Morgan a ‘game-changer’ for party
Te Tai Tokerau LabourMP Kelvin Davis is playing a clever game.
He has welcomed the proposed alliance between Hone Harawira’s Mana and the Maori Party and says ‘‘it will be the Maori Party’s last move in politics’’.
He says this, though, because he knows that trouble is looming.
Davis only beat Harawira last time because just about everything went his way. Not only did the Maori Party run a candidate in the seat, which split Harawira’s vote, but it seemed like 99 per cent of the country had turned on Harawira.
Now, we all know the reason for that - a certain German gentleman by the name of Dotcom sent the nation into a frenzy and sadly Hone copped it because of his relationship with him.
So Davis really had no excuse not to win, particularly after Prime Minister John Key and Winston Peters endorsed his campaign. Despite all of that, Harawira still finished just over 1100 votes behind Davis.
The Maori Party candidate’s vote and the independent former Harawira supporters vote totalled more than 2500 so clearly it’s a seat that Harawira can still win.
The new Maori Party president Tuku Morgan knows this and, as he has said last week, ‘‘he knows how to count’’.
So he wasted no time in going to see Harawira to see if a deal could be worked out.
You could put your money now on some type of accord happening which would allow Harawira to compete directly against Davis with no Maori Party candidate involvement and there will be deals done in most of the Maori seats to the benefit of both parties.
This will all come about because Tuku Morgan is aware of how Maori politics is played.
And after everything that’s happened to him, he is a survivor.
No MaoriMP ever underwent the amount of scrutiny that he received after a disgraceful campaign against him by the Labour Party in 1996 over his purchasing of underpants when he was a Maori TV director.
Yet despite that he served his full term as a MP, then went on to become the boss of Tainui and its chief negotiator.
Then he got thrown out, came back to win the Tainui chairmanship, got done again.
And just when it seemed he might have been gone for good, like Winston Peters he produced a miracle comeback when the Tainui tribes’ Maori King announced him as his spokesman and negotiator which is his current position.
Morgan is also a respected negotiator for other tribes and he was one of our top Maori journalists, working not just in the Maori language area but in mainstream media too with TV3.
So his experience is vast, his appointment is a game changer and if the leaders of the Maori Party, Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox, have any sense they will do well to follow his direction and leadership.