"It has become starkly obvious that the Maori seats are being used by activists to [ghettoise Māori: to isolate them, separate them, cut them off, according to a cultural identity]. ...
"Ghettoisation can be done to a person or group, or people or groups can do it to themselves. ...
"Israr Kasana, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the Canadian city of Calgary, explains why he and his family rejected the temptation to adopt the comfortable way of establishing themselves within a Pakistani community. He says 'Ghettoisation or marginalisation of any kind is bad for society. It creates exclusion, imbalance, envy, anger, ignorance and, more importantly, distrust.' ...
"The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves according to cultural identity, whereas what we must surely want is a society in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law." ...
"[Then National leader Bill] English said [in 2003] the National Party 'stands for one standard of citizenship for all.' ... 'That’s why a National-led Government will abolish the Maori seats.” Of course, it did nothing of the sort when National came back into government in 2008 under John Key. Instead, the Key government abetted the infiltration of all parts of New Zealand society by elements who would substitute authoritarian tribal rule for a free and democratic society, a process which was accelerated by the Ardern/Hipkins governments. ...
"Under pressure from ACT and New Zealand First, the coalition government has walked this back a bit but not to the extent needed to offer meaningful restraint of the authoritarian tendencies which unthinking acquiescence by most of us has unwittingly allowed. ...
"Leadership is needed. We need a Prime Minister who will say loudly and clearly what English said in 2003 ... Today, when NZ First has advanced a Bill for a referendum and ACT says get rid of the Maori seats now, the opportunity is ripe for that sort of leadership.
"Getting rid of the seats, especially by or endorsed by referendum to show it is peoples’ will, would not only remove an anti-democratic excrescence, but also be a signal that enough is enough and that henceforth we shall be a 'multiracial society [where] people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law.'
"Yet the National Party is silent. ..."
~ Gary Judd, composite quote from his posts 'Ghettoising the mind' and 'National could signal its support for democracy'
SOME HISTORY:
"[T]he Māori seats were created to bring Māori into the parliamentary system and guarantee representation, rather than exclude them.
"By 1867, when the Māori Representation Act 1867(1) passed, Europeans outnumbered Māori roughly four to one. ...
"The Māori seats addressed a real problem: under the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 [2] voting required individual property or household qualification. Most Māori land was communally held, leaving Māori largely unable to meet the franchise. ...
The Māori electorates solved the voting problem by granting all Māori men over 21 the right to vote,
decades before universal male suffrage applied elsewhere in New Zealand [3]. Far from limiting Māori rights, the law expanded them. ...
"The seats also guaranteed meaningful participation. Four electorates—three in the North Island, one for the South—were superimposed over existing electorates. Māori with qualifying property could still vote in European electorates, giving many a dual vote. [4] Officials went to extraordinary lengths to ensure participation: in 1890, a returning officer undertook a six-day trek through dense Urewera bush to establish a polling station at Maungapōhatu. [5] Such efforts are hardly consistent with a strategy to suppress Māori voices. ...
"Seats were originally intended as temporary until Māori qualified under the general property franchise [6] ...
"While Māori were under-represented by modern proportional standards [when the Māori seats were created in 1867, each European electorate represented roughly 3,500 people, while each Māori electorate represented around 12,500 people [7]], the four seats ensured guaranteed parliamentary representation, at a time when European immigration was rapidly outpacing Māori numbers. This was enfranchisement, not suppression.' ...
"However today the original rationale for the Māori electorates has disappeared. In the current Parliament 33 MPs identify as having Māori heritage — about 27% of the House — far exceeding Māori’s roughly 17% share of the population. Even without the seven reserved seats, Māori representation would remain substantial, the historical purpose of the Māori electorates has now been fulfilled and, consistent with the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System and with Article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi, they should now be abolished in favour of equal representation for all voters."
NOTES
1. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats2. New Zealand Parliament, “History of the Electoral System,” https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/history/history-of-the-electoral-system/3. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
4. McRobie, Alan, Electoral Atlas of New Zealand, GP Books, 1989.
5. New Zealand History, “Polling in isolated Māori communities,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
6. Ibid.; New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
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