New Zealand will lose one of the founding examples of Treaty partnership if Maori seats in Parliament are abolished, according to a historian who has followed Hawke's Bay's central role in the establishment of the seats almost 150 years ago.
Matt Mullany was commenting yesterday on the stirring of political debate by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who is calling for a referendum on the issue which dates back to the Maori Representation Act drafted by Napier MP Donald McLean and passed by Parliament on October 10, 1867.
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The act took effect the following year when representatives of the Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern Maori electorates took their seats in the House.
Eastern Maori MP and Ngati Kahungunu chief Tareha Te Moananui, of Waiohiki, near Napier, was the first Maori and the first New Zealand-born MP to speak in the New Zealand Parliament, when he delivered his maiden address in September 1868.