IRRELEVANT POLITICS

Thursday evening (27th June), I got a call from someone called Lea-Ann de Maxton to tell me that there was a meeting of the Crown’s Constitution Conversation Advisory Panel the next day (Friday 28^th June) in Kaitāia and to ask who was going to be there from Te Runanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu.  It was the first I’d heard of the meeting and I couldn’t be there.  A short time later an email arrived which said that, “a significant gathering” was taking place and asked me “kindly to extend this invitation and help to promote it.”  I forwarded it to the Trustees of Te Runanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu who have emails.

On Saturday 29^th June those same Trustees, along with their Kuia and Kaumātua, held their hui-a-marama and none of them had gone to the Constitutional Conversation meeting the day before.  I asked why and their answers included, “The meeting lacked notice, it’s a Crown timetable and agenda, it’s not based on He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Ngā Hapū o Nu Tirani and Te Tiriti o Waitangi, it isn’t relevant, we have a longer, fuller Constitutional Transformation conversation, process and agenda going on.”

 

Clearly what was billed as “a significant gathering” actually wasn’t to a significant group of people. 

On that same day the Ikaroa-Rawhiti (east coast) byelection closed, and by that evening we knew Labour had won it with 42% (4,368 votes) of a 36% turnout (10,519 votes cast) out of 29,219 enrolled electors.  That meant at least 18,700 enrolled voters in Ikaroa Rawhiti didn’t vote.  Many thousands more weren’t even enrolled. 

 

Yesterday (Monday 1^st July) Mike Smith asked on facebook, “Why was there such a low voter turnout in the east coast byelection?”  The answers from east coasters themselves came thick and fast.  “No petrol, no car, no time, no idea who to vote for, no abode, no idea where to go to vote, wasn't much hype, no tv, no phone, no post office, system is rigged, no link between voting and an improvement in our lives, the best candidates are stymied in their delivery even if they make it to parliament, the system stinks, we don’t feel heard, a depoliticised public, neo-liberalisation has killed democracy, government is illegal and is a corporation posing as a government, voting is a colonization idea, voting is voluntary, lost faith in MPs who talk crap, wasn’t a priority on my only day off, have seen and heard all the promises before, sick of the lack of unity between Māori MPs.” 

The glaringly obvious fact is that the Crown process of electing a government has no more relevancy for the majority of east coast Māori than the Crown Constitution Conversation has for the majority of Far North Māori. 

Māori disengagement from Crown processes is an old story.  But what is new, is the sustained Māori engagement in our own processes of constitutional transformation, and our increased understanding that politics is unnecessary and irrelevant to the process of good government.