Editorial: Turia's empty victory

Prime Minister Helen Clark worked long and hard to keep Tariana Turia from forcing a byelection, offering her the concession of a temporary suspension from the ministry rather than the permanent dismissal that would normally be the fate of a minister who voted in Parliament against a Government bill. Helen Clark's efforts, and evident frustration in the weeks that Mrs Turia dithered, attested to apprehension in the Labour Party at the prospect of a campaign for the Te Tai Hauauru seat.

The party's fears were immediately confirmed when Mrs Turia announced her resignation on Friday. Helen Clark declared Labour would not contest the byelection. On the face of it her apprehension seems absurd. The Maori seats, after a brief flirtation with New Zealand First, are as solidly Labour as they used to be.

But Labour will have learned from the NZ First raid that large Maori majorities rest on a shallow base. An issue as sensitive as the foreshore and seabed could well cause the voters of Te Tai Hauauru to forsake Labour in sympathy with their MP.

That, though, may not be the real reason Labour has decided to default. The last thing the Government needs right now is a byelection in which it would have to court Maori voters in terms that would play into the hands of National's present appeal to Pakeha. Government would be widely heard assuring Maori they are getting some new special recognition in the legislation removing foreshore and seabed from possible customary ownership - exactly the charge National has been making and the Government denying.

With her resignation Mrs Turia must have hoped to give her people a decision that could have been as historic as the Court of Appeal's foreshore ruling and the Government's legislative seizure of any tidal property Maori might have claimed. Instead, Labour has handed Mrs Turia an empty victory. But her resignation, a response to legislation Maori regard as a simple confiscation, could yet be the catalyst for the formation of a new and lasting Maori political force.