The Rātana movement into politics in 1923 helped seal gains for Māori and Pakeha with Michael Savage in 1936.
Savage was gifted a potato, a broken gold watch, a pounamu hei-tiki, and a huia feather as symbols of the new alliance.
The potato represented loss of Māori land and means of sustenance, the broken watch represented the broken promises of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the pounamu represented the mana of the Māori people, if Savage was able to restore those 3, he would earn the right to wear the huia feather.
It is time for Labour to earn the right to wear that feather.
What was fascinating about the Māori electorates this election was how tactical Māori voters were, once again proving why they are one of the smartest tactical voters each and every election.
Overwhelmingly Māori in the Māori electorates voted Labour Party vote and Māori Patry candidate vote and this has generated the focus on the power of the MMP Overhang the Māori Electorates generate.
If there was a Rātana 2, the Labour Party and Māori Party could strategically work together and push a tactical voting plan that calls for voters in the Māori electorate to all give their candidate vote to the Māori Party candidate and their Party vote to Labour.
This would end up creating up to 7 overhang seats in the Parliament which would cement an enormous block that could (with support from the Greens) become an unbeatable tactic that would ensure victory.
If this new alliance could demand better material conditions for those on the socio-economic bottom, working class aspirations and Māori aspirations could combine to finally deliver the promise to Rātana made in 1936.
If Labour want to wear that huia feather, they must rethink their MMP tactics and strategy.
This hard right racist Government used Māori as a political punching bag and exploited post Covid grievance to cobble together a Government bound in their desire to hurt beneficiaries, workers, renters, the environment AND Māori!
We need a common ground policy platform that sees the State alleviate living costs rather than punish those the ruling Government’s supporters despise.
There is far more that binds us in this land and a Left wing Government knitted together at with a bi-cultural heart will be what is urgently required after the spite this new hard right racist Government is generating.
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More like earn the wooden spoon…..
Great ideas MB. Unfortunately they need a better leader than Chippy, he didn’t even bother to go to the hui. J A would certainly have attended that. He needs to fucking go.
I would choose Willy Jackson to replace him.
I like your idea. Willy as leader would take LINO to under 20 %.
Me too. It needs to be a radical change, not more of the same.
And it needs to be soon.
Correct LC, Jacinda would have gone and paid her respects.
Chippy is a caretaker only.
I think you are right Bob the First, and not for the first time. Keep it up and make the percentages turn round from 98% drivel 2% sterling – turn it round help save our souls and sanity, strengthen our resolve, our belief in ourselves. We can do with less hyperbole from you and in general, either up or down.
I just had a look at the electorate numbers again, and it was worse than I remembered.
https://electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2023/statistics/candidate-votes-and-turnout-by-electorate.html
So Kemp and Henare were on ten thousand votes (less than 100 votes seperating them), whereas Didn’t Vote was on 17,000. And that’s of those who even bothered to enroll! Of the more than sixty thousand nominal voters in 2023 Tāmaki Makaurau, well less than half actually engaged with the political process. Kemp was actually elected by about 15% of the potential electorate votes!
Finding a way to engage those nonvoters seems a more fruitful task than cutting shady deals with a church that is increasingly irrelevant to the lives of Takata Whenua. Not easier though, but then again I distrust simple solutions.
@ T OR.
Firstly, voting should be, indeed absolutely must be, mandatory ( And compulsory.) as it is in Australia for example. The current wilfully boring, miserably dull and dangerously, deceptively, boring lot who’s our current sour, salt-less political stew will never make voting mandatory and compulsory. To suggest such a thing would mean we’d have to stand well back to weather the howls and spits of indignation BECAUSE…. they like their little covens, they like their little fiefdoms and cliques. Super rich privateers can hobnob with their political minions and not raise a politically independent publicly enabled MSM eyebrow.
Secondly. “…but then again I distrust simple solutions.” Do you? How odd. There’s great beauty in simplicity, there’s no private space within simplicity to build complex machinations to deprive us of our money, stuff and things as we can see as having been done, and is being done to us, as I write.
National could engage in strategic voting too – given only 90000 votes were cast for the Māori party – imagine in national organises 100000 voters to enrol on the Maori roll and vote national – take some organising but technically they could win all the Maori seats ! Then what would the reaction be ?
Treaty. Time, to recon, Wai, Waitia, Te Treaty, OWN, has Pakeha, whenua, land, theirs, Rivers and Sea, is Maori owned.
Argue, treaty settle, offer money, lets buy in our progressive capitalist structure, the bastardisation of their treaty, lets give them enough money, to argue about.
I’d love to see Labour, or any party in fact, make a serious play to earn the treasures.
The Greens might make a better fist of it than Labour though if they chose.
TPM remains a wild card however, quite prepared to stoke racial division for a poll bump. The kind of Māori leadership NZ needs to see to win support for the Treaty however, is an enlightened, unequivocally post-feudal group with the interests of NZ front and centre. Making the world safe for cowboy hats is a piss poor substitute.
Stu, ACT are already playing the “stoking the radical division for a poll bump” card.
Not only that it, worked at the last election!
Quite true – but the dominant current thread of Māori activism is, like the Houthis, not selective in its targeting. If they want to succeed, and secure good outcomes, they need to come up with a smart approach, and a solution.
Act is gathering publicity for its bill, but only around the Treaty. The other clauses they’ve thrown in need pretty serious scrutiny too – as things stand they may sneak through when the ‘everyone gets a BJ and a pony’ version of the Treaty is rejected.
Tuku Morgan is doing a better job as opposition by himself , than all of Labour, Greens, put together ….with help from the TV news people of course……