Maori seats
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For most of the time since the establishment of Westminster-style Parliamentary Government in New Zealand, the Maori inhabitants have had allotted to them specific seats in the New Zealand Parliament.
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Organisation
The Maori seats operate in much the same way as general seats, but have as electors people of Maori ancestry who choose to place their names on a separate electoral roll. Maori electoral boundaries exist on top of the electoral boundaries used for general seats - 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, a fixed number of 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 in 1993, the rules regarding the Maori seats changed - today, the number of seats floats, meaning that the voting 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 (the 1999 election), six Maori seats existed:
- Hauraki
- Ikaroa-Rawhiti
- Te Tai Hauauru
- Te Tai Tokerau
- Te Tai Tonga
- Waiariki
The 2002 election had seven:
- Ikaroa-Rawhiti
- Tainui
- Tamaki Makaurau
- Te Tai Hauauru
- Te Tai Tokerau
- Te Tai Tonga
- Waiariki
Seven out of sixty nine is much less than the proportion of New Zealanders who identify as Maori, but since many Maori choose to enrol in general electorates, the proportion is not very different from the proportion of voters on the Maori roll.
For maps suggesting broad electoral boundaries, see selected links to individual elections at New Zealand elections.
Elections
Today, elections for Maori seats occur as part of New Zealand general elections. In the past, however, elections for Maori seats took place separately, occurring on different days and having different rules. Historically, Maori elections were more poorly organised than general elections, and received fewer resources. At first, Maori seats did not even require registration for voting, although this was later changed. New practices such as paper ballots (as opposed to casting one's vote verbally) and secret ballots were also adopted later in Maori seats than in general seats. Reforms of the Maori electoral system were frequently delayed or overlooked, with Parliament considering the Maori seats to be 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. All distinctions were finally abolished by the election of 1951, when general seats and Maori seats were integrated.
Party politics
As the Maori seats were established before the development of political parties in New Zealand, all early Maori MPs functioned as independents. When the Liberal Party formed, however, the Maori seats began to align themselves with the new organisation, with either Liberal candidates or Liberal sympathisers as representatives.
Since the Labour Party first came to power in 1935, however, it has dominated the Maori seats. This long owed much to Labour's alliance with the Ratana Church, although the Ratana influence has diminished in recent times. In the 1996 election, however, the new New Zealand First Party, led by the part-Maori Winston Peters - who himself held the general seat of Tauranga - briefly captured the Maori seats. Labour regained the seats in the following election.
A change in the Maori seats came in 2004 with the resignation of Tariana Turia from her ministerial position in the Labour-led coalition and from her Te Tai Hauauru parliamentary seat. In the resulting by-election on 10 July 2004, operating under the banner of the new Maori Party, she received over 90% of the 7,000+ 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 remains untested at the polling booth.
The Maori Party aims to win all seven Maori seats in the next scheduled election (2005), but opinions differ over its chances. A Marae-Digipoll survey of Maori roll voters in November 2004 gives 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.
Establishment
The establishment of Maori seats came about in 1867 with the Maori Representation Act, drafted by Napier 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 be able 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 Maori representation 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.
Calls for abolition
Ever since the establishment of the Maori seats, periodic calls have arisen for their abolition. Even at the time of their creation, the seats aroused much controversy, and given that they were intended to be temporary, 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. Many MPs alleged that elections in the Maori seats were frequently corrupt. 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 which had not been "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 were defeated.
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 the seats would be abolished. 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 was indicated when they were not included among the electoral provisions "entrenched" against future modification.
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 system was adopted, the Maori seats should be abolished. It argued that under MMP, all parties would be required to pay attention to Maori voters, and that the existence of separate Maori seats marginalised Maori concerns. Following a referendum, an Electoral Reform Bill was proposed, and the abolition of the Maori seats was included in it. 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 Electoral Reform Bill is the closest that the Maori seats have ever come to abolition.
More recently, both the National Party and New Zealand First have advocated abolition of the separate seats.