Simmering

Opinion

Simmering relations

Will higher Maori representation in parliament bridge the racial divide?

It is inevitable that relations between New Zealand’s indigenous Maori race and the Pakeha population are a dominant continuing theme in this country and I make no apology for returning to the subject. It is, after all, an issue impossible to ignore when you reflect on the following recent news events: • a judge rules that Maori do not need the licence to fish for trout in the nation’s rivers that everybody else must buy or face

prosecution.

• a Maori sub-tribe resuses to pay a council’s fees for dog licences because it says dogs are a taonga, or treasure; • the Ministry of Maori Development says disparities between the standards of living of Maori and Pakeha threaten social order in the nation’s cities; • a Maori member of parliament says the Treaty of Waitangi is more important than the Ten Commandments; • a Pakeha launches a petition for a referendum on replacing the treaty with a constitution guaranteeing equal rights for all New Zealanders; and • a Maori takes a sledge hammer to the America’s Cup yacht ing trophy, accusing the government of “illegal occupation of

our country”.

That little medley was guaranteed to get the race relations pot simmering and it surely did. As former Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore said; “New Zealand is tinder dry at the moment.

One bright spark in the wrong place could ignite passions and unleash anger that has been suppressed for generations. For the fist time in my life, I fear for the future of our country.”

Now, Moore is a passionate man, with a passionate love of New Zealand and has been known to go over the top when talk ing about his country. But any thinking person must agree with his statement that race relations and Treaty of Waitangi matters are the “defining issue” of our age. “We could get everything right in economic terms, but if we fail here we fail everywhere,” he says. Many people thought the scene was set for a rapid

improvement in the situation when 15 Maori MPs were elected to the new parliament last year, giving them representation roughly proportionate to their share of the population for the first time. With an appropriate voice on the nation’s leading marae, Winston Peters’ emergence as the deputy prime minister and a powerful say in government through coalition partner New Zealand First’s clean sweep of the Maori seats, things were look

ing up.

With Maori at last given their rightful place in governing the nation, there was scope for the true partnership both sides yearned for in the interests of mutual development and racial harmony. All it needed was goodwill and common sense from both parties. Sadly, this has not proved forthcoming. Some Maori MPs have not helped their cause. Tukuoroirangi Morgan’s $9O boxer shorts purchase {PIM, April 1997) only compounded red neck Pakeha suspicions that Maori leaders loved to ride on a tax payer-funded gravy train and helped kill a Maori-languague TV channel. Labour MP Tariana Turia’s maiden speech depiction of non-Maori New Zealanders as tauiwi - or foreigners - and sub sequent statement that the Treaty of Waitangi was more impor tant than the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta and the United Nations charter only alienated even those Pakeha sympa thetic to Maori rights. The judge who interpreted the treaty to rule that, in some circumstances, Maori did not need a licence to fish for trout didn’t help matters. His ruling was very qualified, limiting the right to fish without a licence to a small number of Maori from a particular hapu or iwi, which has traditional author ity over a river fishery, providing conservation issues are taken into account.

The main purpose must be to provide for the fisher’s own family or marae. Nevertheless, Moore said, the ruling was “just plain wrong, stupid, dangerous and inflammatory”, asking how it could be policed. Little wonder then that the Pakeha man’s sug gestion of a referendum on replacing the Treaty of Waitangi with a constitution for all New Zealanders attracted widespread sup port. Denying his proposal was anti-Maori, Mark Whyte said: “There is a lot of racial divisiveness in our country and the root cause of a lot of it lies in the treaty. We’re a long way on from 1840 and I think we need a different set of rules to live under so that all decent people who want to make New Zealand their home can do so without favour or discrimination.” Under the law, he has 12 months to collect the signatures of 10 per cent of enrolled voters who can demand a national referendum. Its outcome would not be binding on parliament but would assuredly spark a very bitter and divisive campaign - the very thing the country does not need.

As Moore says, a referendum would be passed because there are more non-Maori voters than Maori - but it wouldn’t solve anything. “It will simply feed the radicals who can then claim with justification that the legitimate needs of Maori are being dismissed.” The government is planning to provide funds in this month’s Budget for four new Maori commissions on health, edu cation, employment and economic development to remove dis parities such as Maori people being almost three times as likely as non-Maori to be unemployed. Maori, are looking to their New Zealand First MPs and ministers to live up to their promises.

Veteran Maori Council chairman Sir Graham Latimer has already warned that if they .do not perform, a new Maori politi cal party should be set up to challenge them. ■

David Barber

Wellington