Problems Of Reserved Electorate

Papua-New Guinea feels that it has invented something with its 10 reserved seats for the European minority at the 1964 elections but New Zealand has been using similar tactics since 1867.

The NZ “reservations” are in reverse, however—four Maori seats.

A person of half or more Maori blood must enrol as a Maori and vote only for a Maori candidate. A person of less than half Maori blood may choose whether he will go onto the Maori roll or on the European roll.

But whether he is full or part Maori he can stand for any of the European electorates —even though people of half or more Maori blood cannot vote for him. (Three Maoris stood for so-called European electorates at the election on November 30; so did, for the first time ever in NZ, a Chinese candidate.) Many New Zealanders, both Maori and Pakeha, doubt the fairness of the reserved Maori electorates. They think they have outlived their usefulness and that the time has come for a common-roll.

But while the Bishop of Aotearoa (a Maori bishopric) calculates that on a population basis there would be 20 Maori members elected from a common roll, a few believe that there might be no Maori mem bers at all. Some Maoris think that even this might be a sounder system than the present huge Maori electorates —better a Pakeha that they can approach than a Maori member they never see.

The question of the reserved Maori seats has become a political football with both Conservative and Labour scared to do much about it.

The fairest thing might be a Maori referendum. If a recent Gallop poll is correct, 61 per cent, of Maoris would vote for a common-roll.— Sydneysider .