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National has made a success through its first nine months in
government of putting potential coalition conflicts on hold.
Reviews, consultation and export reports have been commissioned in
the most contentious areas of government. But it couldn't
last.
Tau Henare's email to National party colleagues about the Maori
seats on the new Auckland council has brought the first big contest
between coalition partners ACT and the Maori Party to a head. It's
several weeks before the select committee is due to report back on
its new super city plans, but ACT leader Rodney Hide has this
morning been forced to confirm that
he would resign if Maori-only seats were part of Auckland's new
governance structure.
"If there were going to be reserved Maori seats, I couldn't as
minister introduce that legislation and so, I would have to step
aside," he told Breakfast.
Which is as clear an indication as we've had so far that National
has absolutely no intention of bowing to Maori on this issue. For
all the fighting that will ensue over coming days, the Maori Party
seem to have lost this one.
Hide has grand plans for local government, including a rates cap
for councils nationwide that will restrict them to what he deems as
"core business" and introduce more user-pays in the provision of
council services. He will not walk away from his mission so
easily.
Looking at the raw politics, it was never likely that Maori seats
would be part of this government's plan. Not only did National
stand on a platform of abolishing Maori seats in last year's
election, the Cabinet signed off on the reforms that rejected the
Royal Commission's recommendation of three Maori seats.
John Key has repeatedly said he was seriously considering the Maori
Party's position, that he was "listening". He said the hikoi
protesting the ejection of Maori seats from the super city council
was "ahead of its time" because nothing had been decided. Yeah
right. This was never going to be an issue where the Prime Minister
could wrangle a win-win. The best that he could hope for was that
by delaying the scrap he could take some of the heat out of the
issue.
What's more, Key always knew that the Maori Party wouldn't die in
the ditch over these seats; minor coalition partners have to pick
their fights and what the Maori Party wants more than anything else
is the foreshore and seabed. It's hardly "mana-enhancing", but as
Tariana Turia has said this morning, "we have no intentions of
withdrawing support for the Government and we have no intention of
withdrawing our ministerial roles. That's not what we went into the
relationship for."
They went into the relationship to win return of the foreshore and
seabed and, longer term, to extend Maori influence into the right
of New Zealand politics.
Don't get me wrong, Maori Party MPs
genuinely want those Maori seats . Theirs is a
party that lives and dies on designated Maori seats. But when push
comes to shove they will back down on those in the hope of getting
the other, and Key knows it. And so, it seems, does Hide. ACT 1,
Maori Party 0.
This is the first proper bit of coalition management that National
will have to do; it won't be the last.
