The Maori electorates have the ability to create a genuinely progressive Government in 2017.
The grim math for progressives has always been the following.
Labour + Greens won’t = 51, they need NZ First to get there and we all know that Winston is about as socially progressive as your average 100 year old.
It’s always been the problem for the Greens and Labour, that no matter how progressive they want to be, NZ First will always hold them back, it was this reason that I helped set up MANA, to be that difference between getting over 50% and not getting there.
So how can we get the Greens plus Labour to 51% without NZ First?
In the Maori electorates.
The Maori Party and MANA Party are still talking through the requirements of what an alliance this election would require, but anything less than not standing candidates in particular electorates will result in failure, so they know what they need to do to ensure that.
What the Maori Party require next after an arrangement with MANA is high profile candidates. Without those high profile candidates, they won’t generate enough excitement in the electorates and wider media to ensure a high enough turn out to counter Labour’s machine. In this they need Maori candidates with real mana, someone like Willie Jackson who once in power knows exactly how to maximise the political leverage to get the best for Maori. Howie Tamati is an excellent start.
If the Maori Party and MANA make an arrangement not to stand in certain electorates and the Maori Party bring in candidates of the calibre of Jackson and Tamati, they have every chance of winning 6 electorates and MANA winning 1 electorate. So Labour would ‘lose’ 6 electorate MPs, but thanks to MMP, they would make those numbers back up from their Party vote.
This would result in Labour still having the same number of MPs (if they can get their Party vote to 30% +) and you would have MANA Party (plus any extra MPs they bring in through their tail coating Party vote) and 6 Maori MPs.
At those numbers, the Maori bloc would have an opportunity to make real gains from a Labour/Green minority Government, far more than they have managed from National.
But for this to occur, the MANA + Maori Party alliance needs to be confirmed, the Maori Party must court candidates of Jackson’s quality and they need to be strategic in their post election negotiations.
There will need to be many BBQs at Marama Fox’s home this Summer.
[…] Here is my analysis of the Maori seats here. […]
Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox is a hardline social convervative. She is anti choice, anti drug reform, anti homosexual, anti sex education,and anti evolution. She is a Manchurian candidate of the Destiny and Mormon churches.
Be careful what you wish for Martyn.
The Maori party also supported National’s legislation to sell off state housing that has broken up families and made countless people homeless.
Labour did this too so what is your next valid argument Words
She is not all those antis Millsy that is pure exaggeration
Yeah I think you got your facts missed up buddy, good try though. You should stop making sweeping generalisations based on a persons link to their religion.
You must be really proud of your dear old Mum, Jareth. I hope you enjoyed the muskets and blankets Donkey gave her to sell out Maori and everyone else when she agreed prop up his corrupt, useless government.
I’m sure she’ll be able to have good laugh with Hekia about the appalling rates of child poverty in NZ, and how they never did a thing about it while they were enjoying the good life in parliament.
Talking the party vote up is easy, getting the party vote up is not.
For any convoluted thinking around the “what ifs?” the simple picture is the most likely picture – each Maori seat Labour loses strengthens John Key.
Love to use a rugby analogy – you can’t score a try unless you catch the bloody ball in the first place.
While a good idea the theory – the legacy of the Maori party is poor. They have helped prop up National and ACT and what about if there is a split between Mana and The Maori party afterwards and The Maori party join the Natz yet again.
I also don’t think that the way the Maori party do things helps Maori. It just helps the 10% Maori elite or those who are excellent at getting grants and settling up Charter Schools. Their are neoliberal Maori getting rich off the system – fishing using slaves from abroad is a good example.
I’ve got Whanau who are uban Maori and get absolutely nothing from the Maori party because they are urban, live in Auckland and don’t understand or want to work the system. Urban Maori and Maori in areas like Northland then get the poor working conditions, expensive rentals and poor health care, Drug growth and discrimination that has blossomed over 8 years of National’s rule. Mana would be better for them, or Labour or Greens, even NZ First.
But the Maori party has made their lives worse.
The likes of Kelvin Davis will fight such considerations, and Labour has too much pride to give away the Maori seats without a fight. So I do not have much hope in this strategy working.
Also is any agreement between Mana and Maori Party going to be fragile, given the personalities involved, and I would have my doubts about how long any kind of alliance may last, it has not even started yet.
The trick that Labour needs to master is how to attract both enough middle ground (middle class) voters and at the same time enough of the disaffected, who do in large numbers not even bother voting. Tapping into both those pools would bring the numbers needed for Labour to get over 35 percent, maybe near 40 percent, but it will not be an easy task to master.
So far the battle is over the ones that tend to vote anyway, and in a slight majority they seem to be the more right of centre leaning ones, who have property, careers, rather secure employment and other vested interests.
More voters are needed, more need to be reached somehow, just fighting over the same size pie will be maintaining the status quo, I fear.
Agree 100%
Those disaffected voters are where the election will be won or lost .
SCrew the bloody Maori party they backed National the last three elections with Dunne and Act they all need to disappear right off the political landscape the traitorous buggers.
Hear hear 100% Geoff
Maori Party – a ‘trusted coalition partner with a neoliberal National-ACT-United Future’.
So, if the current Labour Maori electorate seats go into Maori Party control, then it is a sequitur argument that continues the neoliberal scourge.
More Maori unemployed, fewer Maori owning homes, more Maori homelessness, more Maori living in cars, more Maori in the new prisons that National ACT, United Future and Maori Party are building.
Yep sounds like a clear choice for Maori in Aotearoa next election. Vote Maori Party to reelect National.
Or vote for a better deal for Maori in a left-wing, Maori-friendly coalition.
Maori Party need to fight against the Nactional draconian slime and degradation of the middle & lower class amongst us to even get a lift in voter support as of now most here say that Maori Party side with Nactional most of the time even when it disadvantages the Maori voters lives like the loss of rail to Northland and Gisborne which is killing the poor Maori on roads and jobs as 60% of Kiwirail workforce were maori.
We need to see Marama step up here and force this government to reopen the rail as maori are most disadvantaged here.
Low rent areas are all near busy truck routes and the noise and air pollution is also killing most who are maori also so we see a pattern that Maori Party needs to fight for their disadvantaged here clearly.
what Martyn suggests is in the realms of a mathematical forecast only really-plus Labour (in unholy unity with all other parties) torpedoing Hone and Mana last time shows where they are at
happy to be proven wrong on this, maybe a deal will be struck by Mana/MP in just one or two seats
one practical thing that could be done to increase the voting pool, and mentioned on TDB before, is a campaign to highlight the unpublished roll and get people on it, many thousands are estimated to be starters for this if they were reached and assisted
As Willy Jackson himself has pointed out, it was the German that cost Hone his seat.
I have often enough heard that “the German” is not all that popular in his own native country. But then again, he changed his “home” a few times, Finland, Hong Kong and now New Zealand come to mind.
How can Hone… and Minto…have credibility after getting into bed with the big German?
Why shouldn’t they? Last I heard it’s a democracy and “the big German” has the same rights you do, Patrick.
Sorry Frank,
I did reply. No swear words, no racial slurs, no unfounded attacks agin anyone and I agreed that this country is a democracy.
Unfortunately this blog is not and as I must have been pointing out facts that did not fit with the moderator’s view of what is acceptable to the far left my post was censured.
I think mainstream Labour understands what would happen to democracy if the far left got power – that democracy would would be gone.They and the center right have always understood that the far L and R are two sides of the same. nasty coin.
If either get power we are talking North Korean, family royalty, communist regime to Putins emerging new far right communist “where are you now” government.
Unbelievable that we have come to this.
But lucky the vast majority of Kiwi’s tread the middle path and keep us safe,
no different from the gnats and the dirty Saudi deals that still haven’t delivered
Because Hone and Minto don’t listen to Paddy Gower’s framing.
Hone and Minto are more focused on policies (as the left should be).
The Internet Party sat to the left of Labour, and Mana was (probably) going to go into a coalition with Labour.
Please stop regurgitating Paddy Gower’s personality games. He’s not to be taken seriously
At one stage during the last election campaign, there was talk about “the big German” perhaps helping young Maori up north get some IT skills, to create some employment and upstarting businesses there.
As far as I note, there has not been any genuine contacts between that “big German” and his adopted “whanau” up north, he is too busy pursuing his new business endeavours, for his own benefit, and fighting off his extradition.
All that may be reasonable and fair enough for Kim to do, but I feel he let a fair few people down, which some have by now woken up to.
Oh yeah – and he has a name.
What’s with the referencing by nation of birth and size?
Where can we go with this?
big nose from Burnside
fat woodwork teacher
Maori vixen
It’s sloppy and disrespectful.
Crap – it was the prospect of having both Hone and Laila in the house that spooked Labour and NZF. Those two would have made life very uncomfortable for a lot of MPs (especially on the left) and so preferred them not there.
A foot in the door that might have led to Sykes and Minto in three years time – no way Jose!
This is desperate.
Hone said he doesn’t want anything to do with those that support National. So how can Mana in all honesty, forge an alliance with the tory Maori party that supports National?
A vote for the Maori party is a vote for national is a sentiment that is still holds strong today. Why should Labour gift the Maori seats to National ?
It ain’t going to happen
this post if off the planet
‘if a progressive Government is to have a chance’
Progressive towards what? And ‘have a chance’: you’re joking, surely!
The western world is run by banks, corporations and opportunists for the short-term benefit of banks, corporations and opportunists, and governments have degenerated into puppet shows that keep the masses distracted from the real game and keep the masses believing in the system (though that agenda is now failing spectacularly; hence the continually declining voter participation).
No truly progressive government -one that deals effectively with the financial issues, social issues, energetic issues and environmental issues that are direct consequences of the western world being run by banks, corporations and opportunists- will EVER be allowed to acquire and maintain power. Just look at the incessant attacks [by the ‘neocons’] on any nation that has even the slightest whiff of socialism and the ‘regime change’ that is implemented by transnational banks (with a bit of assistance from the US military if required).
Change, when, it does come, will be via collapse of current political structures and mayhem in the streets. That kind of change is already underway in much of Europe, the US, much of South America, the Middle East, much of Asia and parts of Africa.
Governments have made such a mess of everything for such a long time they have almost run out of options -other than more surveillance and violence directed against ordinary people- and NZ is on exactly that track. Oh, I nearly forgot, also lots of phony ‘trade deals’ to ‘stimulate economic growth and lift all the boats’ -all absolute bollocks, of course.
The world is in a tailspin, as a direct consequence of corrupt and ‘useless’ governments that act for banks, corporations and opportunists. Here are some graphic images of the politics of failure, as practiced in France:
https://www.rt.com/news/364570-paris-street-camps-refugees/
Labour teamed up with National, the Maori Party, ACT and NZ First to destroy Mana at the last election. I doubt Labour have a strategic bone in their body. They keep chasing the middle and shifting NZ further right.
Now they’re blaming immigrants for structural economic problems.
Labour’s strategy should’ve been to strengthen Mana and that would’ve pushed the Maori Party closer to disappearing. But they didn’t. Labour killed off Mana and they strengthened the Maori Party, and pushed them closer to National.
Labour are not only welded to neoliberalism, they also don’t understand how the left needs to operate under MMP. Put simply, they’re out of touch idiots. Now they”re scrapping the conservative barrel with reactionary positions on unemployment and housing. Pathetic!
The Maori Party have been a complete failure in government. It’s always disconcerting seeing them hold up scraps tossed to the poor, as if these scraps justify their poor performance in government. They come across spineless in representing Maori interests.
MANA, aka Hone Harawira got sent a clear message at the last general election – he’s not wanted! He’s also very unbecoming in is bitter attitude and ability to work with any other party. It will be interesting to hear both parties rhetoric during 2017, that or mind numbing!
I’d be more likely to vote National than either of those parties. If Maori voters are foolish enough to vote these two parties back onto the government’s teat, more fool them!
“He’s also very unbecoming in is bitter attitude and ability to work with any other party”
Nonsense.
What makes you say Hone has a bitter attitude and an inability to work with any other party? Hone was happy to work with the Internet Party. Hone was very keen to work with the Greens. Hone said he’d work with Labour (even though many of the Mana members I know didn’t want him to). And now Hone is reaching across to the Maori Party in a bid to work with them at the next election.
Hone has only failed to work with two parties – National and ACT. I think the Left should thank him for taking that stance.
Put simply, you have no evidence of this claim that Hone has a bitter attitude and is unable to work with other parties. If anything, Hone is too willing to work with other parties.
If you have a reasonable critique to make of Hone, then go for it. But your claim is all in your imagination.
Oh yeah, this is a great idea. When the Maori Party decide to go with National again to protect the business interests of the Iwi organisations (which is who they really represent), we’ll end up with Donkey and the Gnats for another 3 years. No thanks.
Labour doesn’t have the money, therefore, it’s doomed at the get-go.
It really is that simple.
National, by contrast , have pots of gold on all levels.
They have the dopy , export revenue earning farmer well and truly brainwashed, they have the sycophantic, filthy riche 1%’ers fawning over jonky like he’s the last virgin alive and he’s enraptured the middle management bride and groom brigade with a booming false economy that is their property ‘values’ so that they can abandon their common sense for a BMW today and fuck tomorrow with a “might all be dead anyway right? ”mentality.
National are wiping the dance floor with the one or two well intended in Labour to such an extent that it’s becoming a little embarrassing to be honest.
Worse still? Old Labour are loving it. They love being the down trodden. They love the humiliation and degradation. They love being the poor little victim party surrounded by like minded idiots weeping into their hankies as National burn down their villages. And the villages are full of idiots by the looks.
Ask yourselves? Jonky and the National Party have been in government for how long now? Nearly six years? And how much damage, destruction, thievery, lying, mismanagement, conning, swindling and down right con jobbing have they been connected to?
And Labour? What have they done about it?
I can tell you. Not.One.Thing. Nothing. The cowardly fuckers have done NOTHING ! to stop the onward progression of the jonky effect.
I say; Fuck Labour. They’re in fact worse than the jonky. At least we know that little pricks game.
If andrew little came in to OUR parliament sporting a man-bun and wearing Blue tie dyed man-panties I’d not be in the least surprised.
Lat time I checked it was 8 years but who is counting and what does it matter? This is a democracy and they were voted in.
So what’s your solution to rid us of both National and Labour parties so voters can get the government they so richly deserve?
And what would that government be like?
Just asking.
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