THEM AND US

"Mana May Miss By-election" was the headline in last Friday's Herald, pretty much the same line we were fed by TV1 and TV3 the previous night. As a headline it at least had alliteration going for it, but as important news or even as mundane information, it held little merit. The headline might just as well have read, "Mainstream Media May have Missed the Point.”

Perhaps it’s not fair to expect the mainstream to get it, even 171 years after they began publishing in this country. After all, very few within it have either the chops or the insight to know what is politically important to Māori in general, let alone to Māori who will vote in the upcoming Taitokerau by-election. So let me spell out to them what is and isn’t important to us.

Iwi Chairs have very little influence on how we vote. In fact the support of certain Chairs will almost certainly lose a candidate more votes than it will gain; especially if that Chair is seen by us as a Crown puppet or, worse still, a Crown employee. However, anyone within our iwi who has a long record of standing apart from the Crown and standing up for us can swing a lot of votes.

Political parties don’t have the same clout with us that they held, say twenty or even ten years ago. Add that to the fact that there is no party vote in a by-election, and party branding just doesn’t have a lot of relevancy for us today. Not unless it’s tagged to someone who does.

Planks of policies and platforms of promises; even though most of the razzamatazz of campaigning is based around such things, they don’t impress us much. No matter who the government is, we’ve seen most policies and promises aimed at addressing issues of concern to us come to nothing.

What is important and does impress us is the candidate and his history amongst us. We want to know, does his public campaign match his private character? Is he known to tell his party what we want it to do? Or does he sell us what it wants to do? Does he equate his ambitions with our needs? Do we see him at our hui, laughing and crying over the same things we do? Has he got an honest mouth instead of a smooth tongue? Does he live clean or dirty? If he’s got skeletons, are they closeted or are they out in the middle of the floor dancing for all to see? When we watch him do we sense his strength and mana, or does he feel just like a big puff of emptiness?

We did not create the Māori seats, and if Don Brash has his way we won’t be there when they’re uncreated. But while they exist we do take an interest in who sits in them based on the answers to all the above, and not on whether they have money to run their campaign. In the end, if we like the candidate and what they stand for, we’ll raise the necessary funds. We may even vote for them.

As for mainstream media, they do a fair to middling job analysing the Dons and the Keys of politics. But they still don’t get us.