Clark's former campaign worker says confidence is gone

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

Tony Ward was a fervent fan of Helen Clark for 20 years and rated her highly as a prime minister. No more.

The 62-year-old Pakeha director of programme development at Whakatane's Maori university, Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, feels betrayed and saddened.

He has known the Prime Minister since he worked for her election campaign in Mt Albert in 1984, and she supported his (unsuccessful) bid for a seat on the Auckland Harbour Board the next year.

Now, in an open letter to Helen Clark, Dr Ward has lashed out at her handling of the foreshore and seabed issue, accusing her of pre-empting the legal process and alienating many admirers such as himself.

He is vehement about the Prime Minister's labelling of some of the hikoi participants as "haters and wreckers" and her reported remark that they would be worse company than celebrity sheep Shrek.

Writes Dr Ward: "I have always been one of your most ardent supporters and have until now considered you to be a great Prime Minister able to bring together the diverse sections of the New Zealand public with understanding and compassion, and with a sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of the tangata whenua.

"All that support has now gone.

"Your comments [about the hikoi members] fill me with disgust. The pressure that you are now under, and which presumably leads you to make such ill-advised comments, is of your own making."

Referring to court action which should have gone on to test Maori argument on foreshore and seabed ownership, the letter continues: "Had you allowed the due legal process to take its course you would have consolidated your position against the divisive politics of Don Brash. Instead, you have chosen to join him in a display of racist gutter politics.

"When Maori accede to our demands that they follow due process, and it looks as though they might have some legal success, you decide to shift the goalposts. Sadly, from a Maori perspective, that has been the history of the Crown from the 1840s.

"You now have neither my support nor my confidence. If and when a Maori party is formed it will get my vote."

Dr Ward yesterday said he came to New Zealand 22 years ago as "a refugee from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan". Originally from England, he worked and taught in the US for 12 years, eight of them at the University of California Berkeley.

An architect by profession, with a PhD from Auckland, he now lectures in contemporary cultural studies and critical education theory at Whakatane, where he has lived for the past two years.

The long-time Labour Party supporter moved to New Labour and the Alliance "with the betrayal of the electorate by Douglas, Prebble and co in the late '80s.

"But I always supported Helen. I saw her as being aloof from and not connected to that."

Although he had not talked to her in person for the past few years, he said: "She must know in her heart of hearts that this whole process is alienating her from people who really care about her. She must be feeling awful."

Dr Ward said he thought Helen Clark was shocked by the "racism that came out of the woodwork" after Don Brash's Orewa speech and tried to forestall and divert it.

But the real issue, he said, was not about Maori wanting title to the land but about them having access to the law to determine if they had a case.

"Ken Mair and co have been very consistent about that."

Helen Clark's refusal to meet the hikoi showed how estranged she had become from Maori. "She is on the back foot, in damage control and defence mode."

The only way Dr Ward could see the Prime Minister recovering ground was to admit she was wrong and allow a case to go back to the Maori Land Court.

Otherwise, he said, Maori had a unified voice and, if they could consolidate, there had never been a better time to start a Maori party. "Racism behind the scenes has been exposed for what it is."