Armstrong on Turia

An insightful column by John Armstrong on the Maori Party where he notes that for the first time Maori stand on the brink of gaining political power – rather than just court-derived power.

MMP is about to enter a fresh phase, one in which all the parties represent recognisable blocs of the electorate. The personality cults are on the way out. Jim Anderton must be thinking about retirement. It will be touch and go whether New Zealand First makes it back into Parliament at the next election.

That is an interesting scenario. On the left you may have Labour and Greens, on the right National and ACT and in the centre a Maori and a “family values” party.

Some on the left are focused on that the Maori Party is not pure and is not a party of the left (incidentally they actually do vote with Labour on key issues far more than they vote against) because the Maori Party has advocated for work for the dole. I think it is silly to paint them as left or right (Jordan partly agrees, but then asserts they always vote right in the end) – they want to achieve the best for Maori and don’t care what labels are applied to a policy, so they will support any policy they think is beneficial for Maori.

Now that is not to mean that just because they sincerely believe a policy is good for Maori, means it is and one has to agree with them. They do not have a monopoly on political wisdom for Maori, just as the Greens don’t on environmental issues.