KEY POINTS:
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is playing "the race card" with comments accusing the Maori Party of fostering political separatism, Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples says.
Mr Peters has called on Maori to turn their backs on the Maori Party and taxpayer sponsored militant separatists, saying they represent apartheid and the destruction of New Zealand values.
Speaking at the close of his party's annual conference in Taupo yesterday, Mr Peters attacked the Maori Party for being a party solely based on race.
"In South Africa we called that apartheid, and the rest of the world including New Zealand condemned it.
He said those who had marched protesting the arrest of Tame Iti were doing so not because of his innocence or guilt but because he was brown. He accused them of humming "a hymn of hate".
But Dr Sharples said Mr Peters was guilty of "playing the race card".
"He's doing a Don Brash really, in hope that he will get a bit of support," he said on Radio New Zealand.
Dr Sharples said the Maori Party's stance on the so-called "anti-terror" raids was purely to call for fair treatment for their people.
He said even easy-going moderate people in the Bay of Plenty iwi Tuhoe had been shocked by the police tactics used in raids a fortnight ago.
Questions needed to be legitimately asked why the people of Ruatoki - a peaceful quiet village - had been subjected to such heavy-handed tactics when gangs who had been killing each other for years were not.
Dr Sharples said the Maori Party was not supporting a small group of separatists - as Mr Peters' claimed - but voicing the concerns of the majority of Maori.
NZ First, which once held all the Maori seats, had abandoned Maori through its policies.
Dr Sharples said even if some of those arrested were found guilty of terrorism related charges he did not feel the large-scale swoop on Ruatoki was warranted.
But no immediate action to reduce Maori Party co-operation with the Government was planned as a result of the raids, he said.
Prime Minister Helen Clark today said a lot of Mr Peters' speech was "hyperbole", but it was true the Maori Party were "ethnicity-based".
She said she did not accept the Maori Party's assertion that Maori had been targeted by police in the raids.
"The police targeted what they believed were offences and their decisions and the Solicitor-General's decisions about that will be known in the fullness of time and I think probably not too far away," Helen Clark said on Newstalk ZB.
"So I think we are all better to suspend judgment about this until we see what evidence police intend to put forward before the court."
Helen Clark said she did not believe Tuhoe would ever have sovereignty as a separate state as some desired.
Mr Peters said those arrested in the raids sponged off the state they chose to undermine, while other Maori worked and paid taxes to fund them.
- NZPA
