Polynesian

Opinion

Polynesian connection in NZ general election

David Barber

Wellington

THE Pacific - the word and its Polynesian people - will play a major role in New Zealand’s general election next year.

In itself, that is a happy prospect. Whether, in fact, it will turn out to be good for New Zealand and its Maori and Pacific Island people remains to be seen.

It could put the Maori and island populations on the political map as never before and raise their cultural identities to exciting new heights. It could also separate them alarmingly from their pakeha and Asian fellow countrymen, causing dangerous new racial and cultural divisions in a nation increasingly diverse and in need of harmony.

As the politically volatile year of 1998 draws to a close, it could go either way.

At the centre of this issue is a new political party called Mauri Pacific - which means “essence or spirit of the Pacific”.

Its aim, said founding leader Tau Henare, is “to take the nation on a voyage of rediscovery, back to the Pacific and towards cul tural integrity so that we can begin to understand who we are, where we are and where we are going”.

Despite New Zealanders’ origins in an indigenous Pacific peo ples’ movement, what he calls Anglo-New Zealanders are the dominant culture in a land that has failed to develop its own uniqueness, he said.

Maori culture, said Henare, was an important source of unity and pride and should be capitalised on to ’’galvanise” the nation towards a common vision.

Brave words and a brave move by the Minister of Maori Affairs, starting a new political party towards the end of a year in which many New Zealanders have become sick and tired of poli tics and politicians.

And starting a party that, on first appearance at least, has little to recommend it except a somewhat nebulous vision is bravery indeed.

Henare and <his four fellow founding MPs, Internal Affairs Minister Jack Elder, Maori seat holders Tukoroirangi Morgan and Rana Waitai and the Reverend Ann Batten, are an odd mixture of new party political visionaries.

On the face of it, all the three Maori members have in common with the other two are former membership of the New Zealand First party, whose MPs split up in August when its coalition gov ernment with Prime Minister Jenny Shipley’s Nationals collapsed.

This inevitably led to charges of political opportunism, charges enhanced by the fact that Elder and Batten are now members of their third party in as many years.

All had remained in Parliament as independents since the split, supporting the now minority National Party government while their former colleagues went onto the opposition benches, with Henare and Elder retaining their ministerial portfolios.

Mauri Pacific - in the unusual position of having been bom holding the balance of power in Parliament - has to convince vot ers that it is worthy of a lasting place on the fast-changing New Zealand political scene in the Mixed Member Proportional envi ronment.

As an infant, it has to be said the odds are heavily stacked against it. One has only to remember the fate of the United New Zealand party, also created by a handful of MPs defecting from other parties, who were all voted out, with the exception of leader Peter Dunne, at the 1996 election.

Henare’s first task, given his cultural vision, is to win the Maori seats which NZ First captured with a clean sweep in 1996.

This Maori bloc - not longer ago hailed as the “tight five” - is now in disarray, with Tu Wyllie staying with NZ First in opposi tion and Tuariki Delamere supporting the government as an inde pendent.

The Labour Party, which had a monopoly on the Maori seats for years, claims to be regaining lost ground and Winston Peters’

NZ First will be lusting for revenge on those he dubs traitors, promising a no-holds-barred tussle on the hustings.

But Henare says he wants to field candidates in every elec torate and insists Mauri Pacific is not a Maori party, but is aiming to attract all New Zealanders. “It is really all about nationalism,” he said.

There was little in the way of policy when the party was launched, only two planks: * Compulsory Maori language lessons in primary schools, and * Signposts and public billboards to be bilingual, both in Maori and English.

Now it has to be said that with the best will in the world the majority of pakeha voters are not going to stop in their tracks and regard those as founding policies that will force them to seriously consider switching their political allegiance.

Whatever Henare says, it cast Mauri Pacific as a Maori party from the outset in most pakeha eyes. True or otherwise, it gave credence to some critics’ claims that Mauri Pacific’s bi-cultural approach, which ignores the growing Asian population, for instance, will be divisive rather than inclusive.

And a new divisive party is something New Zealand does not need as it goes into an election year in which the nation’s politi cians will inevitably be highlighting their differences rather than the things that should draw New Zealanders closer together. ■