Mike Hosking: Ihumātao fiasco proves there's no point in a Māori Party return

COMMENT: From our "dreams are free" file is the suggestion that the Māori Party, such as they are, is eyeing up a comeback as a result of the land occupation, or protest, or festival get together, or whatever it is you want to call the fiasco at Ihumātao.

A similar thing was said a couple of weekends ago when a group hired an entire hotel to sit around for the afternoon and express their outrage over the nabbing of babies by Oranga Tamariki.

At some point those who dream of organising political parties might want to realise that forming groupings based on anger leads nowhere productive or long-term.

The original Māori Party was formed out of the foreshore and seabed scrap with the then Labour government. As the issue faded, so did the anger - and so did the reason for a party. Hence in 2017 the last remnants were voted out.

You can't just go round looking for scraps and aggrieved players and then thinking it's next stop Wellington. And the irony of all of this is that a Māori Party doesn't represent Māori because there isn't a Māori vote, per se.

Not all Māori are the same or anywhere close to it. Even at the Fletcher's site they're scrapping with each other. There is no cohesive Māori voice, never has been, never will be.

The Greens suffer the same issue. Under the broadest of environmental umbrellas they represent a cause, but it's never taken off. It's never been harnessed as successfully as it could have been, simply because one green is not the same as another.

Once again we find the scrap at Ihumātao as an example. At the communist agitator end of the Greens, Marama Davidson, Golriz Ghahraman, Chloe Swarbrick, they can't get enough of a good old cause. You'll note James Shaw, the sensible one, isn't within a hundred miles of it. He must be pulling his hair out when he sees stuff like that.

The person who wants to save a snail, open a walking track, or run their compost bin on solar panels doesn't get Swarbrick or Davidson, and I suspect secretly wishes they'd go away and let the Greens be green instead of activists and stirrers.

And that's before you get to yet another irony of the Greens' presence, they're protesting against themselves. They seem to forget they're essentially part of the government.

The protesters want the government to do something, so the greenies are saying to themselves, given they are part of the solution, that they want themselves to do something. That's how nuts it all is.

Political progress and success is based on concepts, ideas, and moving a country forward.

The Māori Party was based on the past and anger. And an attempt to resurrect it now, will be based on exactly the same thing, and even if it flickered to any sort of life, will end up in exactly the same fashion.