Tainui split on Nanaia Mahuta's future

By JON STOKES, Maori affairs reporter

Opinion is split within Tainui over suggestions that MP Nanaia Mahuta should leave the Labour Government.

Ms Mahuta enjoys almost universal support from her constituents to cross the floor in opposition to the Government's foreshore and seabed legislation, but opinion is divided over suggestions she should leave the party after her vote.

Ms Mahuta has repeatedly refused to give an assurance she would stay with Labour.

She said this week that if the Government failed to change tack "it will result in Maori forming strong opinions about whether their political voice is best served within the Labour tent or aligned to it".

Speculation that Ms Mahuta could leave Labour has grown since Associate Maori Affairs Minister Tariana Turia announced last week that she would leave the party.

More than 200 Tainui members are expected to join the national hikoi in Wellington today.

A contingent of senior elders sent by the Maori Queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, is expected there tomorrow.

There are suggestions from some quarters that the elders are there to support Ms Mahuta when she resigns after opposing the bill.

However, a senior Tainui kaumatua, who did not want to be named, disputes this.

He said the Maori Queen preferred Ms Mahuta to work with the Government rather than join a Maori party.

Tainui executive member and former Maori Affairs Minister Koro Wetere is a Maori adviser to Prime Minister Helen Clark and a former adviser to Dame Te Ata.

Ms Mahuta's father, Sir Robert, was a Labour supporter and was instrumental in her entry to Parliament as a 26-year-old list MP in 1996.

Ms Mahuta is a niece of Dame Te Ata, the head of the Kingitanga movement.

Some sectors within Tainui are concerned that Ms Mahuta's position could compromise its Treaty of Waitangi claims to Kawhia, Aotea, Raglan and Manukau Harbours and the Waikato River.