KEY POINTS:
The Maori Party has a critical date looming on the political calendar. Within a fortnight of the House resuming next Tuesday, a private member's bill repealing the Foreshore and Seabed Act is set to be debated.
National holds the key to its passage.
The issue will be a
test of the relationship between the Maori Party and National. Central to that test will not be whether National supports it, but how National's failure to support it is taken.
There is a lot at stake in the bill - the potential for Labour to get stuck into the failings of the Maori Party, the potential of National to form a government after the next election, and the potential of the Maori Party to graduate from being an independent voice for Maori, to being an independent voice with real influence.
National almost certainly won't support it. That was stated unequivocally by National leader John Key at his caucus retreat in Gisborne in February and it has been reiterated at recent meetings between the parties.
Until the vote is taken, the Maori Party lobbying will continue in what one National MP calls "a full court press".
It is important for the party not to give up the fight or be seen to give up the fight.
The party was founded on the foreshore and seabed issue - borne of a Court of Appeal judgment allowing Maori to claim freehold title of the foreshore and seabed at the Maori Land Court.
Labour responded with a law that shut down both the Maori Land Court avenue for freehold foreshore title and common law rights to claim customary title through the High Court, and replaced it with a statutory regime to recognise customary rights ranging from small to grand scale. And in case there was any doubt, the law vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown.
In the backlash against Labour, Tariana Turia's party won four of the seven Maori seats and there is every expectation it will gain more at next year's election.
Labour is closely watching the progress of the Turia bill - which is before the House only because she was lucky enough to have her number pulled out of the regular parliamentary ballot for bills.
It is bound to seize upon the bill's imminent failure as an illustration of the Maori Party's weakness - sure, a loud voice, but a voice with no clout. The Hone Harawira outburst against Australian Prime Minister John Howard epitomised that.
But whether the defeat of the bill is seen as a failure of the Maori Party will depend on whether Maori see it as a one-policy party, an image the four MPs have assiduously fought since day one.
If its supporters seriously believed a small, new party could change a momentous piece of legislation from Opposition, it might be blamed.
If its support was more a protest vote, it should be able to wear the loss without too much damage, and easily shift the blame to National and Labour.
It may also be able to persuade its support base that they may live to fight another day on the bill - after the next election.
There have been suggestions that National might support the bill to select committee but no further, just to cause strife again for Labour.
Getting the repeal bill to select committee would be a partial victory for the Maori Party, giving it the platform it wants to revive the issue in hearings around the country. For them it would be better than nothing.
It is not a novel notion. Labour has done exactly the same thing for Act's Rodney Hide in sending a bill it doesn't support - setting up a red-tape audit against existing and new legislation - to select committee in the hope of getting a favour down the track.
Creating a headache for Labour might be a good reason for National to support the Maori Party Bill to select committee but there are stronger political reasons from National's perspective to vote against it.
It would raise the hopes of Maori that the act could be repealed - only to disappoint them that there wasn't the parliamentary support to do so.
National could also be blamed if getting the bill to a select committee reignited the furious and volatile debate that surrounded the Foreshore and Seabed Act.
And the timing makes no sense for National. Why would it use the strongest bargaining chip it has with the Maori Party in Opposition, when the same chip could be used in 18 months to get them both into Government. It is the one single chip that National can play and that Labour cannot.
National has legitimate concerns that the hellishly complicated bill as drafted does not technically do what it seeks to do - to return the law to the Court of Appeal position - concerns Labour has also raised.
National is sorting out a policy framework for the application of customary rights issues - water, carbon or foreshore - and has argued to the Maori Party that it would be premature to support the bill without having a position to do so.
It is not in National's interests to deal with the bill now but that position will almost certainly change. It expects to deal with the issue during the election campaign and to have a clear position in the likelihood that it is top of the Maori Party's negotiating priorities.
By that time, National will commit to a process to advance the bill to select committee, if not to the substance of the bill itself. It may also have worked with the Maori Party to address some of the technical complexities of the bill.
The comparison to that course is Winston Peters' private member's bill to remove reference to the Treaty of Waitangi in legislation. It was defeated just before the 2005 election. Peters then made it a condition of the confidence and supply agreement with Labour that it support the bill to a select committee.
National is banking on the Maori Party accepting the reality that parties make decisions in their own interests, no one else's. It also runs the risk of eroding the good faith that has steadily been built up between the parties in the post-Brash era.
