Labour goes all-out to retain Ratana's backing

The Government will present a strong front today at Ratana Pa as it begins its election-year battle with the Maori Party for the Maori seats.

Helen Clark will bring just over half the Labour caucus - 27 MPs, including 15 ministers - who will arrive after National and New Zealand First are welcomed.

Labour traditionally holds the church's support but is now vying for its loyalty with the Maori Party.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia claims Labour has not kept to a pact signed in 1935 by Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage and church founder T.W. Ratana.

However, Government minister Mita Ririnui, a Ratana minister, said Mrs Turia was guilty of making "sweeping generalisations" about the 1935 pact and she would find the accusation difficult to back. Among many better statistics, Maori unemployment was down and tertiary education had increased.

Mr Ririnui said a"deliberate flow of misinformation" had seen the Government attacked over its foreshore legislation.

"I'm looking forward to putting the record straight," he said.

Ratana president Harerangi Meihana was yesterday reported reiterating the church's allegiance to Labour.

Church spokesman Wayne Johnson was sceptical about a push by Ratana minister Te Whakaotinga Ronald Smith, a Maori Party supporter, to separate the secular and religious wings of the movement.

The Maori Party invited Mr Smith to air his plans to re-establish a political base at Matamata's Te Omeka Marae at its AGM last year.

Mr Johnson said Mr Smith's assertion that Ratana Pa was not the true base for the church's secular wing was at best "debatable".

National's sole Maori MP, Georgina te Heuheu, will accompany party leader Don Brash to Ratana. She has just announced that despite a rocky time early last year - when she lost the Maori Affairs portfolio after criticising Dr Brash's Orewa speech - she would again seek a list seat with National.

Mrs te Heuheu said Labour had ditched its Maori constituency with the foreshore legislation.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said he had gone to Ratana for the past 12 years and had never seen a 27-strong contingent from one party before. "I don't think anyone is going to be fooled by them."

Asked about the battle for the official support of Ratana, Mr Peters said his party was the only one to have taken the Maori seats from Labour and "the church would be wise to beware of false prophets".

LABOUR AND RATANA

* In 1935, T. W. Ratana promised Labour the Maori seats in exchange for the party's agreement to look after Maori.

* Labour asserts the bond by attending the annual celebrations marking the prophet's birthday.

* Labour won the last of the seats in 1943 and held them all until 1993, when Tau Henare won Northern Maori for New Zealand First. The Winston Peters-led party scored a clean sweep three years later when the church withdrew its allegiance but Labour won them all back in 1999.