KEY POINTS:
All voters on the Maori roll - not just members of the Maori Party - will determine which party it supports after the election, co-leader Tariana Turia said last night on TV One's small leaders debate.
That means that if the Maori Party holds the balance of power, the Government's supporters will be able to attend Maori Party hui and vote for Labour. "We advertise the hui and whoever comes, comes," she said.
When host Mark Sainsbury asked if they had to be Maori Party members, Mrs Turia said, no, they just had to be on the Maori roll.
The party held 18 hui after the last election and she expected that, after any negotiations this time, the hui would take no more than a week.
Sainsbury: "And that will determine what you do?"
Turia: "That's what we said and that's what we'll do."
The Maori Party stands a good chance of being the kingmaker after the November 8 election.
Mrs Turia also stressed it was the quality of the relationship that mattered most.
"All policies can be talked through if you have got a trusting relationship between you and the other party."
Act leader Rodney Hide and Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons support the Maori Party's bottomline position of entrenching the Maori seats.
Mr Hide argued they should have the same protections as the general seats, which require a 75 per cent vote in Parliament to change.
Neither National nor Labour has indicated whether it would support entrenching the Maori seats.
Mrs Turia said she expected the Maori Party would require support for its draft legislation through all stages in the House, not just the introduction.
Last night's debate was very civilised, with none of the talking over one another that characterised the debate between Prime Minister Helen Clark and National leader John Key.
Mrs Turia and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters had a pronounced reconciliation after the sparring in the wake of the Maori Party's vote to censure him in Parliament.
They each remarked several times that they agreed with the other, for example over a bureaucratic approach to tackling violence.
Mr Peters also said he had been one of 11 children and was born in a tent - then amended that to say he had been brought home from hospital to live in a tent. "I know what poverty smells, feels and tastes like and I hate it."
He said Mr Key had been lucky to have been brought up in a state house.
Progressives leader Jim Anderton said he could work with Mr Peters again, Mr Hide said he couldn't and Ms Fitzsimons said she would have difficulty, with a police investigation still going on into the declaration of NZ First donations.
