Catherine Delahunty: Maori representation no threat to open democracy

Catherine Delahunty says that our current Prime Minister has recently demonstrated a backwards-looking and naive grasp of New Zealand's history. Photo / Martin Hunter

Gareth Morgan has many interesting opinions and is well informed on issues from water quality and conservation but his Herald opinion piece on Maori representation on local councils requires a response.

The assumption that Maori seats on local authorities will destroy democracy is not correct. Where this has occurred on councils the sky has not fallen on the communities or upon decision making.

Gareth Morgan also attempts to minimise the value of the Waitangi Tribunal as a site for debate on the place and meaning of Te Tiriti.

He is correct that the national conversation needs to be a broader than the tribunal which is essentially focused on historical redress.

However, rulings such as the recent Waitangi Tribunal ruling that the rangatira did not cede sovereignty to the British Crown in 1840, provide a basis for a new conversation.

They correct the colonial record by affirming the korero of the indigenous voices which have been passed down from 1840 to 2014, especially in Te Tai Tokerau.

A fresh conversation requires an informed population and a willingness to discuss the relationship between tangata whenua and the Crown without fear of what this conversation could lead to.

New Zealand as a Pacific nation has the opportunity to value both the Te Tiriti relationship and the democratic traditions which were imported here.

We need a fresh approach to this relationship and a desire to create participatory models of decision making with more sophistication than Westminster democracy can provide.

This can be seen as either an exciting challenge or a threat to our current governance arrangements which have successfully marginalised Maori in our local government system.

Anyone can stand for a local election but the low numbers of Maori speak for themselves and Maori who speak for haputanga rather than as individuals are extremely rare on councils unless Maori wards are created.

"That's democracy" the beneficiaries of the system will tell us.

Maori wards or Maori seats in the Parliament make a space for Maori voters to choose their own people at least partially on their own terms, and until we are brave enough for the shared governance structures which Te Tiriti tried to enshrine, they are necessary.

I would urge Gareth Morgan to discuss the impact of these wards and seats with people in the Waikato Regional Council, Bay of Plenty and New Plymouth, especially tangata whenua, before naming them as a threat.

The co-governance structures created in some Te Tiriti settlements are actually a closer reflection of Te Tiriti than Maori wards or seats but the jury is still out on how well they can work.

The resource disparity between regional councils and iwi and hapu load the dice against an equitable relationship.

The entrenchment of a stronger iwi role in resource management decision making has been written into Te Tiriti settlements but will not work if councils refuse to engage. An example of this problem was described to me by representatives of the Te Tau Ihu from the top of Te Wai Pounamu who told me they might have to use Te Tiriti settlement funds to fight councils in court for these statutory relationships to be realised, it seemed the ultimate irony.

A fresh conversation will only happen when a better educated generation of citizens is prepared for the dialogue based on a sense of history and justice rather than a less than creative definition of the issues that relies on fear and control.

This conversation will not be led by the current Prime Minister who has recently demonstrated a backwards-looking and naive grasp of New Zealand's history, but by people from all cultures whom I meet at Waitangi ever year who come to listen to the dialogue from a place of respect.

Catherine Delahunty is a Green list MP.