WAATEA NEWS COLUMN: Why removing local Māori representation is so damaging and racist
The Political Right use Māori as a political punching bag
The sudden decision by Local Government Minister Simon Watts to legislate away any unelected Māori representation that has voting rights on local councils seems like a racist solution looking for a stupid problem.
ACT and the Taxpayers’ Union have made such a fuss about unelected Māori representatives with voting rights you would think Westminster Democracy itself was in danger.
“One person one vote’ they thunder as if that somehow makes this legislative amputation of local democracy some type of defence of democracy.
It’s racist nonsense.
Firstly, it’s not one person one vote, in NZ it’s 1 person, 2 votes!
I’m not being lectured by right wingers on democracy when they can’t even get the basics right.
Secondly, the very fact we have 1 person 2 votes shows that there are values inside a democracy that we implement to recognise the importance of democratic structures that recognise the power imbalances within the structures of power.
Thirdly, including the indigenous people of your nation whom you have a Treaty with and who didn’t cede sovereignty on your local councils is something to be celebrated as unique NZ Democracy, not denigrated!
These Māori representatives had voting rights on getting things through to Council, they didn’t have final voting rights on what Council decided. This is not the conspiracy the Right have constructed!
This also impacts youth representatives as well, Hastings granted youth councillors voting rights on some council committees – when local democracy is dying and participation is waning – why shut down Māori and Youth engagement in a process they don’t even have a final say on?
There is an irony about the Right claiming to be defending democracy when they are ramming this law through without a select committee process!
This Government have rammed through 57% of their legislation under urgency removing select committee scrutiny and proper democratic participation.
Where does the Right get off lecturing the Left on Democracy with that record?
Rawiri Waititi was right when he said, “This coalition only cares about democracy when it can be weaponised against Māori”.
This nation’s democracy whakapapa’s to an 800 year tradition since the Magna Carta that has spent centuries of friction between King and Subject, Tory and Whig, Protestant and Catholic, to forge democratic values, the intellectual gravity of which demands more from democracy than majoritarianism which is merely two wolves and a lamb voting on who is for lunch!
Reducing Māori and Youth representation will not lift local democracy participation, it will silence it.
That is the opposite of democracy.
