone of democracy which says electors should have the final say about how their representatives are elected, not the representatives.

What could be more basic to a healthy democracy than that?

Regrettably, allowing electors to have a say on how their representatives are elected did not suit Mahuta’s racist agenda, and nor does it suit a majority of councillors. It seems they believe in local representation, when “local” means they have the say, not those they pretend to represent.

Mahuta lied on two counts. Those lies were repeated by racial activists and to their shame, went unchallenged in the mainstream (activist) media.

 The first lie was that the petition right applied only to Maori wards. It didn’t.

The same petition right is available to citizens when their council resolves to change the voting system from First Past the Post to STV.  Why? Because it is changing the voting system!

Introducing the Maori roll into the voting system and dividing people into either the general roll or the Maori roll, also changes the voting system. That’s why the petition right was applied.

Those who say the petition right is racist, are either fools or liars, or both. And the village idiots who say “but it does not apply to rural wards” are too simple to understand that shifting ward boundaries or creating new wards to define a geographic community of interest is not changing the voting system.

The second lie perpetuated by Mahuta, and one that still resonates today, is that Maori are under-represented on local councils. The facts show otherwise, but facts that challenge the false narratives of activists are too inconvenient for them to accept. 

The inconvenient truth is the number of councillors who identify as having Maori ancestry is greater than their relative share of the population, both now and after the 2019 election (before Mahuta’s intervention). Maori are able to be elected onto councils on their own merits – they do not need to get a free ride via Maori wards.

This truth does not suit the radicals because it detracts from their bogus narrative which says, or at least implies, that pakeha don’t vote for Maori (wrong) because they are racist (very wrong). They prefer to hold the delusional opinion that Maori are victims of the tyranny of the majority. 

When the obvious is pointed out to them – namely the examples of Maori that are elected on their own merits - they usually say “but they do not speak for Maori”. In other words, they are not their sort of Maori, meaning they only want Maori who are as radical as they are.

A second reason why the radicals are not convinced by the facts is that their objective is not to have “fair” representation based on population proportionality. Their “fair” is to have 50% representation and they quote the “partnership” and their sovereignty as the reasons. 

They prefer not to talk about this because they know it will scare the public and cause a backlash that will erode the incremental gains that they are making.

What they also know, but dare not say, is that 50% representation will give them control. They know some of the “non-Maori” representatives will side with Maori – the Labour and Green party councillors for example, who may as well be members of the Maori Party when it comes to Maori privilege.

Gaining control of the council is the prize they are after, and what a prize to win. They would control a huge and captive income stream into perpetuity, paid for by non-Maori, which they can divert for the benefit of Maori. And there is absolutely nothing those getting the juice squeezed out of them could do about it. It’s a case of either shut up and pay up, or shut shop and move overseas. The squeeze is already happening in some councils, like the Northland Regional Council.

It’s a deliberate and brazen political strategy. What is astounding is that so many non-Maori are so blind that they can’t see it and so naive that they fall for the mystical nonsense used by Maori to justify their position of privilege. It is as simple as robbing a bank without security.

Unfortunately, a casualty of the Maori rights war is democracy itself. If New Zealanders allow our basic democratic rights to be lost, then we will forever be hostage to racists who believe their privileges are more important. Sadly, we are a long way down that track. It will take courage to bring it back from the precipice.

Frank Newman, a writer and political commentator, is a former local body councillor.