John Armstrong: Tariana Turia is Politician of the Year

Don Brash would beg to differ, but there can be no turning back the page. Not now, not ever.

The supreme irony of 2004 is that it began with a speech that shamelessly sought to submerge Maori in some kind of ethnic melting pot but ends with Maori stridently asserting their political identity as never before.

No one can pretend to know quite where this will all lead, but a new chapter has opened in New Zealand politics.

With the birth of their new party, Maori have taken the final step out of the political ghetto to which the two major parties had historically confined them.

At long last, Maori are exploiting the decade-old mixed-member proportional electoral system to their maximum advantage.

They have taken their political fight from the fringes right into the mainstream. The power equation has a new dimension - one that is raw, uncompromising and hugely unsettling to the established parties.

National's response has been to turn its back on Maori. This is no answer. National is only turning its back on the future.

It is blind not to see that. For wherever you looked this year - the unseemly jostling of the Prime Minister at Waitangi, the foreshore law, the hikoi, Labour's u-turns, Labour's Maori caucus, Tariana Turia's resignation, the Maori Party, John Tamihere's sacking - politics and Maori were inextricably intertwined. It was really the only story.

For Labour, there is now the desperate struggle to cling on to the Maori vote when the inescapable logic of MMP dictates that such a faction ultimately becomes a separate party - more so given the Maori seats are a security blanket negating the need to breach the 5 per cent threshold.

No wonder this year has witnessed the slow strangulation of Labour's Maori caucus. The MPs are fatally compromised by remaining answerable to the wider party - and therefore answerable to Pakeha. The Maori Party is answerable to no one.

Of course, it is quite possible the new party may not survive for long. It may collapse in on itself, the gulf between Maori radicalism and conservatism being too big for even Turia's mana to hold together under one umbrella.

But the forces that have driven the party's formation will neither dissipate nor diminish. They will simply find fresh channels through which to surge.

That those forces have found outlet for now in the Maori Party is down to the two defining events of 2004.

Pakeha antagonism found vent in Brash's one-standard-for-all treatise at the Orewa Rotary Club, which, in turn, succeeded only in further unifying Maori.

That solidarity gave unstoppable momentum to the hikoi, which had been driven initially by frustration over Labour's point-blank rejection of the claim on the foreshore and seabed.

An eerie quiet has since settled over Pakeha. It is if they have been appeased by Brash voicing their worries and Labour belatedly acknowledging them.

Perhaps - and it is a big perhaps - the power manifested in the massed ranks of the hikoi made some Pakeha realise Brash's solutions are too simplistic and it is wiser to take a step back towards compromise.

What is not in dispute is that the hikoi bore down on Parliament in such numbers as to give Maori sufficient confidence there was a firm enough foundation for a new party. And in Turia they had the necessary figurehead.

It was also very much a case of now or never.

Likewise, Maori voters will be crazy not to seize the moment. Qualms they might feel about deserting Labour should be erased by the realisation that Labour's Maori MPs will still get into Parliament, courtesy of high list rankings.

If those voters don't want to give both votes to Turia, they can rationalise split loyalties by splitting their votes in favour of her party in the constituency contests while giving Labour their party vote.

Whatever, the upshot is there will be even more Maori MPs in the next Parliament - and with more leverage because Labour's remaining Maori MPs will be really feeling the blow-torch of their Maori Party counterparts in the House.

One thing is for sure, should Labour find itself relying on Turia's backing to govern. With Matt McCarten quietly advising her, the Maori Party will not be the soft touch for Labour that McCarten's Alliance was. Once bitten, never bitten again.

All of the above necessarily means Turia wears the mantle of Politician of the Year.

You can argue that it would have been more courageous for her to continue her fight within Labour. But having made the jump - and that would not have been an easy decision either - she has generally outwitted her former colleagues. She remains a large thorn in Labour's side.

That is not to say everything she has done comes up smelling of roses.

You cannot go much lower than slinking out of a Labour caucus meeting at Premier House stretched head down across the back seat of the Prime Minister's limousine to avoid waiting television cameras.

The suspicion lingers that she has cleverly modelled the suit of martyrdom worn by Winston Peters during his prolonged exit from National in the 1990s.

And, as her opponents will constantly remind her, the hard graft of building a new party is only beginning.

Moreover, she can expect a propaganda offensive from Labour next year to convince Maori voters that day-to-day living standards matter far more than theoretical arguments over perceived, but unobtainable rights and, on the former score, Labour is delivering.

That will not stop Turia surfing back into Parliament - and not alone. There is too much goodwill for her party not to succeed whatever obstacles confront her between now and polling day.

Labour had hoped that by ignoring her, it would deprive her of headlines, leaving her party starved of oxygen. That hasn't happened.

Labour might have got a fright from Brash. It certainly remains wary of him, but no longer fears him. Labour has worked out how to handle him.

It still has no answer to Turia. She remains the only politician who strikes fear into Labour's heart.