Treaty a major issue for swaying voters

Titirangi's Doug Burt goes shopping. When every dollar counts, he doesn't want his taxes wasted. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Money is tighter than it used to be for Doug Burt these days.

Mr Burt, 54, of Titirangi, has had to give up his job because of prostate cancer and diabetes. He's become the "home help", shopping cheaply for sausages at the Avondale market when the Herald found him. His wife runs a small business in Onehunga where he helps out half a day a week.

When every dollar counts, he doesn't want his taxes wasted.

"Too much money goes into the arts, which I think is the privilege of a minority, and this Government tends to be pandering to minorities," he says.

He's switching from Labour to National in next month's election. One of the things he hopes for is that National will "put a limited time period on the Treaty of Waitangi settlements, rather than continuing it for the next 50 years".

Many New Zealanders agree. The Treaty, and the more general issue of "handouts" to Maori, is the second-biggest issue swaying right-shifting voters in the election, and was mentioned more often in the total sample of 600 voters than all but four other issues (welfare, tax, health and student loans).

The predominant theme is that, whatever the rights and wrongs of 150 years ago, the Treaty now gives money and privileges to people who just happen to be descended from the "right" side of the New Zealand wars - even though almost every Maori now also has European ancestors.

"If I sold my house to someone and came back 20 years later and wanted it back, it wouldn't happen," says Christchurch distribution worker Helen McLellan, 40. "That issue is splitting the country."

Howick student Becky Tappin, 18, likes Don Brash's line that "all of us are New Zealanders".

"Helen Clark just keeps forking out and forking out to those Maoris. I think there's got to be a point where she's got to say, 'That's enough'."

A Manukau storeman of Samoan and Chinese descent, Saki Ah San, 32, asks what makes today's Maori different from other people.

"If the Maoris can have one [a treaty], why can't the Chinese, the Samoans, the Tongans?" he asks. "If you are going with the one world, stuff the treaty settlements. What's the point?"

Taupaki floristry worker Jacqui Burdett says: "I have a son paying his way through tech, who wants to know why his education isn't free when some of his mates are free just because they're of a different race."

A 61-year-old woman from Pukenui in the Far North says: "We have a classic example - the kohanga reo gets everything, but the playcentre struggles with the parents helping them."

Tauranga administrator Leslie Kruger, 45, fled South Africa and has been astonished to find the situation "exactly reversed" here.

"It's racism in reverse," he says. "You can't have democracy on the one hand, and on the other hand favour one group of people. It doesn't make sense. It can't work."