Ratana 2 or the Kākāriki Alliance – how Labour, Greens and Māori Party could use MMP to win 2026 election
There are currently two MMP strategies that the Left could use that would ensure a victory in next year’s election.
Let’s be clear, these are all legitimate rules. The DNA of our MMP allows Coat-tailing and overhangs because of the 5% threshold cut off.
With National, ACT and NZF pursing voter suppression laws around special voting before the election, the Left must consider MMP strategies to defeat this anti-Treaty, anti-Māori, anti-Worker, anti-Renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-disabled and anti-environment Government.
This is either the worst Right wing Government in living memory or it isn’t!
The egos of the Left must be put aside for the common ground between us.
Ratana 2 – The Potato, the Watch, the Greenstone and the Feather
Māoridom and Labour have been bound together since Ratana brought them together. Ratna’s 4 gifts are buried with Michal Savage, so the symbolism is huge.
There needs to be a Ratana 2 whereby Labour and Māori Party agree to a shared stagey in the Māori Electorates.
Candidate vote Māori Party, Party vote Labour.
Last election Māori Party took 3.1% Party vote which is wasted because they had 6 electorates. Push that party vote to Labour and you use that wasted vote AND create an overhang!
That could give us on the Left 3 terms until the right recovered.
Think what we could do in 3 terms.
Chance of Ratana 2 happening?
I would have said there was a serious chance of this being at least considered, but Doc Ferris’s late night sectarian rants that go from ‘Māori First’ to ‘Māori Only’ has destroyed any chance of that happening at all.
Doc has managed to give National, ACT and NZF so much political ammunition Labour have little choice but to inoculate themselves.
I would not be surprised if Labour actually rule out the Māori Party being in Cabinet with them before the end of the year.
That doesn’t mean that they can’t negotiate a deal with policy and Ministers outside Cabinet, but Labour simply can’t agree with the sectarian anti-migrant values Doc is pushing and the bewildering inability for the Māori Party leadership to actually reign him in is deeply destabilising.
Slow clap Doc. Well done bro. Well done.
The Kākāriki Alliance
There’s more than one way to skin a right wing Government.
If Labour are forced to rule the Māori Party out of Government, then there is a means to still use MMP to achieve the very same goal WHILE strengthening the progressive hand.
If Hone Harawira called for a Māori Party and Green Party hui at Waitangi 1st February next year to discuss a Political Alliance between te Parti Māori and the Greens, they could cut the exact same Māori Electorate Deal I’m suggesting Labour could use.
Candidate vote Māori Party, Party vote Green.
The wasted Māori Party vote gets picked up by the Greens, a Māori Party clean sweep of the electorates produces an overhang, but the most important part of the alliance would be the agreement of a united negotiating front with Labour.
This means even if Labour rule out the Māori Party, they still have to negotiate with them as a collective of the Greens which ensures NZF can’t play the Greens like they do every election.
Chance of The Kākāriki Alliance happening?
Chloe needs a strategy that is radical and can propel the Greens into a negotiating force. Cutting a deal with the Māori Party over the Māori Electorates would pick up wasted Māori Party vote while lifting the overhang and brings the negotiating muscle of John Tamihere.
For the Greens it is a radical strategy that is win win win.
The Greens won’t be as burnt by the association with Doc as Labour would.
This allows Labour to hold the centre, Greens and te Parti Māori work together to create a Government with a truly progressive economic transformation policy with Māori Party Ministers outside of Cabinet.
I have a meme
That one day the Political Left in Aotearoa New Zealand, can sort their shit out enough to see that there is more common ground between us than the narcissism of petty policy difference.
I dream this Summer that the Labour, Greens and MāoriParty can meet for an early election year hui to present a united front that includes an individualised electorate voting strategy to maximise MMP and an agreed basic policy platform.
For the love of the risen Baby Jesus, this anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-worker, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-disability, anti-environment Government is too dangerous to hand a second term to, but it’s not enough to win through apathy, the Left needs an electorate mandate from the People to make the transformational change we all voted Jacinda in to achieve.
We are all still waiting for that transformative change Jacinda promised us in 2017.
Meanwhile, National, ACT and NZF keep destroying the egalitarian foundations of this nation while desecrating the Treaty.
The Planet is burning, the people are hurting and the Rich get richer.
The Left needs to work together, the narcism of petty difference is beauty our collective mana.
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The only flaw in your cunning plan Martyn is if TPM is regularly polling close to 5%, in which case every party vote will be needed.
His plan was that those in the Maori seats electorate vote for TMP and party vote Labour. On the assumption that TMP retain their existing Maori seats there is no penalty if they get close to 5 % in the party vote although there is unlikely to be any overhang that benefits the Left.
The question to ask is, “Can Swarbrick, Tamahere and Hipkins all enjoy drinking a whisky together?”
Agree 100% Martyn, we’ll put. I’ve been saying for some time now that the left need to come together as a block under some sort of framework or understanding that would consign this hateful greedy divisive coalition to the gutter where they belong. Good clear messaging appealing to the young and disenfranchised to use their vote.. their sacred inalienable and powerful right, is also massively important.
The Maori Party is already a block under a sort of framework. They can certainly form a wider framework with the left wing of the Green Party. Do you honestly believe that the Labour Party has anyone left wing in it? Seymour’s meth can’t be that good, surely.
Yep. If Hipkins is determined to stay on and Labour haven’t got any better ideas, then he can do something useful and stand behind other parties that have picked up the ideas that Labour would have had if it hadn’t been seduced by neoliberalism’s “Let the Market decide”: Code words for letting business in to find out what people will buy and sell it to them and tell them it’s cheaper and more efficient and in touch with modern trends. Just what we didn’t need exactly, but we bought it.
So Greens and TP Maori and Labour would approximate a good working government and Hipkins can roll up his sleeve and stop doing the things to appear to turn himself into a working person’s icon eating sausage rolls and so on, and do some hard political yakker thinking first what do people out there need, and do immigration better, lower, and faster. I’ve talked to some of the working men lately doing things needed out on the street, with cones, and viz vests, and organised and hard working, they deserve better from Labour so get on with it, but in the coalition to keep you honest you Labour rascals and that’s a kind word for you. Living on the past endeavours of your forebears.
And to all the future Coalition, play fair, be fair, be kind (and practical) to all of the other people of whom they are just a select few, selected for the moment and work with little play, make the most of their time in the sun or rain, and don’t let artificial outrage and shock about a fault drive them out of their seats. Just make them go through a public reforming break of a few weeks, to get their heads and so on in balance, and then back into the fray of doing good, practical politics and coping with admins. If they can stay the pace next step will be reforming our systems. Some good admins, some good privates, under the foot of good departments controlling them and not the other way round.
If the new Coalition could turn us round a bit and lessen harsher treatment, they would deserve a second go, people expecting a gradual betterment in the whole country. I’m thinking of having a new public entity called MARS. It will be for and by people who help each other to manage towards better times or recovery from earthquakes of any sort; acronyms abound, mine is Managing in A Rapacious Society. It will be a big citizens advice bureau and be for people, not just aiding them in distress, but helping all and those with lots can support it or projects that help those who can still help themselves. It will have Celia Lashlie as its figurehead RIP. Repeat aloud – I’m going to MARS in my car, bus, tuktuk*, or bike (not rocket!). Say – Our society shall not die -under the attacks of financial and nearly soulless zombies and predators. callow or infantile as they are; often found in the middle and mostly upper classes. We are
not a classless society no more.
I am angry with Ferris, here am I a middle class white woman of 75 married to a middle class white man and we had his billboard on our fence, I am a a member of TPM, I think they and the Greens are the future and should be planning their bottom lines together NOW. He is absolutely stupid and a danger to TPM.
What is going on with TPM leadership. Ferris insulted them and he’s talking like God Almighty. Who the hell does he think he is. He needs to be reminded that he is in parliament to represent the people, not inflate his ego and tiny fanatical intelligence.
Don’t be a Lone Comet join the informed people who know that those in parliament will sooner or later be affected by all the things you have listed. They are only human and just like you so don’t expect better.
The thing is the bloke is spot on with his observation. The Maori caucus should be holding an inquest in to how such a shit optic was allowed to happen in the first place.
Fucking hell everyone, with the absence of any policy for a manifesto, if this is how bollocks labour are behind the scenes, in a campaign they’re gonna get mushed up and we’re all gonna get fucked over… again.
Shit or get of the pot.