Maori voters in the Maori seats have essentially just had their own minor Brexit moment – they’ve voted the Maori Party out of Parliament. The 13-year project is over. Instead, Maori support has shifted back to the Labour Party, which has won all seven Maori seats, for the first time.
The Maori electorate effectively gave the finger to New Zealand’s first successful indigenous political party, and returned home to the party that has traditionally been associated with Maori politics. So, although the radical zeitgeist taking hold in the West – with a politics of extreme volatility now being the norm – might have been absent from the general electorate in this election, it seems it was present amongst Maori.
The kaupapa Maori political experiment
The Maori cultural-nationalist political experiment – or “kaupapa Maori” vehicle – is now all but over. When the Maori Party formed in 2004, its leaders projected the party as the legitimate voice of all Maori. But support for the project rapidly declined after the Maori Party chose to work with the centre-right National Party in 2008.
The Maori Party has been accused of being aligned with a growing Maori corporate class, as well as with the so called Maori iwi (tribal) elite. In contrast, Maori voters, who tend to lean leftwards economically and traditionally, gave their vote to Labour instead. It seems that many Maori have decided to ditch the Maori party once and for all.
Most Maori are poor working people at best, or situated in New Zealand's growing underclass. The fact that Labour has trumped the Maori Party in all the Maori electorates, suggests that class and material interests – or “bread and butter” issues – have overridden cultural and indigenous concerns within the Maori electorates.
The Maori Party’s pro-Establishment reputation
The perception of the Maori Party as a vehicle for iwi elites has seriously dented its appeal to voters in the Maori electorates. The party’s partnership with the National Party, and its focus on cultural concerns over economic policy, had led to the departure of much of its earlier electoral support.
The party’s lack of focus on tackling Maori poverty, as well as the growing levels of inequality within Te Ao Maori (or Maoridom) itself – had led to a perception of the Maori Party as a political vehicle for rich Maori as opposed to the majority of poor and working class Maori.
Mana Party leader Hone Harawira was initially able to capitalize on the growing levels of discontent with the Maori Party, which initially acted to propel the Mana movement as the legitimate voice for disenfranchised poor Maori. However, when Harawira took his party into an alliance with maverick capitalist Kim Dotcom, the ability of Mana to present itself as a voice for the poor died.
The Willie Jackson factor
Maori urban leader and seasoned politician Willie Jackson has been key to Labour’s triumphant result in the Maori seats. Jackson has been well aware that the majority of Maori have been hurting over the last decade of National’s rule, and he knew there was a strong mood for change in the Maori electorates.
Jackson had originally planned to stand for the Maori Party in the Tamaki Makaurau electorate. But he then dumped the party earlier this year, and joined Labour instead. If the Maori Party had retained Jackson’s support, the party would have had a real chance of recapturing the Maori vote through connecting with the anti-Establishment zeitgeist.
However, with the subsequent loss of Jackson to the Labour Party, the Maori Party, along with Harawira, faced the real chance of obliteration. Labour was now able to more effectively present itself as the voice of disenfranchised urban Maori.
Labour appointed Jackson as their Maori Campaign Director for the 2017 election, and he subsequently proved to be central to their winning streak in all of the Maori seats. The Maori urban leader pushed a strong class-centred narrative to the Maori electorate, arguing that poor and working class Maori interests were being ignored by the Maori Party. This narrative proved to resonate strongly with Maori voters.
The failure of the independent Maori political project
The founding of the Maori Party, and its subsequent success, led many to conclude that a new era had dawned in which Maori overwhelmingly supported the need for an independent Maori political vehicle with a well-defined Maori philosophy. The Maori Party itself even went as far as declaring the Maori Party as the permanent Treaty partner in a relationship with the kawanatanga (government).
The Maori Party represented a new and unique political phenomenon. The formation of the Maori Party, and the subsequent election of four Maori Party MPs to parliament in 2005, represented a watershed in indigenous politics in New Zealand. The Maori Party’s electoral victory was historic in terms of representing the first time an indigenous-based political party in New Zealand had independently gained electoral seats.
The Maori Party emerged at a time of heightened protest activity over the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. Labour MP Tariana Turia broke from the Labour Party, and presented the need for an independent Maori political voice. She argued for a Maori party with a firm Maori philosophy or world view, that was neither “left or right”, but “Maori” in its outlook and composition (Tariana Turia, 2013).
The party was seen as presenting a platform for kaupapa Maori politics, an ideology that privileges a Maori world view. However, the party’s focus as a vehicle for a kaupapa Maori ideology ignored the contested understandings of what is a Maori world view, as well as the heterogeneous nature of Te Ao Maori (Maoridom) itself.
Tariana Turia, who still commands a significant influence over the party, tended to ignore the deep divisions that mark out Te Ao Maori, and equated elite Maori concerns as the concerns of Maori as a whole. This orientation towards the Maori Establishment acted to cause deep divisions within the party, which eventually led to the split by Hone Harawira and the formation of the left-leaning and working class oriented Mana Party.
It’s about class and “bread and butter” issues, stupid
The project of forming a single independent political voice for Maori has failed. The early leaders of the Maori Party view of Maori as essentially a homogenous group with a common outlook and with united concerns, proved to be misguided. The increasing relevance of class divisions within Maoridom – between iwi elites on the one hand, and poor and working class Maori on the other – proved to be a divide the Maori Party has failed to understand and capitalise on.
Willie Jackson gave the Maori Party a chance to redefine itself as a voice for disenfranchised urban Maori, and a chance to capture some of the “missing million” non-voters. But with the party’s loss of the urban Maori leader, it has been Labour and not the Maori Party-Mana alliance that has been able to present itself as the vehicle for disenfranchised Maori against the tribal and corporate Maori elites.
