Red-faced Kelly stays away from Davies' funeral

The High Commissioner to Canada and former Labour MP Graham Kelly has been forced to abandon plans to attend Sonja Davies' funeral because of the fallout over his extraordinary remarks about Maori, Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Mr Kelly forged a close friendship with Sonja Davies when the pair worked together at the Shop Employees Union.

He had wanted to attend the funeral at the Wellington Town Hall on Sunday when he heard about her death last Sunday.

In arrangements for the funeral circulated yesterday, planners had even assumed Mr Kelly would be speaking at the funeral, such were their historic ties.

But according to Government sources, Mr Kelly decided against it yesterday, realising the embarrassment it would cause to his former Labour colleagues and the distraction his attendance might create at a friend's funeral.

There have been calls for Mr Kelly to resign over comments he made about Maori, Asians and Pacific Islanders when speaking to a Canadian Senate committee about New Zealand's fisheries management system.

He referred to Maori as "fighting and eating each other" and engaging in "Maori wars" ever since arriving in New Zealand; about Asian immigrants as "strip-mining a beach of periwinkles and having a boil-up"; and to a Pacific Island minister who looked like Moses who strip-mined a beach with his congregation.

Prime Minister Helen Clark is confirmed as a speaker at Sonja Davies' funeral.

Her office could not confirm whether she or other senior Labour figures had spoken to Mr Kelly about the funeral.

Mr Kelly was a trade unionist for 25 years before being an MP for 16 years, most of them as MP for Porirua.

He left as a list MP in 2003 to take up his new role - for which he is paid between $127,075 and $164,450 a year - a job he got after he was sacrificed as foreign affairs select committee chairman for the leader of United Future, Peter Dunne, who supports the minority Government on confidence and supply.

Maori Party leader Tariana Turia yesterday lodged a formal complaint with the Human Rights Commission.