A New Zealand Paradigm

Like Richard, I've been thinking.

The polls are all showing a close election. The MSM is all saying Winnie will be the kingmaker. Very predictable with no real alternatives put forward, until now.

The Maori Party, Tariana Turia & Pita Sharples will the queen/king makers. Here's why.

It is no secret that Tariana believes Labour has sold Maori out. After all she left the party amongst such dissatisfaction. Pita Sharples was on Jesse (Willie) Jackson yesterday morning saying exactly the same thing. I don't believe they will support Labour post election if given half a chance.

Then we must consider their likely votes.

The could very easily win all 7 Maori seats. If they only pick up 2-3% of the party vote they will cause an overhang because of this. Yet, that is still 7 seats.

If National win 50 odd seats (as current polls predict), and ACT get 6-7 seats (and I think they will get these) and the Peter Dunne party picks up 1 or 2 seats then it's all over for the centre left immediately. ACT could quite easily vote for the government yet not be part of the coalition as they have done before.

Let's not kid ourselves, the Maori Party is not a centre left party. Jordan confirmed this as below:

How does Turia's party fit into this dynamic?

It seems to me that the Maori Party's ambition is to work back towards an illusory golden past of Maoridom, where individuality is subsumed under collective whanau, hapu and iwi identities. This is highlighted by the constant references to whanau, hapu and iwi in their speeches; by their hostility to the inevitable effects of modernity and the Enlightenment on Maori society; by their desire to see social services dominated by a Maori "Aristocracy" (also known as iwi-based service agencies) rather than the universal services provided by the welfare state.

A more conservative - in fact reactionary - approach to politics is hard to imagine. If a pakeha-based party was out campaigning for the restoration of the great landed estates as there were in England; supporting the putting of economic and social power back in the hands of the elites; undermining the national institutions of common citizenship that bind us together - that party would be laughed out of political existence within minutes.

So when you hear stories of Pita Sharples saying the welfare system is bullshit and should be abolished because it "keeps people in dependency" please don't think he's joking. When you hear Tariana Turia saying she believes the State is illegitimate and that the only valid collective identities are those of kinship and blood, don't believe she is joking. Neither of them are.

That party stands for the antithesis of left wing politics, and of liberal politics. It seeks to turn around Maori society and take it back to some non-existent glorious past, and in so doing create a new privileged elite that can exert the kind of social control of the past. These are not its policies - the policies are more middle of the road than this analysis allows; I am talking about the values and the direction they want to go.

It has nothing to do with the challenges that truly face Maori society in the 21st century. It has no answers to poverty or disadvantage or structural racism or the fight for social and economic equality. It has nothing to do with the left. On that basis, the miracle of Turia's time in the Labour Party is that it lasted so long; not that she left. The stunning ineptitude of most of our media means that the party has been pained as Labour friendly, when it is the opposite.

Now, I may get pilloried for this post on the basis that I am not Maori and that I shouldn't be commenting on such issues.

Crap.

I am not Maori but I am a social democrat, and I understand the currents of political thought that came out of the Enlightenment. I see how hostile the Maori Party's ideology is to that progressive tradition. As a New Zealander, I have no time for a group which actively seeks to take my country backwards.

I know some wet urban liberals who are thinking of voting for the Maori Party. I just hope they realise that if they do, they are voting for a party of the conservative right, which would be much more comfortable in coalition with parties that shared its hostility to the State and to national collective institutions - National and ACT - than it would be dealing with the progressive elements in National and with the bulk of the Labour Party.

Sadly the realities of politics may mean that my party has to deal with these people post election, just as it may mean we have to deal with NZ First, but even NZ First is not as bad (from my point of view) as the Maori Party. At least they fall within a recognisably relevant set of issues - fear of cultural change, populism, economic and social nationalism and so on.

As the top weights and favourites head down the home straight with half a furlong to go, with ACT and the Greens hanging out down the inside rail, watch out for the lightweight down the outside.