Te Pāti Māori: Back on track or on another collision course? – Adam Pearse
It’s not often an MP is named one of the world’s most influential rising stars only for all the attention to surround their colleagues.
But such was Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s lot as she faded into the background of a tumultuous week for Te Pāti Māori’s five other MPs.
In Time magazine’s blurb about the 23-year-old MP, former United States Interior Secretary Deb Haaland wrote how Maipi-Clarke leading last year’s haka in the House after the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill brought “tears to my eyes” as she marvelled at the display of “indigenous power and pride”.
The suspension for another Haka makes it crystal clear to their base that while the Māori Party are in a ‘reset’, they will still grind up against a system they inherently believe serves the interest of the rich and few rather than the many.
The new pivot to material solutions and finding ways to build bridges between the Greens and Labour is the exact tonic to internal ego’s and the desire to air dirty laundry in front of the Marae.
I just don’t think Mariameno Kapa-Kingi or her son (the only paid Vice President the Party has ever had) want much scrutiny on the claims of overspending, and while the Leadership structure is rigid, the reality is the enemy is not the Māori Party leadership, the enemy is the National, ACT and NZF Government and their appalling anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-worker, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-disabled, anti-environment agenda that strangles the common good for their donors interests.
Rawiri’s eye roll at the media dredging up Eru Kapa-Kingi’s dirty laundry list has been sold as the end of the Māori Party’s reset, yet the media barely scrutinised David Seymour for allegations he wanted to start a race war…
…which proves the double standards the māori Party are put to by a hostile mainstream media.
The truth is the Māori Party’s direct connection via social media to their voters means they don’t need the mainstream media the way other political parties do.
Every Poll tells us how close the next election is, every poll tells us Labour will need the Greens and Māori Party, so instead of trying to attack the Māori Party from inside, perhaps the internal dramas and egos driving this division need to reflect on that.
Everyone on the Left needs the Māori Party reset, not just the Māori Party.
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This is a problem for the party to sort now next year will be too late .Maybe the tight 3 need to loosen their control and let the younger brigade have more input and more front page time .It is the new younger generation that will make Maori stronger not the older ones who think they know whats best .If JT and Rawhi try to keep control of the narrative the young ones will move off and the party will loose all momentum .
We were all young once, and experience tells us that not all ideas from our youth will stand the test of time. If they can’t learn to cooperate now, like you say, next year is going to be too late. They need to be a solid party in government to enable progressive change from the Labour Party, which requires taking the best ideas from their members and giving up on the culture wars.
The so called leaders need to look at the Hikoi and what it acheived .They managed to engage NZs from all races and walks of life and there was none of this ONLY MAORI CAN BE PART OF IT bull shit we have seen recently .I was invited to join the party not so long ago but when that BULL SHIT came out I declined .How ever I still think they have a major roll to play in the future of NZ if they play a straight bat .If you want to make change you must take everyone along with you not just the select few such as we are seeing with the current government .
I have to agree that the intention of the US-Funded heavy Right push in New Zealand (Atlas etc and something sadly happening across the World – Atlas funds 500 organisations) is to Divide and Conquer the New Zealand People so they are less likely to come together to address the massive and growing injustices represented by extreme, unjust wealth and its consequential extreme, unjust political and social influence. The attack on all aspects of Māori Culture by creeps like Seymour and Luxon comes from the fact they have been tasked and funded with promoting what is essentially “White Christian Male Supremacy” – a bleak, ridiculous, backwards-looking monoculture – no matter how carefully Seymour couches it in murmurs of “equality” and the need for a “single, equitable system” (Zero chance that “single” system, in his warped little mind, could be anything other than White, Christian and Male). There, too, the word “Christian” has little to do with the person whose name it carries and much more to do with the recently-revealed and surprising level of domination by those same US forces that hatched Atlas with the extreme, “Dominant White Male Ideal” that is the real, underlying force behind the brutish Colonial Project called “Zionism”. Despite all these poor, put-upon White Christian Males, the real, enriching, progressive, productive and exciting planetary future lies in embracing and rejoicing in the rich diversity and complexity of all Homo Sapiens coming together and working together for our common benefit. Sad, but predictable, that Seymour and Luxon have captured what I call the #AngryStupid cohort but encouraging that the future represented by our younger citizens is more open, aware, diverse and articulate in rising about the stolid Luddites of Seymour and Luxon 🙂
“Despite all these poor, put-upon White Christian Males, the real, enriching, progressive, productive and exciting planetary future lies in embracing and rejoicing in the rich diversity and complexity of all Homo Sapiens coming together and working together for our common benefit.”
And it is exactly this type of framing and bullshit pixie dust aspirational nonsense that is so off putting to so many people and has driven so many people away from the left.
The left was originally about science and material and industrial progress. Not about faux diversity and post-modernist world views.
Newsflash, you can have both at the same time
People that approve of Maori party hakas in parliament are asking for a rousing and off-key performance of Die Walküre from Gerhart Brownlee. I’m sure the MP is very brave, but the rest of NZ have suffered enough.
Of course the treaty bill was about driving division. Star of David Seymour is a nasty piece of work who should be booted ( not literally) from Parliament. It’s just like he is likely trying to make the school lunch programme so shit that it will eventually get turfed out. He’s a freeloading weasel.
Willy Jackson and Te Ururoa Flavell had the most considered response to what’s happening in the Māori party. The tekanga in Parliament needs to be followed, party’s need discipline to function credibly. The disrupters in the party need to move out of the party and join the Kapa kingi protest movement which was very effective in its sphere of action, which is outside Parliament. The leadership of the Māori party stated clearly that their intent is to work with the other two left parties to oust this terrible government. Good. Let them do it. Please god.
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