treaty myth #1 - maori seats set up to ensure maori got representation
When the NZ Govt was set up with seats and so on the basis for eligibility for voting was based on the situation back in the Mother Country, ie men with property. Maori owned property communally so didn't qualify, until they started turning communal property into individual property (a topic for another post).
At that time eligible Maori voters (considerably less than the number of adult Maori) were at least a quarter of the voting population. But non-Maori were given 60 seats to represent them, while Maori were given four. Yes, four. You read that right - four (4). Quite ignoring the voter eligibility dodginess, they should still have got 20, to be proportionate. But no, four was deemed sufficient to represent Maori in Parliament.
Maori were not allowed to stand in any General Electorates until the 1970s. I think that Winston must have been the first Maori elected in a general seat in 1975 (Hunua) although I'm aware there was some election funding scandal there (anyone know?).
Until the arrival of MMP in 1996 there remained just the 4 Maori seats. That's through the whole of NZ's parliamentary history, since the 1850s, only the four seats, regardless of changes in the population and so on.
Clearly all of this was not about giving Maori representation when they otherwise would have had none or very little - in fact it was about restricting their voice. Many Maori migrated to the General Roll prior to 1996, to try to get a say in how the vast bulk of the MPs were elected. Now that the numbers on the Maori Roll actually determine the number of seats there has been a surge back again - interesting that even today, at about 14 - 16% of the population, Maori get more seats (7) than they had for over 140 years.
3 comments:
Great post span - very interesting
Just a correction - Maori were allowed to stand in general seats, it was pakeha who were forbidden to stand in Maori ones. The first Maori MP in a general seat was James Caroll, who represented East Coast in the late 19th Century and into the 20th. There were several Maori MPs in general seats throughout the 20th Century before MMP saw numbers take off.
Also Winston won a petition for Hunua in 1978, not '75 - the first time a result had been overturned by judges in NZ.
thanks everyone for your comments - especially those correcting mistakes on my part (i am certainly no expert and just starting to learn about these things).
interesting though that many of the comments disagree on what the truth is - imagine how confused or uninformed the general public must be, given that most bloggers have finished school! apparently the NZ History compenent of Year 13 History is excellent, but how many get that far, how many who do take history (not me), and how many schools do the NZ History component rather than Kings and Queens (not many)?!
IS has also posted on this over at NRT for those interested in reading some more.
the other Che made a point about the number of Maori leaders despite the woeful under-representation - it is interesting that although there are (now) many Maori who can stand in the Pakeha world the reverse is not so true. I was at a workshop the other day when a Maori woman was talking about her son, who was Pakeha and adopted. she and her whanau had brought him up fluent in te reo and tikanga, and he could now stand on the marae and so on, but he felt quite confused and isolated as a Pakeha in this situation. i hope that my children's generation are more comfortable in both situations.
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