What are you people imbibing ?
Please keep your eye on the ball.sharpen up!

That toxic selection of dogwhistlers and crypto fascists in denial , that comprise the NP “brains trust”[ I use this in its loosest terms] exist only to serve up what is still available in public wealth for their Cyano capitalist paymasters.

New Zealand has an enormous marine resource , extended significantly in 2008 .
It encompasses vast areas of clean , temperate ocean suitable for pelagic fish farming [protein , #1 resource of the 21st century] , massive tracts of unexplored sedimentary basins for oil and gas , and recently explored volcanic vents producing rare and expensive metals.
A huge treasure chest and most certainly in the eyes of a number of transnational thieves .
The MP and all TW would be well advised to tread with extreme caution , read the fine print so to speak. and remember well, one of the great lines [unlikely to reworked and delivered by donKey]
…..white man speaks with forked tongue….

* using stockmans classification is “highly offensive”: Academic Cant. University.

Then the Maori Party was set up to exploit the underlying racism of Maori New Zealand for electoral gain.

“She claimed that this power of ownership extends to Tahiti, the ancient homeland of Hawaiki.
http://www.act.org.nz/news/margaret-mutu-must-be-challenged

Here’s what Chris Trotter has to say:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4392654a1861.html

I take your meaning, now – not Māori votes.

Politics IS about tough choices. The Maori party will discover that soon enough, when they have to sell a compromise (inevitable) to their own voters. It’ll be interesting to see what you have to say then.

Indeed, it will be, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they manage that tension. I think they’ve made some bad decisions so far, but mostly they’re minor crimes of omission which can be reasonably excused on the grounds of needing to build a relationship in good faith with a much more powerful government partner – the sort of compromises Māori MPs in other parties have to make every day of their political lives. I don’t know what the first really big issue of division will be.

As to the implication of “what you have to say then”, I’m not a blind defender of or apologist for the māori party; I’m not even part of their constituency. I just support their right and ability to drive their own political agenda. Since that agenda is explicitly derived from kaupapa Māori, and their constituency knows this and broadly understands those kaupapa and how they work in practice, the extent to which they betray the agenda should (in principle) be reflected in their electoral support. But we’ll see.

L

Orewa was exploiting Maori for cheap votes. And consequence and intention are different things. Politics IS about tough choices. The Maori party will discover that soon enough, when they have to sell a compromise (inevitable) to their own voters. It’ll be interesting to see what you have to say then.

Brash lost the election, was replaced by Key, and Maori have become a group for National to work with, not exploit for cheap votes.

Ignoring for a moment that National has never been in a position to exploit Māori for cheap votes, are you seriously trying to argue that the Foreshore and Seabed Act was intended to repair the relationship between Māori and National, and that this was Labour’s intention all along?

Come off it. I agree that the net effect of Labour’s cynical pandering to the One Nation idiots has resulted in the state of race relations in NZ being better than they were beforehand, because both National and Labour now realise they can no longer afford to ignore the needs to tangata whenua. This was the māori party’s purpose, driving this change was their mandate, it was the justification for going into government with National and it’s them who can take credit for the thaw (however much of a thaw that might be).

Appeasement? Or victory?

Appeasement by Labour. Victory for the māori party.

L

Come on, Lew, don’t play dumb. Labour in 2009 are doing the right thing, because (as ever) we start from here.

Labour in 2004 made a choice, which had consequences. The other choice would have had different consequences <i.and we don't know what they would have been.

One consequence of what they did do, however, is that Brash lost the election, was replaced by Key, and Maori have become a group for National to work with, not exploit for cheap votes.

Appeasement? Or victory?

Yes, Helen Clark fell out with Turia, and it is a disaster that the MP was formed in the context of bad blood with Labour. But that is nothing to the damage that National cynically did to race relations in this country.

Labour and Maori have a long and productive history together, and the original tension with the MP (a particular party representing some Maori) doesn’t change that.