Both sides of the Maori wards debate are claiming victory following last Saturday’s local referendum results.
Hobson’s Pledge says the fact that 25 councils voted to remove their Maori wards is cause for celebration. The pro-Maori ward brigade, on the other hand, is pointing to the 17 councils that voted to retain the seats, and that the number of “Keep” votes cast outnumbered the “Remove” votes by 52% to 48%.
With the special votes still to be counted, at least one council is likely to flip over to the retain side (the Northland Regional Council), so the final tally is likely to be 24 to 18.
The general pattern was for councils with a high Maori population, and regions with a high state sector workforce (like “woke” Wellington) to vote in favour of keeping the wards. In general, provincial cities and rural areas voted to remove them.
Based on those numbers, I struggle to see how any group would be popping open the bubbly. There is cause to celebrate at least the partial reversal of Nanaia Mahuta’s abhorrent racist agenda that was woven around a tapestry of lies, but we now have at least 17 more councils with race-based wards that will remain in place for at least six years.
The pro-Maori wards activists have also substantially eroded public opposition to Maori wards, with districts flipping from being opposed in previous referenda to now voting to keep their Maori ward. No doubt these activists will be heartened by the advances they have made and will have their sights on the councils that do not have Maori wards in their relentless pursuit towards co-governance.
Michael Laws, Whanganui’s former mayor, thought more councils would vote to keep their wards. He pointed to a strong social media presence and a campaign by the mainstream media to keep the wards.
It is certainly true that there was a concerted campaign to silence the remove campaign from expressing its views. Hobsons Pledge has reported that Stuff refused to publish their material (although the arguments seemed to centre around the use of images rather than the message itself).
In Northland, there was an aggressive campaign to prevent the remove campaign from gaining traction. Roadside hoardings were destroyed within hours of going up, and there has been no mainstream media coverage, at least not in Northland, looking at both sides of the debate. What coverage there has been has lacked balance and, in some cases, has been blatantly misleading. For example, when covering the issue of Maori representation on councils, a reporter for the Northern Advocate said Maori had historically been underrepresented. Clearly, it did not suit the reporter’s narrative to mention the fact that today Maori are over-represented both on local councils and in Parliament!
During the voting period, the same newspaper published a photo showing pro-Maori ward signage to illustrate a story unrelated to Maori Wards. The editor justified it by saying they “…strongly defend freedom of expression when it comes to issues such as Māori Wards”, which, of course, skirted around the point of the complaint.
But it was not only the mainstream media going into bat for Maori wards. In Northland, local councils mobilised what they called a “roadie campaign” to increase voter participation.
This is how it has been described by the Northern Advocate:
“Northland’s biggest local election voting roadie campaign kicks off this week as mobile ballot boxes are taken into some of the region’s most remote locations. Voting ballot box roadies to more than 180 mostly far-flung locations began in the Far North on Wednesday and will begin in Kaipara next weekend. Thousands of kilometres will be travelled and more than 100 destinations will be visited…The Northland roadies will visit marae, rugby clubs, sports halls, schools, markets and other community-led events across the district.”
The Far North District Council says the purpose of their Mobile Ballot Box Tour is “aimed at educating our communities about the upcoming local government elections in October, and empowering people to vote.”
These are worthy words, and few would dare argue against empowering people to vote. The question is whether they targeted all voters equally.
That’s a fair question, given voter turnout in the general wards was down from 42% in 2022 to 40% this year, but the turnout in the Maori ward went up from 22.8% in 2022 to 28.6%. The difference may simply be that the Maori ward issue was of greater concern to those on the Maori roll than those on the general roll. Or it could be that marae were used to “harvest” votes.
The Whangarei District Council had official polling places which it publicised. No marae were listed. However, it allowed pop-up polling places on request. These were not publicised. They were granted at the discretion of council staff working within the council’s Strategy and Democracy department, which is managed by Aaron Taikato, who describes his tribal affiliations as Te Arawa, Ngaiterangi, and Ngati Raukawa ki te Tonga.
Those pop-up locations included a number of marae, among them the marae at the Northland Polytechnic. The request appears to have come from a Green Party MP or an associate and is now the subject of a Police complaint regarding pro-Maori wards signage and unauthorised staff assisting voters at the booth.
At least three of the four councils in Northland have senior staff with tribal affiliations. It is therefore not unreasonable to question whether they are using their position to enhance the Maori vote to gain favourable outcomes for Maori.
When confronted with these obstacles, it is remarkable that voters in so many councils voted to remove their Maori ward, albeit by slim margins.
There is no question Maori separatists have made gains in the last ten years.
In 2015 a referendum challenged the creation of Maori wards in the Far North District Council. That was defeated with 67% of voters opposing the creation of a Māori ward.
Last Saturday that had been reversed with 54% voting to keep the Maori wards and 46% voting to remove them.
That trend is repeated in other regions. In 2018, there were five districts had polls – all rejected Maori wards. Four of those five councils had since created Maori wards after Mahuta removed the petition right, so they were again required to hold a referendum.
Two voted to keep their wards. They were Palmerston North, where support for the Maori ward rose from 31% in 2018 to 55% on Saturday, and Whakatāne, where support rose from 44% in 2018 to 60% now.
The councils where voters continued to oppose the wards both lost ground: Western Bay of Plenty from 78% to 60%, and Manawatu from 77% to 57%. In other words, one in five voters had changed their view on Maori wards within seven years.
New Plymouth was one council that has had more than its fair share of controversy over Maori wards. It started in 2013 when Andrew Judd was elected mayor. During his three-year term he had a “Road to Damascus” moment where he found “Maori”. He later described himself as a “recovering racist” and has been paraded at various pro-treaty events as a model for others of European descent to follow. Judd gained the support of his councillors to introduce a Maori ward, but it was challenged in a citizens-initiated referendum held in 2015 which rejected the establishment of a Maori ward by 83% to 17%. A subsequent council again introduced a Maori ward, but that too was defeated on Saturday, albeit with a greatly reduced margin of 58% to 42%.
No doubt Andrew Judd and his fellow “recovering racist” will wait for their next opportunity to yet again introduce Maori wards and hope the trend of the last ten years continues.
And that is the danger that all councils face.
My conclusion from the Maori wards figures is that Maori radicals are winning. They are winning because a growing share of the population are either too complacent to vote, or are swallowing the “partnership” narrative that is being parroted by the radicals – and the mainstream media.
I cannot help but wonder if, in 30 years’ time, today’s grandkids will ask the question: “How did it ever happen?”
The question I have today is how to stop it from happening. Or is it already too late? Is it so embedded within the state sector, our media, and our legal and judicial system, that the next chapter has already been written? Is it inevitable that people with a get-up-and-go attitude will turn their backs on “Aotearoa” and get up and go to Australia? I hope it isn’t, but fear it is.
Reluctantly, I have come to the view that we all need to do a heck of a lot more than we are doing at present. The task ahead is more than a few can do alone. It requires a movement, and that can only happen if people get off the couch and stand up for democracy. Hoping for the best is a losing strategy.