Key electorate: Tainui

By GREGG WYCHERLEY

Labour candidate Nanaia Mahuta has been nicknamed "the princess" by her caucus colleagues because her aunt is the Maori Queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu.

But Alliance list MP Willie Jackson, one of her opponents for the new Tainui electorate, calls her the "sleeping princess", knowing she can sleepwalk her way into Parliament.

Mr Jackson faces a tough fight to beat Ms Mahuta, who at 19th on the Labour list is certain of a place in the House regardless of the result in Tainui.

Her decision to campaign for both party and electorate votes in Tainui rather than to seek to hold on to Te Tai Hauauru electorate may cost the Alliance one of its few chances of winning a seat.

Tainui is a new seat made up of the northern part of the old Te Tai Hauauru and most of the old South Auckland seat of Hauraki.

It takes in and includes Hamilton, Coromandel Peninsula and Waiheke Island and unifies the Tainui tribal areas in one seat.

Tainui is Ms Mahuta's home ground and she intends to make full use of the connections that catapulted her from obscurity as a university researcher to eighth on the Labour list in 1995.

Daughter of the late Sir Robert Mahuta, she was identified by then Labour Party president Maryan Street as "a person to watch in the future" and went on to win Te Tai Hauauru by more than 6000 votes in 1999.

But "difficult to see" may have been a better description.

Her profile has been low to the point of invisibility, and the biggest splash she has made was a week ago, when her relationship with her first cousin made headlines.

She has refused to comment on her engagement to William Ormsby, who is son of Sir Robert's brother, William Tuitawhiao Ormsby.

Mr Jackson has been struggling for political survival.

He and other Mahuta opponents have accused her of selling Maori short by pushing a two-tick campaign.

Angeline Greensill (Ngahina Mana Maori Movement ) says Ms Mahuta is cruising to Parliament on her list position and would lose nothing by allowing another Maori MP to get in through Tainui.

"She should be telling the people that, 'Really, I'm already in', but she's not. She's basically saying 'We need two ticks'."

Mr Jackson thinks Ms Mahuta should leave Tainui to him, thereby guaranteeing another Maori MP in Parliament and throwing the Alliance a lifeline.

But friction between the camps has escalated, and last week Mr Jackson complained to police that Mahuta supporters had been stealing and vandalising his campaign signs.

Thieves stole more than 150 of his yellow and black signs, he said, and on one occasion were seen replacing the signs with those of Ms Mahuta.

But when the squabbling is over, whoever wins Tainui will face the challenge of representing an electorate troubled by poverty and hindered by a dysfunctional tribal structure.

A series of disastrous investment decisions has highlighted Tainui's poor performance in managing the tribe's $182 million assets, and this may become a key issue for voters.

The new electorate gives Tainui voters a chance to speak with one voice on the tribal issues that unite them, and most voters in the low-income electorate are beneficiaries of the 1998 $170 million Treaty of Waitangi settlement.

With 47,000 beneficiaries clamouring for settlement benefits, the new Tainui MP is bound to become an important conduit between the Tainui board and its people.

The board is highly factionalised, and supporters of the Maori Queen have re-emerged in control of a business teetering on the verge of receivership.

Ms Mahuta has been helped in politics by her tribal connections and political pedigree.

It remains to be seen whether her connections will prove a help or a hindrance this time around.

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