Graham Adams: Hipkins treads a slippery path on democracy

When Chris Hipkins initially declined last week to firmly rule out accepting a Māori commissioner with the power of veto over Parliament’s legislation as part of a coalition agreement with Te Pāti Māori, he slipped his head into a noose.

For the Coalition parties, it’s the sort of gift by an Opposition party leader most governments in a liberal democracy can only dream about. A power of veto would mean that voters could be denied effective representation under a Labour-led coalition because no matter what policies they endorsed at an election they would be always open to rejection by a Māori commissioner if bills did not comply, in his or her view, with Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The proposed commissioner, according to Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, would be able to strike down proposed legislation like David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill.

Hipkins was more definite the next morning on RNZ in rejecting the proposal. He said he didn’t agree with the creation of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Te Tiriti — at least “not in the way they’ve defined it”.

“I don’t think we should be creating a commissioner that could [overturn laws]. But we’re open to how we can make sure that there are better checks and balances within our constitutional framework.”

Nevertheless, his initial equivocation brought to the fore a question that will dog Labour all the way to next year’s election — exactly how dedicated is the party to ensuring that every New Zealander has a vote of equal value to everyone else’s? And, how willing would Labour be to accept Te Pāti Māori’s wholesale rejection of democracy in policy and law if that turned out to be the price of forming a government?

While commentators have been quick to point out that Labour needs to distinguish itself clearly from Te Pāti Māori’s anti-democratic stance if it hopes to form a government next year, it is rarely mentioned that it can only do that by repudiating a large part of its own recent history. In fact, Labour’s position looks very similar to that of their outspoken Māori colleagues in Parliament even if they no longer say the quiet part out loud.

During the last Labour government, however, the public was told repeatedly by senior ministers — including Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and Willie Jackson — that “democracy has changed”.

Jackson, who continues to lead the party’s powerful Māori caucus in opposition, told Jack Tame on Q&A when he was Minister for Māori Development: “Democracy has changed… we’re in a consensus-type democracy now. This is a democracy now where you take into account the needs of people, the diverse needs, the minority needs… It’s not the tyranny of the majority anymore… that’s what co-management and co-governance is about.”

Hipkins himself didn’t agree when it was suggested on Q&A in March 2023 that co-governance was a threat to democracy. He told Tame: “I believe there is nothing undemocratic about co-governance”.

That was an extraordinary claim for a Prime Minister whose government had overseen law changes in which ethnic clans making up 17 per cent of the population were being given power equal to the other 83 per cent in a swathe of areas including planning laws, water management, health and education.

The burning question is whether Labour has had any change of heart on co-governance, and whether it would revive policies such as the Māori Health Authority if it won the next election.

Hipkins certainly didn’t repudiate any aspect of co-governance when he succeeded Jacinda Ardern in early 2023 as Prime Minister, despite his avowed intention to slash and burn unpopular policies. As a result, there is no reason to believe he has learned any lesson from Labour being beaten in 2023 by a coalition in which all three parties campaigned against co-governance — at least in the delivery of public services.

However, last February, four months after he lost office, he tacitly accepted Tame’s assessment that co-governance isn’t “strictly consistent, in every setting, with the one-person, one-vote model”.

Pollster and political commentator David Farrar tweeted last week: “I think [Hipkins’] stance is that Labour is not campaigning personally to end democracy, and that any decision to end democracy would depend on coalition negotiations.”

But whether Labour campaigns on reinstating co-governance or not, it is worth remembering that it never campaigned in the run-up to the 2020 election on co-governance but proceeded to insert it wherever it could once it had a majority in Parliament. The programme — outlined in He Puapua, which Labour wanted us to believe was only blue-sky thinking — amounted to a stealthy, anti-democratic coup.

We should perhaps to be grateful to Te Pāti Māori for their openness. Its co-leaders make no secret of their longstanding hostility to democracy and no doubt will continue to flush the question into the open — where Labour will have to deal with it.

In April 2022, Rawiri Waititi made it clear that the sort of co-governance he favoured was embodied in the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill, which would have allowed 21,700 voters on the Māori roll to elect three ward councillors while 55,600 voters on the general roll would also elect three ward councillors.

Waititi said: “Rotorua’s electoral bill is brave and progressive. This is an exciting opportunity for our country to learn from Te Arawa [iwi]. This is the sort of equality of governance that our tipuna signed up for when they gave consent to Pākehā coming here.”

A month later, Waititi and his fellow co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, made their disdain for equal suffrage explicit. Waititi declared that democracy in the sense of one person, one vote of equal value was a colonial construct that “belongs to a Westernised system. The system that does belong to us is mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga.”

“[Democracy] is the tyranny of the majority,” he said.

Labour’s strategy for re-election so far seems to be to hope that support will gradually leach away from the National-led coalition and it can delay presenting any substantial or contentious policy of its own for some time. Unfortunately for Hipkins, Te Pāti Māori will continue to make its views on democracy and (un)equal representation known — just as it did last week. And he will have to respond because it looks like Labour won’t be able to form a government without its support.

If that is the case, it will force Labour to fight the 2026 election battle on terrain that cost it dearly in 2023. David Seymour and Winston Peters will make sure of that, even if Hipkins would prefer to play down the question of how deeply Labour is committed to democracy.

It’s hard not to see Te Pāti Māori as the three coalition parties’ secret weapon. “A vote for Labour is a vote for Te Pāti Māori — and a vote against democracy” will be a very powerful campaign slogan.

Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.