Maori have too many rights: Don Brash

Don Brash. Photo / Dean Purcell

Don Brash has launched a fresh campaign against Government policies which he says give Maori more rights than other New Zealanders.

In a half-page advertisement in today's Weekend Herald headlined "Fed up with pandering to Maori radicals?" the Act leader claims National is trading away the country's resources for Maori Party votes.

"Under a string of weak governments, New Zealand has been slowly morphing into a state where those who are Maori have more rights than those who are not."

The advertisement says National has sped up this process with a string of measures including:

* Passing the Marine and Coastal Area Act "to make it much easier for the Maori Party's mates to claim our coastal riches".

* Foisting an unelected Maori Statutory Board on Aucklanders.

* Forcing the people of Wanganui to spell their city's name with an 'h'.

* Keeping "the crippling RMA [Resource Management Act] conditions that force many of us to 'bribe the tribe' to develop our own land".

The advertisement says Act supports the Treaty of Waitangi and Maori culture and claims its policies will do far more for "ordinary Maori" than those of its rivals.

But it says voters have to draw a line in the sand and vote for Act "to stop the Maori radicalisation of New Zealand".

The message echoes Dr Brash's controversial Orewa speech as National leader in 2004, in which he attacked "race-based funding" for Maori as "separatist" and said Maori privilege was responsible for consigning non-Maori to second-class status in their own country.

The speech catapulted National above Labour in the polls.

- Staff reporter