What went awry with well-balanced Maori team?
So this may well be the death knell for the Maori Party. Pita Sharples standing down with the spectre of a fractured caucus over his shoulder and then party president Pem Bird stepping aside with no real succession plan in place are worrying signs. Maybe Naida Glavish will take the reins from Pem but there is sufficient doubt surrounding Te Ururoa Flavell’s ambitions that the move from Minister Sharples seems counter-productive at this stage.
The five Maori Party MPs who entered parliament in 2008 were a well-balanced team.
Sharples was a champion of the urban Maori and had been instrumental in some of the most significant Maori development moves of the past 40 years. Not only has he been grassroots-based and politically astute, he also made it his business to be culturally strong. His story is a powerful one and worthy of acknowledgment and respect regardless of whether one appreciates his politics.
Tariana Turia was much more the iwi stalwart who also brought Ratana connections to the table.
With a background in providing services directly to Maori she had already cut her teeth in Parliament as a Labour PartyMP who, ultimately, impressed the nation with her principled stand on the foreshore and seabed issue.
Flavell had developed a profile as a Maori educator and he had a proven track record of achieving success. He also had impressive cultural credentials and, without a doubt, his oratorical and performance abilities on the marae are persuasive and charismatic.
Hone Harawira needed little introduction to most New Zealanders. He is a nation divider.
Some are incensed by his comments and behaviour; others are inspired to follow him on his crusade for justice. Despite the media interpretation of Harawira, his general position is well considered and utterly consistent.
For a few years he worked very hard to arrange those things in to a package the nation would listen to and could understand as a valid part of the spectrum of debate. He nearly pulled it off and he was even lauded from surprising quarters for his stand on certain principles.
Rahui Katene was the dark horse in the Maori Party camp. Her profile was nowhere near as high as the other MPs’ and she had a lot of work to do to stay in the game. She was a lawyer from a well-known family from within the electorate and she had also married in to another well-known family. Once nominated and then elected she had plenty of work to do to get herself known in her own right and she did this fearlessly. By that I mean she just started fronting up at gatherings, hui, iwi offices and made sure we all knew who she was. And then, unlike other Te Tai Tonga MPs of the past few decades, she stayed in contact.
Her engagement was genuine and she showed real angst when it came to representing our position on important matters.
They had the spectrum covered from conservative to radical, from cultural to political, from charismatic coercion to litigious argument. So what went wrong?
I don’t know what was happening behind closed doors but I do know that sometimes things can genuinely get too much when working with people you rub the wrong way.
It seemed sensible to retain Harawira within the fold and support him to espouse his extreme views on certain matters, to rack up the travel bills and to thumb his nose at the power culture. But there were compromises required and it seems that the individual parts of this equation may have perceived themselves as bigger than the whole.
The Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election has revealed some gaping weaknesses and has shown that
I don’t know what was happening behind closed doors but I do know that sometimes things can genuinely get too much when working with people you rub the wrong way.
support for a different approach may run deeper than the Maori Party expected.
Te Hamua Nikora exposed the soft underbelly of the established parties with his high polling and respectable second place which is most likely a result of the youth vote. Te Hamua has an entertainer’s profile and he is adept at using all forms of social media – the tools that potentially inspire a rangatahi demographic.
There is a lesson for all parties in this by-election result.
But it seems the takeaway lesson for the Maori Party is that Sharples has to step down as leader. To be fair I have struggled to join all the dots in a way that draws a picture showing Minister Sharples leaving the building, but the constant hounding from within his party as well as from critics outside must wear a man down.
Shane Jones was brutal and compelling in his acerbic analysis of a ‘‘spent’’ Maori Party earlier this week on Morning Report but ultimately he was not accurate.
Sharples is not spent and the prospect of Maori representation being absorbed, once again, into the politics of one major party is a significant backward step.