KEY POINTS:
John Key's reaffirmation of his party's policy to abolish the Maori seats in Parliament was made with a significant change to the party's previous position.
Under the new policy there will be no advance consultation with Maori, which illustrates exactly why the seats are needed - to guarantee Maori participation in the political process.
The right of any group to participate in decision-making that directly affects that group is elementary to democracy. It is clear that a sizeable number of Maori wish the seats - which do not limit the rights of others - to be retained.
Arguments that they should be abolished frame citizenship in assimilationist terms. The basic tenet of assimilation is that "everybody should be like me and participate in society only in the narrow terms that I can understand".
It is a position which undermines equality by allowing the dominant to set the terms of political engagement and to exclude others.
Yet the terms of political engagement are a matter for all citizens, not just a simple parliamentary majority.
Active participation in the political life of the community is a fundamental right of citizenship, which cannot be guaranteed if the political system is built on assumptions of political and cultural homogeneity.
In a democracy, everybody must be included. Majority votes are ultimately needed to resolve division, but democracy still ought to function on the basis of the rights of every citizen.
Democracy's guiding principle should be fairness to all, which means that no one group should always be on the losing side.
If the same people are consistently losers then democracy is exclusionary. Yet its purpose is to be emancipatory. Democracy should protect citizens against the misuse of political power, which means that minority interests are legitimate considerations.
Equal rights might, therefore, need to be expressed with regard to unique, historically rooted, political circumstances. Democracy must recognise difference if it is to recognise freedom, which is not acultural.
The basis of full and effective political participation and a full share in the national sovereignty is the right to be governed by representative government.
Representative government through the votes of general electors remains elusive for Maori. Only eight Maori have been elected from general seats since the first, James Carroll, in 1893.
At present, Parliament does not contain a single Maori member elected to a general seat. If Maori are not elected to Parliament, can one truthfully speak of a "House of Representatives" and therefore assume that governments govern with the consent of the people, rather than just the consent of some of the people?
Maori are not and do not wish to be part of the cultureless homogeneity often presented as a political ideal. In a free society this wish ought to be accepted.
Social cohesion is more secure when all people believe that their value systems are represented in the public realm. For as long as electoral inequality remains in the general seats, there will be a fair argument for guaranteed representation.
When political values change and an electoral equality emerges it is likely that there will have been an accompanying shift in the full range of negative social indicators which inhibit equality. It is only at that point that there may no longer be a practical advantage in Maori having reserved seats.
An alternative, but far more difficult policy goal would be to outline the conditions under which just political participation could be achieved without recourse to the guaranteed Maori seats. A policy programme to that end would make a valuable contribution to a free, democratic society.
In contrast to the assimilationist argument, the position that MMP makes the Maori seats unnecessary is argued without prejudice, but on the basis of flawed assumptions. Although MMP has seen Maori parliamentary representation increase to become roughly proportionate to the Maori population, this is not just a function of Maori being elected from party lists.
Maori constituency members are required to raise the number of Maori members to a proportionate number. List MPs represent parties, not communities. They have no direct opportunity to seek an electoral mandate and owe their places in Parliament not to the national body politic but to the small group of party functionaries who influence list selections.
Removing the constitutional guarantee to representation on the basis that the electoral marketplace may encourage political parties to select Maori in winnable list positions would be a risky strategy for Maori to accept.
The removal of Maori seats will not make Maori go away. Maori are a minor player in the complex set of relationships which give legitimacy and stability to the electoral system. But they are not so small in number or in moral claim to a collective voice as to have no significance.
Guaranteed Maori representation in Parliament does not, however, answer questions about the nature of a society that will not elect Maori to public office. This is the more important question for democracy.
* Dr Dominic O'Sullivan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Maori Education Research Institute, University of Waikato.
