I've always thought that calling the Te Tai Tokerau by-election was a mistake for Mana. Not because of the cost to the country, which is insignificant in the context of what it costs to have a democracy. I thought it was a mistake because of the costs to the party.
Firstly the Mana Party has few resources. While almost the entire Te Tai Tokerau section of the Maori Party seems to have gone straight over to Mana, its bank accounts probably didn't.
Even in terms of human energy, it is a big ask to expect party activists to run a by-election and then have to run the general election campaign straight after. Door-knocking, mailbox drops, stalls and billboards take a lot out of a branch.
Added to this, the Labour Party is free to give the by-election its undivided attention in a way that it could not do in a general election. Especially this one. While the Labour machine may not cut a lot of ice in Ahipara it has certainly made some headway in the southern, more urban end of the electorate. Getting those votes back takes a level of grunt that Mana may not have.
Perhaps most importantly, at this stage in its life Mana needs to be building its organisation, its membership, its policies and its processes, not getting itself bogged down in a skirmish in the North. At the Mana Party launch I challenged the party to avoid becoming the kind of political party that revolves around one man, by building a truly national organisation with strong collective leadership. That means Hone Harawira getting around the country, building branches, shoulder tapping candidates and organisers and inspiring people to get involved. It also means getting the principles and policies of the party clear.
It is by doing this that Mana has the potential to become a potent political force. My hope for years has been to see a third political space open up in New Zealand parliamentary politics, where a combination of small parties is able to challenge the duopoly of National and Labour. As a greenwing activist and commentator it seems obvious that the core of that third force would be the Greens, an independent Maori voice and a genuine left party. Mana has the potential to fill more than one of those spaces, if it is able to bring together the Pakeha left and progressive Maori in the way its launch suggested it might.
Instead Mana is using its time to prove that Hone Harawira has a mandate to be the MP for Te Tai Tokerau. Honestly, I don't think anyone doubted it. In fact (with the benefit of hindsight) it seems obvious that a by-election would be unable to improve on the assumption most of us already had - that support for Hone in the electorate was virtually unanimous. All a by-election could ever do was weaken that assumption, which of course is what the polls have now done. I'm pretty confident that Hone will win on Saturday but he will probably never again look as unassailable as he did before the by-election was called.
That is not to say there have been no benefits for Mana in this race. Hone has been generally acknowledged the winner in his various debates by mainstream political commentators. His political style has had some of the rougher edges knocked off in the tumble of the campaign and the more exposure he gets, the less of a caricature he becomes in people's minds. That undermining of the irrational fear and loathing that many Pakeha have will be useful in the longer term.
But whoever takes the seat on Saturday, Kelvin Davis will consider himself a winner. He has represented the Labour Party well. He will be an MP either way and even if he does not take the seat he will be the man that almost knocked out Hone Harawira on his first run. It seems he is, as he says, a born politician and I'm sure it won't be long before the press gallery starts calling him Labour's rising star and speculating on his leadership prospects. Which is kind of why I'm rooting for Hone – the born activist and shit stirrer. Who Hone represents is those people who rarely get represented in the New Zealand colonial parliament.
Showing posts with label Hone Harawira. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hone Harawira. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Bringing the Maori Party back from the brink
Tomorrow the Maori Party has a chance to pull back from the brink, when Hone Harawira and Te Ururoa Flavell meet at Taheke Marae in Rotorua for the first time since Mr Flavell made a formal complaint against his colleague. To do so, though, will take a much more skillful handling of the conflict than the party has shown thus far.
The key question is whether either side actually wants to pull back anymore. I doubt Hone wrote the column that preceeded all this with the intention of splitting the party, but he may now be beyond caring. What is clear, though, is that the leadership of the Party has been trying to force him out for a long time. Over a year ago I wrote about how a rumour campaign had been started against Mr Harawira (well before the 'white motherfuckers' email) that seemed intended to undermine his support base. More recently rumours were being circulated in the party that he was considering leaving the Maori Party, including giving impetus to the speculation that he might team up with Sue Bradford and Matt McCarten.
In trying to oust Harawira, though, the difficulty that the party faces is not just that he is a hard man to take out. Mr Harawira does represent an important strand of opinion in the party. I have spoken to Maori activists all over the country – at tangi, at hui and at celebrations – who have volunteered their dissatisfaction with the direction of the party and their intention to vote Green this election if things don't change. In particular they highlight Metiria Turei's intelligent, articulate and principled outspokenness on things of concern to Maori – including an array of environmental issues such as mining – and they wonder why the Maori Party has so often remained silent.
The Maori Party leadership might respond that these criticisms are unfair. That the party has achieved a number of important successes for Maori as a result of their relationship with National. Many mainstream Pakeha political commentators would agree. The real judges of whether the trade-off has been worth it, though, will be Maori voters come election time. And not just voters. One of the factors in the Maori Party's success thus far is the enormous energy and enthusiam of its activists. It is those activists, the election harvesters, that are starting to down tools, pack up and go home. If the party loses their support it will still survive but in my view will go into decline. Rather than winning all 7 Maori seats as I once hoped, it is likely that they will start to lose seats.
Hone will no doubt win Te Tai Tokerau should he choose to contest it as an independent. The speculation that he might lead a newly formed Left party (or even more bizarrely join a Left party led by Sue Bradford) is no more than wishful thinking in my opinion. That rumours continue to swirl says more about the lack of confidence that such a party could get elected on its own merit than anything about Mr Harawira's intentions. That is not to say that I would not love to see a genuinely Left party in the Parliament. My long term hope has always been for a coalition of Greens, Browns and Reds to between them make up the dominant partner in a Government.
Having said that, the best thing for the Maori Party, and for Hone Harawira, in my view is to resolve their differences. That means finding some new accomodation between them that recognises both their need to honour their commitments and maintain their relationship with National and their need to honour the voice of their own people and maintain a clear distance from National. In particular the influence of the Iwi Leaders Group on policy, a cause of dissatisfaction among many supporters, needs to be opened up for debate.
If the Maori Party, and Mr Harawira, can achieve this then they will have done something extraordinary. The biggest challenge for the Maori Party has always been to balance the interests of its diverse constituency. If they cannot, and Mr Harawira is forced to leave, then they will have failed that crucial test.
The key question is whether either side actually wants to pull back anymore. I doubt Hone wrote the column that preceeded all this with the intention of splitting the party, but he may now be beyond caring. What is clear, though, is that the leadership of the Party has been trying to force him out for a long time. Over a year ago I wrote about how a rumour campaign had been started against Mr Harawira (well before the 'white motherfuckers' email) that seemed intended to undermine his support base. More recently rumours were being circulated in the party that he was considering leaving the Maori Party, including giving impetus to the speculation that he might team up with Sue Bradford and Matt McCarten.
In trying to oust Harawira, though, the difficulty that the party faces is not just that he is a hard man to take out. Mr Harawira does represent an important strand of opinion in the party. I have spoken to Maori activists all over the country – at tangi, at hui and at celebrations – who have volunteered their dissatisfaction with the direction of the party and their intention to vote Green this election if things don't change. In particular they highlight Metiria Turei's intelligent, articulate and principled outspokenness on things of concern to Maori – including an array of environmental issues such as mining – and they wonder why the Maori Party has so often remained silent.
The Maori Party leadership might respond that these criticisms are unfair. That the party has achieved a number of important successes for Maori as a result of their relationship with National. Many mainstream Pakeha political commentators would agree. The real judges of whether the trade-off has been worth it, though, will be Maori voters come election time. And not just voters. One of the factors in the Maori Party's success thus far is the enormous energy and enthusiam of its activists. It is those activists, the election harvesters, that are starting to down tools, pack up and go home. If the party loses their support it will still survive but in my view will go into decline. Rather than winning all 7 Maori seats as I once hoped, it is likely that they will start to lose seats.
Hone will no doubt win Te Tai Tokerau should he choose to contest it as an independent. The speculation that he might lead a newly formed Left party (or even more bizarrely join a Left party led by Sue Bradford) is no more than wishful thinking in my opinion. That rumours continue to swirl says more about the lack of confidence that such a party could get elected on its own merit than anything about Mr Harawira's intentions. That is not to say that I would not love to see a genuinely Left party in the Parliament. My long term hope has always been for a coalition of Greens, Browns and Reds to between them make up the dominant partner in a Government.
Having said that, the best thing for the Maori Party, and for Hone Harawira, in my view is to resolve their differences. That means finding some new accomodation between them that recognises both their need to honour their commitments and maintain their relationship with National and their need to honour the voice of their own people and maintain a clear distance from National. In particular the influence of the Iwi Leaders Group on policy, a cause of dissatisfaction among many supporters, needs to be opened up for debate.
If the Maori Party, and Mr Harawira, can achieve this then they will have done something extraordinary. The biggest challenge for the Maori Party has always been to balance the interests of its diverse constituency. If they cannot, and Mr Harawira is forced to leave, then they will have failed that crucial test.
Monday, November 23, 2009
More on the ETS, the Maori Party and Hone Harawira
There is blood in the water. The emission trading scheme now looks like nothing more than a bait ball for hungry sharks, and the feeding frenzy is on. The National / Maori Party scheme will hand around $110 billion from New Zealand taxpayers to businesses while doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Federated Farmers, not content with the bulk of the fishy proceeds, wants to vacuum up the whole damn lot. They are calling for the Government to scrap the entire scheme without offering a proposal they would support, other than taxpayers picking up 100% of their tab. With all this, it's hard to blame corporate iwi leaders for wanting to get a feed as well. They are currently negotiating (we hear) to plant native trees on conservation land and grab the carbon credits.
The problem arises, of course, because the Government's proposed changes to the emission trading scheme are so contrary that they subsidise the polluters – farmers and industry – and punish the foresters. Maori forestry owners are doubly penalised because many of their forests were planted before the Kyoto agreement was signed and so don't get carbon credits. It doesn't seem impossible to come up with a scheme that actually reduces emissions and treats (pre and post Kyoto) forests fairly, but both National and the Maori Party seem more interested in getting special treatment for their respective powerful lobbies than doing something for the planet.
This has been described in The Guardian (UK) as the worlds “most shameless two fingers to the global community” from “a country that sells itself round the world as 'clean and green'”. New Zealand got a pretty sweet deal in the Kyoto agreement, agreeing to hold rather than reduce our rate of greenhouse gas emissions. We have continued to plead for special treatment ever since, even though we have one of the highest per capital emission rates in the world. Expectations on what will happen at next month's climate change negotiations in Copenhagen vary, but I think that New Zealand can expect to be shamed and embarassed. We certainly deserve it.
Which brings me to Hone Harawira. I've always seen 'motherf***er' as a very literal term describing those who despoil the Earth. Reading his email I don't think he was making a statement about all white people, and while I don't know if he uses that term the same way, it does actually describe quite a lot of colonial history. His words were rash and unwise, but may not have been so shocking if people more fully understood our own recent past, such as the 'scorched earth' policies inflicted in Te Urewera or the bloody invasions of the Waikato.
That's why I can't help feeling that there is more to the Maori Party's attempt to oust him than meets the eye. It has been obvious for some time that Hone is uneasy about the Maori Party's relationship with National and their voting record on things like the emission trading scheme. However, stories have been circulated in the party that Hone is actually upset because he didn't get a ministerial post. What is surprising is that a number of people seem to actually believe it. It looks suspiciously like a deliberate attempt to undermine his credibility in the party, prior to attempting to remove him.
Hone is almost certainly the leadership's most challenging MP, but it would be a grave mistake to think that ousting him would solve the Party's problems. A number of Maori Party activists are also finding the party's current direction difficult to swallow and might view Hone's departure as proof that there is no place left for them in the Maori Party. The Party has always had a difficult challenge in balancing heterogenous Maori interests, and now seems in danger of forgetting that sweet fruits come from healthy roots.
(from myy Waikato Times column 20 November 2009)
Federated Farmers, not content with the bulk of the fishy proceeds, wants to vacuum up the whole damn lot. They are calling for the Government to scrap the entire scheme without offering a proposal they would support, other than taxpayers picking up 100% of their tab. With all this, it's hard to blame corporate iwi leaders for wanting to get a feed as well. They are currently negotiating (we hear) to plant native trees on conservation land and grab the carbon credits.
The problem arises, of course, because the Government's proposed changes to the emission trading scheme are so contrary that they subsidise the polluters – farmers and industry – and punish the foresters. Maori forestry owners are doubly penalised because many of their forests were planted before the Kyoto agreement was signed and so don't get carbon credits. It doesn't seem impossible to come up with a scheme that actually reduces emissions and treats (pre and post Kyoto) forests fairly, but both National and the Maori Party seem more interested in getting special treatment for their respective powerful lobbies than doing something for the planet.
This has been described in The Guardian (UK) as the worlds “most shameless two fingers to the global community” from “a country that sells itself round the world as 'clean and green'”. New Zealand got a pretty sweet deal in the Kyoto agreement, agreeing to hold rather than reduce our rate of greenhouse gas emissions. We have continued to plead for special treatment ever since, even though we have one of the highest per capital emission rates in the world. Expectations on what will happen at next month's climate change negotiations in Copenhagen vary, but I think that New Zealand can expect to be shamed and embarassed. We certainly deserve it.
Which brings me to Hone Harawira. I've always seen 'motherf***er' as a very literal term describing those who despoil the Earth. Reading his email I don't think he was making a statement about all white people, and while I don't know if he uses that term the same way, it does actually describe quite a lot of colonial history. His words were rash and unwise, but may not have been so shocking if people more fully understood our own recent past, such as the 'scorched earth' policies inflicted in Te Urewera or the bloody invasions of the Waikato.
That's why I can't help feeling that there is more to the Maori Party's attempt to oust him than meets the eye. It has been obvious for some time that Hone is uneasy about the Maori Party's relationship with National and their voting record on things like the emission trading scheme. However, stories have been circulated in the party that Hone is actually upset because he didn't get a ministerial post. What is surprising is that a number of people seem to actually believe it. It looks suspiciously like a deliberate attempt to undermine his credibility in the party, prior to attempting to remove him.
Hone is almost certainly the leadership's most challenging MP, but it would be a grave mistake to think that ousting him would solve the Party's problems. A number of Maori Party activists are also finding the party's current direction difficult to swallow and might view Hone's departure as proof that there is no place left for them in the Maori Party. The Party has always had a difficult challenge in balancing heterogenous Maori interests, and now seems in danger of forgetting that sweet fruits come from healthy roots.
(from myy Waikato Times column 20 November 2009)
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