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Maori seats
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In New Zealand politics, the Maori Seats, a special category of electorate, give reserved positions to representatives of Maori in the New Zealand Parliament. That parliament first set up Maori Seats in 1867, after Britain established Westminster-style parliamentary government in New Zealand in 1852.
i seats operate much as do general seats, but have as electors people who are Maori or of Maori descent, and who choose to place their names on a separate electoral roll rather than on the "general roll".
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Encyclopedia
In New Zealand politics, the Maori Seats, a special category of electorate, give reserved positions to representatives of Maori in the New Zealand Parliament. That parliament first set up Maori Seats in 1867, after Britain established Westminster-style parliamentary government in New Zealand in 1852.
Organisation
Maori seats operate much as do general seats, but have as electors people who are Maori or of Maori descent, and who choose to place their names on a separate electoral roll rather than on the "general roll". Maori electoral boundaries exist alongside the electoral boundaries used for general seats; thus every part of New Zealand simultaneously belongs both in a general seat and in a Maori seat.
Number of seats
For most of the period of separate Maori representation (from 1868 to 1996), four Maori seats existed (out of a total that slowly changed from under 80 to 99). They comprised:
- Eastern Maori
- Northern Maori
- Southern Maori
- Western Maori
With the introduction of the MMP electoral system after 1993, the rules regarding the Maori seats changed - today, the number of seats floats, meaning that the electoral population of a Maori seat can remain roughly equivalent to that of a general seat. In the first MMP vote (the 1996 election), the Electoral Commission defined five Maori seats:
- Te Puku O Te Whenua ("the belly of the land")
- Te Tai Hauauru ("the west side")
- Te Tai Rawhiti ("the east side")
- Te Tai Tokerau ("the north side")
- Te Tai Tonga ("the south side")
For the second MMP election (the 1999 election), six Maori seats existed:
- Hauraki
- Ikaroa-Rawhiti
- Te Tai Hauauru
- Te Tai Tokerau
- Te Tai Tonga
- Waiariki
The 2002 and 2005 elections had seven:
- Ikaroa-Rawhiti
- Tainui
- Tamaki Makaurau (roughly equivalent to greater Auckland)
- Te Tai Hauauru
- Te Tai Tokerau
- Te Tai Tonga
- Waiariki
The 2008 election also had seven:
- Hauraki-Waikato - (North Western North Island, includes Hamilton and Papakura)
- Ikaroa-Rawhiti - (East and South North Island, includes Gisborne and Masterton)
- Tamaki Makaurau - (Roughly equivalent to greater Auckland)
- Te Tai Hauauru - (Western North Island, includes Taranaki and Manawatu-Wanganui regions)
- Te Tai Tokerau - (Northernmost seat, includes Whangarei and North and West Auckland)
- Te Tai Tonga - (All of South Island and nearby islands. Largest riding)
- Waiariki - (Includes Tauranga, Whakatane, Rotorua, Taupo)
While seven out of 69 (10 %) does not nearly reflect the proportion of New Zealanders who identify as Maori (about 15 %), many Maori choose to enroll in general electorates, so the proportion reflects fairly accurately the proportion of voters on the Maori roll.
For maps suggesting broad electoral boundaries, see selected links to individual elections at New Zealand elections.
Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples has proposed the creation of an additional electorate, for Maori living in Australia, where there are between 115,000 and 125,000 Maori, the majority living in Queensland.
Candidates for Maori electorates, 2008 elections
See Maori electorate candidates, 2008
Elections
Elections for Maori seats occur as part of New Zealand general elections but in the past such elections took place separately, occurring on different days (usually the day before the vote for general seats) and having different rules. Historically, less organisation went into holding Maori elections than general elections, and the process received fewer resources. At first, Maori seats did not even require registration for voting, although later rules changed this. New practices such as paper ballots (as opposed to casting one's vote verbally) and secret ballots also came later to elections for Maori seats than to general seats.
The authorities frequently delayed or overlooked reforms of the Maori electoral system, with Parliament considering the Maori seats as largely unimportant. The gradual improvement of Maori elections owes much to long-serving Maori MP Eruera Tirikatene, who himself experienced problems in his own election. From the election of 1951 onwards, the voting for Maori and general seats was held on the same day.
Party politics
As Maori seats originated before the development of political parties in New Zealand, all early Maori MPs functioned as independents. When the Liberal Party formed, however, Maori seats began to align themselves with the new organisation, with either Liberal candidates or Liberal sympathisers as representatives. Maori MPs in the Liberal Party included James Carroll, Apirana Ngata and Te Rangi Hiroa. There were also Maori MPs in the more conservative and rural Reform Party; Maui Pomare, Taurekareka Henare and Taite te Tomo.
Since the Labour Party first came to power in 1935, however, it has dominated the Maori seats. For a long period this dominance owed much to Labour's alliance with the Ratana Church, although the Ratana influence has diminished in recent times. In the 1993 election, however, the new New Zealand First Party, led by the part-Maori Winston Peters - who himself held the general seat of Tauranga from 1984 to 2005 - gained the Northern Maori seat (electing Tau Henare to Parliament), and in the 1996 election New Zealand First captured all the Maori seats for one electoral term. Labour regained the seats in the following election in 1999.
A development of particular interest to Maori came in 2004 with the resignation of Tariana Turia from her ministerial position in the Labour-dominated coalition and from her Te Tai Hauauru parliamentary seat. In the resulting by-election on 10 July 2004, standing under the banner of the newly formed Maori Party, she received over 90 % of the 7,000-plus votes cast. The parties then represented in Parliament had not put up official candidates in the by-election. The new party's support in relation to Labour therefore remained untested at the polling booth.
The Maori Party aimed to win all seven Maori seats in 2005. A Marae-Digipoll survey of Maori-rollvoters in November 2004 gave it hope: 35.7 % said they would vote for a Maori Party candidate, 26.3 % opted for Labour, and five of the seven seats appeared ready to fall to the new party. In the election, the new party won four of the Maori seats. It seemed possible that Maori Party MPs could play a role in the choice and formation of a governing coalition, and they (surprisingly) conducted talks with the National Party. In the end they remained in Opposition.
Establishment
The establishment of Maori seats came about in 1867 with the Maori Representation Act, drafted by Napier Member of Parliament (MP) Donald McLean. Parliament passed the Act only after lengthy debate. Many conservative MPs, most of whom considered Maori "unfit" to participate in government, opposed Maori representation in Parliament, while some of the more radical MPs (such as James FitzGerald, who had proposed allocating a third of Parliament to Maori) regarded the concessions given to Maori as insufficient. In the end the setting up of Maori seats separate from existing seats assuaged conservative opposition to the bill - conservatives had previously feared that Maori would gain the right to vote in general electorates, thereby forcing all MPs (rather than just four Maori MPs) to take notice of Maori opinion.
Before this law came into effect, no direct prohibition on Maori voting existed, but other indirect prohibitions made it extremely difficult for Maori to exercise their theoretical electoral rights. The most significant problem involved the property qualification - in order to vote, one needed to possess a certain value of land. Maori owned a great deal of land, but they held it in common, not under individual title, and under the law, only land held under individual title could count towards the property qualification. Donald McLean explicitly intended his bill as a temporary measure, giving specific representation to Maori until they adopted European customs of land ownership. However, the Maori seats lasted far longer than the intended five years, and remain in place today.
The first Maori woman MP was Iriaka Ratana, who succeeded her late husband Matiu Ratana in 1949.
Calls for abolition
Ever since the establishment of the Maori seats, periodic calls have arisen for their abolition. Even at the time of their origin, the seats aroused much controversy, and given their intended temporary nature, attempts to abolish them arose quickly. The reasoning behind these attempts has varied - some have seen the seats as an unfair or unnecessary advantage for Maori, while others have seen them as discriminatory and offensive.
In 1902, a consolidation of electoral law prompted considerable discussion of the Maori seats, and some MPs proposed their abolition. Many of the proposals came from members of the opposition, and possibly had political motivations - in general, the Maori MPs had supported the governing Liberal Party, which had held power since 1891. Many MPs alleged frequent cases of corruption in elections for the Maori seats. Other MPs, however, supported the abolition of Maori seats for different reasons - Frederick Pirani, a member of the Liberal Party, said that the absence of Maori voters from general seats prevented "pakeha members of the House from taking that interest in Maori matters that they ought to take". The Maori MPs, however, mounted a strong defence of the seats, with Wi Pere depicting guaranteed representation in Parliament as one of the few rights Maori possessed not "filched from them by the Europeans". The seats continued in existence.
Just a short time later, in 1905, another re-arrangement of electoral law caused the debate to flare up again. The Minister of Maori Affairs, James Carroll, supported proposals for the abolition of Maori seats, pointing to the fact that he himself had successfully won the general seat of Waiapu. Other Maori MPs, such as Hone Heke Ngapua, remained opposed, however. In the end, the proposals for the abolition or reform of Maori seats did not proceed.
Considerably later, in 1953, the first ever major re-alignment of Maori electoral boundaries occurred, addressing inequalities in voter numbers. Again, the focus on Maori seats prompted further debate about their existence. The government of the day, the National Party, had at the time a commitment to the assimilation of Maori, and had no Maori MPs, and so many believed that they would abolish the seats. However, the government had other matters to attend to, and the issue of the Maori seats gradually faded from view without any changes occurring. Regardless, the possible abolition of the Maori seats appeared indicated when they did not appear among the electoral provisions "entrenched" against future modification.
In the 1950s the practice of reserving seats for Maoris was described by some politicians as "as a form of 'apartheid', like in South Africa".
In 1976, Maori gained the right for the first time to decide on which electoral roll they preferred to enrol. Surprisingly, only 40 % of the potential population registered on the Maori roll. This reduced the number of calls for the abolition of Maori seats, as many presumed that Maori would eventually abandon the Maori seats of their own accord.
When a Royal Commission proposed the adoption of the MMP electoral system in 1986, it also proposed that if the country adopted the new system, it should abolish the Maori seats. The Commission argued that under MMP, all parties would have to pay attention to Maori voters, and that the existence of separate Maori seats marginalised Maori concerns. Following a referendum, Parliament drafted an Electoral Reform Bill, incorporating the abolition of the Maori seats. Both the National Party and Geoffrey Palmer, Labour's leading reformist, supported abolition; but most Maori strongly opposed it. Eventually, the provision did not become law: the Maori seats came closer than ever to abolition, but survived.
The ACT Party and the National Party have each advocated abolition of the separate seats. New Zealand First also advocates abolition of the separate seats but says that the Maori voters should make the decision.
See also
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