National's Maori MP told to fit in or else

By AUDREY YOUNG and RUTH BERRY

National Party leader Don Brash is poised to sack his Maori affairs spokeswoman, Georgina te Heuheu, next week unless she commits herself in the next two days to his hardline Maori policy.

"I have a high respect for Georgina, but I don't think anybody who is at fundamental variance with the party policy in the area for which they are a spokesperson could easily retain that portfolio," Dr Brash said last night.

Mrs te Heuheu has refused to make life easier for her leader by going voluntarily, and last night she dismissed a report that she was thinking of leaving National.

"Leaders come and go but the party remains," she said defiantly - perhaps doubly upset by Dr Brash's tough speech on Maori issues this week, given that she actively promoted him in the coup against Bill English last October.

Asked last night if he could let the matter drift, Dr Brash said: "No, no. I can't. The caucus meets on Monday."

He said he would deal with the issue then.

North Shore MP Wayne Mapp is a possible replacement for Mrs te Heuheu, but tub-thumping deputy leader Gerry Brownlee is a more likely prospect for such a key post in an area where the Opposition believes the Government is hugely vulnerable.

The National caucus is holding a three-day retreat in Whangarei next week ahead of Waitangi Day.

The new-year tension over race relations comes as UMR polling released to the Weekend Herald reveals that voters identified it as the most important problem confronting the country last year in averages of monthly polling.

The polls reveal that crime and violence were voters' biggest worry at the end of 2002, with race relations well down.

But concerns about race had risen by early last year and peaked in August, when the Government released its foreshore and seabed proposals.

One National insider said the poll results, prepared for an unidentified private client by UMR, had cemented the party's decision to begin Dr Brash's year with a speech on race relations.

But MP Murray McCully, one of Dr Brash's strategists, denied this yesterday, saying he was unaware of the polls. However, he was not surprised by the results.

Dr Brash talked in his speech of a "dangerous drift towards racial separatism" and he described as "deeply corrupt" some practices of consultation in the name of the Treaty of Waitangi.

He said a National government would not allow any Government financing based on race, would abolish the Maori seats and the Maori wards on local councils and scrap some of the proposed foreshore and seabed measures.

The foreshore and seabed concerns first arose last June when the Court of Appeal ruled that it was possible for the Maori Land Court to award private ownership of the foreshore and seabed to customary rights holders.

It has led to internal dissension in Labour, too, with Associate Maori Affairs Minister Tariana Turia deciding to abstain from the vote on the issue.

Mrs te Heuheu said there were a lot of similarities between what she and Labour's Maori MPs were experiencing.

In the "might is right" environment of Parliament, she said, Maori MPs in mainstream parties often faced significant pressure when tension exploded over race.

Meanwhile, Dr Brash continued his assault on the Government yesterday, seizing on submissions by Solicitor-General Terence Arnold at a Waitangi Tribunal hearing.

Mr Arnold said the Government's foreshore and seabed policy gave Maori "real power" and the ability to stop others' activities.

Dr Brash also roped in former Treaty Negotiations Minister Sir Douglas Graham - seen as a relic of a kinder, gentler National Party - to support his speech on Maori policy.