KEY POINTS:
He is the "other guy" in the Maori Party, one of the three members who joined Tariana Turia in Parliament after the last election: Pita Sharples, Hone Harawira and what's-his-name.
Te Ururoa Flavell is not much better known three years on. He has kept his head down while Sharples and Harawira have spoken out much as they did before entering the House.
They still have the look of dilettantes. If the Maori Party is in our politics for the long haul it will need MPs to supply the grunt.
Flavell comes in through the back door of his Ngongotaha home. He has been in Wellington all day at an NZEI forum. Even for an ex-teacher, that must be grunt.
He is quietly spoken, mild-mannered, asks the photographer whether he should remove his jacket with the party insignia on the breast, and agrees to sit outside despite the evening breeze off the lake.
I want to know how he came to politics.
"On the protest lines," he says. He met Ken Mair and reels off names of others he was standing with. "Eva Rickard, Syd Jackson, Annette Sykes, Mike Smith."
They were giving the National Government's "fiscal envelope" for Treaty settlements a hot reception at marae around the country.
Flavell says he was not at the "hard edge". Education was his interest. "Mike Smith [the One Tree Hill tree destroyer] always says everyone has their part to play. Not all need to be at the hard edge."
He fondly remembers a particular protest at Waitara against the fiscal envelope. "We had all the people wear a blanket and carry a photograph of an ancestor. They just sat on the ground in their blankets with their photographs. Wira Gardner [former Maori Affairs head, assisting minister Doug Graham at that time] later described ... how moving it was."
It was another decade before his life took its present turn. The Labour Government's response to the foreshore and seabed ruling brought all the old activists out again.
"We got to hear that a political party was being planned and got in touch with the organisers, said we'd like to be part of it."
He had not planned to be a candidate. "The party does not allow self-nomination. You have to have 50 people nominate you. I was put forward by people who felt I had the skills.
Now 52, he was practically born in the house where he lives with his wife Erana, an educational psychologist, two children and a foster child. Three older children are away at universities.
He grew up here when it was farmland. At 13 he was sent to boarding school, St Stephens, then stayed in Auckland to qualify as a secondary teacher of Maori language and phys ed.
Various postings followed before he went to university in the 1980s, collecting degrees in Maori and becoming head of Maori studies at Taranaki Polytechnic in the early 1990s.
Then, for three years he was principal of his old school, but his heart had never left Ngongotaha. His marae is nearby, one of five in the vicinity. It is a Maori world.
The only serious challenger for his Waiariki seat, Labour's Mita Ririnui, already has hoardings in the main street. Flavell admits to being a little slow off the mark but seems relaxed. He is confident the party will win all seven Maori seats this time and it is asking for the party vote into the bargain.
He is clearly excited at the strong possibility the Maori Party will hold the cards that decide whether Labour or National forms the next government.
But astonishingly, the party appears not to have worked out yet how it would use a strategic stake. I ask whether it will look to secure a set of specific policy commitments or reserve a right to approve or veto all important decisions.
Flavell says that has not been decided and it does not sound like he is foxing. "We've got the whole spectrum of [other small parties'] experience to consider," he says.
The guiding principle of the Maori Party is tino rangatiratanga, tribal self-determination as expressed in the Treaty of Waitangi. The party's constitution aims "to promote Maori self-determination through the establishment of a forum to provide a Maori viewpoint and guide and advise the parliamentary team."
Statements by the party president, Professor Whatarangi Winiata, suggest it envisages acting as an equal Treaty partner with a governing party, having an equal say in national decisions. Pita Sharples sounds wary of this interpretation and so is Flavell.
When I invite him to describe how the country might look with rangatiratanga in full flower, he replies carefully.
"Maori will be making decisions for ourselves, on our own future, within the resources of the country."
It does not, he insists, envisage a separate state-within-a-state. "When John Key recently went to Tuhoe nation, he told Tame Iti the National Party could not agree to separatism but could look at Tuhoe control of services such as health and housing for their people. That is exactly the same thing."
Flavell, like Sharples, sounds less interested in acts of autonomy purely for the sake of Maori prestige than in practical social services that they firmly believe Maori could run more successfully for Maori.
He cites the tragedy of Nia Glassie, the Rotorua 3-year-old who died last year after being spun in a washing machine and hung out to dry.
In meetings afterwards, he heard police, social workers and other agencies agree that it would be impossible to identify all such vulnerable children and "wrap services around them" to guard against such things.
That, he believes, is the sort of thing dedicated Maori-run services could do. And they would not be exclusive. "They would be available to anyone who wants to use them".
The idea is not new - it already exists to a degree through organisations such as West Auckland's Waipareira Trust - and the Maori Party does not yet appear to be very different in its operation from any other.
There is no sign of the forum mentioned in its constitution. Its MPs are not about to be mere conduits for decisions of a pan-tribal assembly such as Professor Winiata seems to envisage.
If this election hands them the balance of power they have undertaken to consult their membership (about 30,000, Flavell reckons) within three weeks. But they will not be taking votes, he said. They will try to get a sense of what their people want them to do through a series of meetings.
But the MPs will make the call. Not so very different from any other party, not so very radical, but exciting all the same.
